The sun rises on fiddler and composer Graham Mackenzie's new album The Dawning
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There is so much of Inverness fiddler and composer Graham Mackenzie on his second album – what and who drives and inspires him, music he has played his whole career and also new music he has written over recent years.
Landscape and places anchor many of the tracks on The Dawning and the picture of Graham – with what looks like an actual dawn breaking behind him? – makes an atmospheric cover.
“It was a dawn!” he confirmed, laughing. “The photographer and videographer Somhairle MacDonald and me went up to Loch Ard, about an hour from Glasgow in the Aberfoyle area. It is really beautiful round there. I went there cycling in September and liked the look of the scenery. Somhairle actually knew the area quite well and we left Glasgow at 5.30am. I’m not really a morning person,” Graham laughed. “But we arrived for 7am and got lots of options including that shot!”
It has been a while since Graham’s first album Crossing Borders in 2016, based on his Celtic Connections New Voices commission in 2015.
“I was out in Cape Breton on study abroad exchange from the RCS (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) in 2014 and got the call from Donald Shaw asking if I would like to do New Voices. And my first album fell into place from that.
“But if I’m being honest, this is what I would have envisaged as my first album,” Graham said, meaning the music on The Dawning.
"I would have liked to record a half in half album at the start where I would have taken music I had been playing over the years and added a few of my own tunes in at the same time, as my first one. So a lot of this music I have recorded on The Dawning I’ve played for many years now. It’s just been finessed over time really and parts have been layered up through the recording process.”
Graham explained that the music for Crossing Borders had been all ready to go.
“It was all written, rehearsed and arranged – and that fell into being a debut album.”
It meant Graham was not starting from scratch for his second album and if it hadn’t been for delays caused by Covid and the pandemic, we may have heard it sooner.
The writing of the music on the album spans from the time of Crossing Borders and up to around 2019.
“I’ve been trying to thread it all together so that it works together,” Graham said. ”But though my fiddle style and compositional style will evolve and develop over the years, it has stayed true to how I started in both aspects.”
And another aspect of his work that has remained, is the double strand of disciplines.
“I am still heavily involved in both the classical and traditional worlds,” Graham said. “My work is quite split up between the two these days, but the more you are involved in, the more you are influenced by, and that can only be a good thing.”
As well as solo playing. Graham is a member of the folk group Assynt – with piper David Shedden and guitarist Innes White – which won up and coming artist of the year in 2018 at the Scottish Trad Music Awards. They have also got new album Where From Here to launch at Celtic Connections.
But Graham seems to delight in being part of different groups of musicians and different genres of music. He performs with the GRIT Orchestra – a group of 80 folk, jazz and classical musicians put together in 2015 to celebrate the music of the late Martyn Bennett and his ground-breaking multi-genre album GRIT. The group has gone on to appear at Celtic Connections three years later for a concert exploring the idea of Bothy Culture.
While in Manchester, Graham was one of the five-strong Scottish, Irish and English folk line-up Aizle – which means 'spark’ – pianist Jim Molyneux also appearing on The Dawning. And the group – which brought out an EP in 2017 – were noted then for the evidence in their music of the classical and jazz backgrounds of the players and the choices of Irish and Scottish traditional tunes in their repertoire.
The Parisian Baroque ensemble Les Musiciens de Saint Julien playing baroque classical music and based in Le Havre has Graham as the only fiddle player among its 15 musicians.
He has also worked with The Undivided, a folk/jazz fusion project fronted by Mike McGoldrick – who has produced The Dawning – and Neil Yates, who provides The Dawning’s brass arrangements.
Recently, Graham worked alongside composer Ruth Barrett to record the music to the ITV period drama, Sanditon.
In an ideal world, The Dawning might have been released a couple of years ago – Graham shares the album’s timeline.
“At the beginning of 2020 it was myself and Jim Molyneux the piano player and Innes Watson, the three of us got together and rehearsed and worked through some ideas and arrangements.
“Then it was all scheduled to be recorded in March 2020, but that is when everything was put on hold,” Graham said, confirming the role Covid and lockdown played.
“It was on hold for basically a year and a half which was really annoying because we were building a bit of momentum at that time and then it fell through. But as things started opening up, I managed to book some studio time in September 2021 and we recorded it over five days at Gorbals Sound in Glasgow.”
For Graham there was the chance to experiment with adding an element of jazz and use of brass instruments into the music and arrangements, particularly having a big inspiration in Mike McGoldrick as producer and Neil Yates who is a trumpeter and who did the brass arrangements for the album.
And Graham embraced the opportunity to work with the two, and Mike as producer.
He said: “From the last time I made an album, I definitely wanted to have that extra voice during the recording stage.
“Mike is one of my biggest influences and probably one of my favourite people to listen to, so I’ve been very lucky to have him play and work with me on the album - and I fully trust him in any decision he makes.
“We’ve got a good relationship together and we have known each other since I met Mike during Donald Shaw’s Harvest project during 2004 when I was 12 or 13.
“Since then we have stayed in touch. I lived in Manchester for years and got a chance to spend some time with Mike then. Since then we have collaborated on various projects together and we also keep in touch on a social level as well.
“So if there is anyone that I would want to produce an album with, it would be Mike!”
Everyone in the full line-up on the CD will be appearing at the Celtic Connections launch.
Graham said: “I’m delighted everyone is available and we are able to do it.”
Graham had wanted to bring jazz to the album’s traditional music and brass – did he think he has succeeded in doing that?
“I didn’t want to go too far but I think it gives a flavour of what I enjoy listening to and the projects I have been involved in over the years as well without going too far from what I’m actually about as a musician in terms of fiddle-playing and traditional music, but there’s maybe just a little evolve from there. Hopefully it comes across like that.
“There is brass featured on four tracks of the album and I think they complement the arrangements we had already had there when the brass was added on top.
“I think in my head and a lot of other people’s brass has a brass quality attached to it where brass can be quite a calming sound as well and it’s having that idea I your head as well which Neil has brought to the album.
“I’m not a brass player and I don’t have a lot of knowledge about brass instruments, my last album was a fully strings and folk band, two things I know about a lot.
“However, what a brass instrument is capable of doing is so much more than just the kind of loud sounds that you attach to the idea of brass.”
Starting to get out on his bike led to inspiration for some of the music on the album.
“I enjoy cycling, since lockdown really," Graham said. "And it’s been a nice thing to see all of Scotland from a different perspective, on the bike as opposed to in the car.
“I feel I know Scotland a lot better now from being on the bike for a good few years. I’ve been quite inspired by the views and things like that and over the years I’ve been over to Mull a few times and that has been quite inspiring, to write new music there. A couple of the tunes that were recorded on the album were written whilst I spent a wee bit of time in Mull.
“Ardtun –- and Cula Bay which is on Uist, that was written coming back from there.”
The Dawning is available to buy on CD and to stream and download on all major digital platforms from next Friday (January 27). For more information visit www.grahammackenziemusic.com Graham will launch his album at Celtic Connections on Sunday, January 29 when he will be joined by the six musicians featured on the album – Mike McGoldrick, Innes Watson, Jim Molyneux, James Lindsay, Neil Yates and Matt Carmichael. Graham is also arranging a tour for 2023. The band Assynt will also be releasing their new album Where From Here at Celtic Connections.
GUIDE TO NORTH MUSICIANS TO SEE AT CELTIC CONNECTIONS: https://www.whatson-north.co.uk/whats-on/news/shapshot-of-home-talent-at-celtic-connections-300463/
