It’s a long time since Fraser Fifield was playing the bagpipes in Aboyne, where he grew up in the 1980s, but he has never forgotten the lessons he learned.
One of his passions was collaborating with kindred spirits and that has taken him all over the world on a remarkable journey, which includes recording in such far-flung places as Buenos Aires and Mumbai, while his distinctive low whistle featured in Montenegro’s entry for the Eurovision Song Contest in 2014.
As a gifted multi-instrumentalist, composer and teacher, Fraser has worked with many artists in the Scottish folk scene including the likes of Old Blind Dogs, Salsa Celtica, Capercaillie and Karen Matheson.
And, when a slot became available at short notice on BBC Radio Scotland’s Live at the Lemon Tree programme, he was asked if he might step in to fill the gap and began a partnership with Aberdeen guitarist Graeme Stephen.
It sums up his approach to music – “have pipes, will travel” – and few Scots can have clocked up more air miles in the last 20 years than this peripatetic character.
‘Piping never leaves you’
Variety has been the spice of life for Fraser, whether playing or writing, and he won an award from Hands Up for Trad in 2015 for innovation in Scottish traditional music, as the prelude to Celtic Connections commissioning a new composition Secret Histories in 2020, which was performed at its opening concert by the 70-strong Grit Orchestra.
Yet, whether embracing a plethora of different styles, forging fresh links with maestros in South America, Asia and Europe, or booking time in recording studios to bring new CDs to fruition, he is happy to admit that the journey all started while he was playing the chanter as a schoolboy in Aberdeenshire nearly 40 years ago.
As he says: “Piping never leaves you. It’s kind of a blessing and a curse. You develop a way of hearing things totally through the bagpipe filter, so that your training on the pipes informs everything. It’s the bedrock of everything I do and there is a certain dexterity in the fingering that you can apply to the whistle especially.”
New album
Some people have music in their DNA and seem capable of mastering any new discipline. It’s an exaggeration to state that you could throw an umbrella in Fraser’s direction and he would get a tune out of it, but he’d give it a better stab than most.
In recent months, he has created Secret Path, a dazzling collection of eight original songs, performed by a trio of whistle, wurlizter and drums, featuring colleagues Paul Harrison and Tom Bancroft, and it was released on June 30.
Some observers believe there’s nobody else quite like him on the international circuit. Not that Fraser spends time tooting his own horn. He’s far happier making joyful noise on his very personal odyssey.
Further information can be found at fraserfifield.com/home
