Heather Elder was one of the more than 30 people who came along to Johnsonville beginners’ classes in February 2017.

In April 2017, Heather was one of the group of new dancers at our first Tartan Night of the year. By the time our October Tartan Night came along, she was up the front sitting in with Lynne Scott’s band – a swift transition!

Heather went on to play as a band member in Lynne’s bands for our first shared annual dance with Capital City in 2018 and at our April and July Tartan Nights in 2019. Check out the photos and you’ll see Heather with her game face on, which is why some people call her a ‘serious’ fiddle player.

See more about Heather’s fascinating journey to becoming a Scottish Country Dancing musician below.

Kristin Downey

I’m rejoicing on the inside!

I’ve been told I look very serious when I’m playing my fiddle. You’ll just have to take my word that I’m rejoicing on the inside!

I fell in love with the instrument aged nine. My mother taught me piano when I was seven, and I went to Saturday morning recorder classes for a while, after which the teacher suggested to my mother that I learn the violin.

I remember sneaking into the living room after everyone had gone to bed and opening up the case, just so I could admire my new instrument: the curved shape, the delicate, perfectly symmetrical F holes, the gleam of the wood. I mean, it was a rental and looking back it was probably a cheap mass-produced violin but I thought it was gorgeous.

In high school I played in the Auckland Secondary Schools and then the Auckland Youth Orchestras. I loved being an orchestral player – the feeling of immersion in this big musical machine, the camaraderie of camps, tours and concerts, the glorious repertoire.

At the time, I was also working my way through the Trinity College exams – I passed Grade 8 aged 15 and ATCL the following year. Looking back, this was way too young and I honestly don’t know how I managed: I loved ensemble playing but if I had to perform solo I would quake with fear and my bow would bounce and stutter across the strings.

After I left school I kept up the fiddle for a while, playing in a pit orchestra and a few chamber groups and once, long ago, the title role in a community theatre product of Fiddler on the Roof, unrecognisable behind a highly unconvincing Life of Brian-style beard.

Eventually work, study and travel took precedence and I stopped playing properly for years. I finally picked it up again in the UK when my daughter was very young and played with a local folk group called, believe it or not, Swinging with the Chickens.

When we came back to New Zealand in 2005 I started looking around for more folk opportunities. I joined a klezmer (Jewish folk music) band, and had another baby. My younger daughter gestated to klezmer music, and both my girls spent a lot of their early lives dancing at gigs.

I stayed in the Klezmer Rebs for 10 years, playing at musical festivals around the country, as well as for weddings, birthdays and bar mitzvahs. We also made a few CDs – I wrote the title track on the latest one, Always a Pleasure (2016, available on Bandcamp) and even sang a number on it too!

Singing’s also been part of my musical life – I conducted my house choir at school, sang in the Auckland University Choir and later in the Cambridge University Music Society Chorus under the late Sir Stephen Cleobury, former musical director at King’s College, Cambridge – a huge privilege. Closer to home, I joined the Festival Singers in Wellington last year.

But the fiddle will always be my musical home. In 2014, after a few years  in the kIezmer band, I decided it was time to try something new and signed up for a Scottish fiddle camp that I’d found online – the Southern Hemisphere International School of Scottish Fiddle, or SHISSF, in Kaitoke. Just as well I did – it was the last one they ran.

There I met Lynne Scott, who suggested I come to Ceol Alba, her monthly Scottish music session. When she ran a workshop for musicians interested in playing for Scottish Country Dancing, I went to that too. Shortly afterwards I started playing with her at the Island Bay Scottish Country Dance Club (now Capital City), and gradually venturing onto the dance floor.

I’ve learned (and am still learning!) a lot from Lynne and she’s been a patient and generous mentor as I’ve got to know the music and the community and have played at club nights and dances.

So far, the highlight of my admittedly very short career as a Scottish fiddler has been playing with Lynne’s band Wild Heather for Hogmanay 2018 at the Summer School – my first Hogmanay gig and my first Hogmanay. It was a blast!

What with work, teenagers and a new puppy, life is pretty busy and so music-wise I mostly stick to Scottish fiddling. I do branch out from time to time, though – I’ve played traditional Persian music in Parsima, an Iranian band founded by a colleague from RNZ Concert (where I worked for a while as a music librarian). Later it morphed into a world music band called Sounds Like Us.

I’ve done a bit of session work, including with a friend who produces ambient techno under the name Jet Jaguar. And a few years ago I played a ghostly musician in a Fringe Festival show-slash-installation called Traces in a pub basement. But nothing beats playing for a hall full of happy dancers.

Heather Elder
3 August 2020