Tim Macdonald: Fiddler and Dancer Tim Macdonald, a musician who also dances, is a past Chairman of the Chicago Branch. He is a regular performer, scholar, composer, and teacher of early Scottish fiddle music. He has competed at the Glenfiddich Fiddle Championship and plays for Scottish country dancing. He is currently in Edinburgh for a year, studying for an MScR in the School of Scottish Studies of Edinburgh University. Tim gave a talk at Winter School in Pitlochry in February Before telling us about your music, what is your connection to Bonnie Prince Charlie? I am the five-times great grandson of Flora MacDonald from South Uist, who helped Charles Edward Stuart evade Government troops after the defeat at Culloden in 1746. She married Allan MacDonald, moved to North Carolina, then to Nova Scotia, before returning to Skye. My four-times great-grandfather was their son John. He was a Lieutenant Colonel in the army and is buried in Exeter Cathedral. His son James was my three-times great-grandfather. He was also in the army, died young in India, but not before fathering Augustus who was born in India but moved to New Zealand where my great-grandfather, Major Reginald Macdonald OBE was born. He also served in India, where he fell in love with a married Englishwoman, and they moved to the US. He was keen on genealogy and convinced the Lord Lyon that he was the rightful chieftain of the Macdonalds of Kingsburgh and Castle Camus. His first child was my grandfather, Somerled Donald St Maur Macdonald, a Pittsburgh chemical engineer, whose second son is my father John, the 17th and current chieftain of Kingsburgh, thus making me a direct descendant of Flora MacDonald!
When did you start playing the fiddle? I have lived equal thirds of my life in Honduras, Pittsburgh, and Chicago. I started playing the classical violin when I was four. When my family moved to Pittsburgh, we started going to Highland Games – in the US many of the Games have fiddle competitions. On hearing everyone play I realised that they played the violin and seemed to be having fun. I too played the violin, but I wasn’t having fun! So surely there must be a solution! My mother miraculously found an excellent teacher on the other side of town – Colyn Fischer. Colyn had studied with Ian Powrie and Alasdair Hardie and would go on to win the American National Championships in Scottish Fiddling several times. So, every two weeks we would drive a great distance so that I could get a lesson from him and learn the alchemy of turning simple tunes into complex and enjoyable music. I remember an early comment from him, “Vivaldi would be proud! That’s not a good thing.” Colyn also taught at a summer camp – The Jink and Diddle School of Scottish Fiddling in North Carolina – and eventually I was pronounced old enough and a good enough player to attend. A full week of non-stop fiddling away from home – Heaven! An important part of ‘Jink’ pedagogy was the idea that you couldn’t really understand how to play dance music unless you understood the dancing, so every day there was a 90-minute country dance class and at the end of the week a 12-dance beginner’s ball with the largest dance band you’ll ever see: several dozen fiddlers of all levels! Through the very patient efforts of camp co-founder and RSCDS teacher, Moira Turner of Richmond, I muddled through skip change and right shoulder reels for a few years and slowly realised that, despite my teenage protestations, it really was fun and deserved my proper attention.
18
www.rscds.org
James Murray, grandson of Flora MacDonald, great-great-greatgrandfather of Tim Macdonald.
How did you get involved with the RSCDS? I had moved to the Chicago area to study for a degree in computer science. In my first term I gave a talk about playing Scottish fiddle music. My lecturer stopped the class to ask if I knew about the Chicago Branch of the RSCDS – which I didn’t. He then invited me to dinner and to the weekly dance class afterwards. At the Silk and Thistle class, as it’s called, I both refined my dancing in all the countless ways I couldn’t at the annual beginner-level camp classes, and also cut my teeth leading The Silk and Thistle Players for a few dances each night. Later on, I got even more involved, joining the demonstration team, serving a term as chairman, and starting to do teacher training before everything was cut short by the pandemic.
What other influences did you have? As a fiddler I had been becoming more and more interested in how our music had developed. Through the tunes and dances I’d get little snippets of the history from various teachers, but they weren’t always clear or consistent with each other. And sometimes I’d want to play a tune in a way that sounded good to me, but I’d be told it wasn’t ‘traditional’ and to play it this other way instead. Increasingly, I started reading academic material on Scottish music history. Scottish Fiddle Music of the 18th Century by the late
