Scotland Music Adventures: Refractions and Spin

Folk and traditional music is passed on in ways as varied as the artists who to do it.

Artists may choose note to note transcription, others prefer free invention on traditional themes; the same musician may choose both of those approaches from time to time. There are many steps and shades in between those choices too.

Those shades and steps in between are the places Neil Pearlman and the four women who comprise the group RANT have chosen to walk in recent projects.

Neil Pearlman’s instrument for his album Refractions is the piano.

He has chosen Gaelic song along with several fiddle and bagpipe tunes, mainly from Scotland, some from Cape Breton, as source material.

For some of the tunes he explores what the these pieces of music become when brought to the piano. Melodies that are usually carried by voice and backed by fiddle or flute reveal different aspects when brought to keyboard.

For other tunes, Neil uses the ideas present in a tune as inspiration for his own invention. For several he offers music that references its source by creating a musical dialogue with it.