Music diary, July 3, 2026
The fiddler Alasdair White is not someone who pops up constantly in the frontline of Scottish folk musicians. Instead, he’s done loads of work with that frontline as a session and band musician over the years.
Now, he has come up with a beauty of a solo album. It’s not his first; the very fine An Clar Geal came out already twenty years ago,but An Iuchair is a work of a mature artist, displaying both inspiration and deep dedication to the traditional roots.
About the name of the album: I know Scottish Gaelic bit and recalled that “iuchair” means “key”, “an” being “the”. But why the space-themed cover art? I got curious and checked other possible meanings of iuchair on Am Faclair Beag, a very useful online dictionary of Scottish Gaelic. And there it was: “Reul an Iuchair: Sirius/Dog Star” – I presume this is the connection.
As I listened to the album, totally delighted, I thought to myself it feels like a tapestry, or an extended piece, with several movements, even if the individual tunes are clearly independent of each other. When I looked for background information, the explanation was found on his website:
“Alasdair also recently premiered a major commission at the Hebridean Celtic festival in Stornoway, an hour-long original piece entitled An Iuchair.”
So there – even when I didn’t know this, it felt like this right off the bat. Says a lot about this work’s power.
What I find striking is the fact that all the tunes are his own but they radiate tradition – if I had been told they are trad tunes, I would have fallen for it. And yet, they have a contemporary feel to them; the album does not sound like a collection of fantastically performed Scottish trad, it’s music that lives in two ages at once so to say. It’s a bit mysterious to me, as I’m neither a Scot nor a musicological expert in any Celtic music, but what I am is mighty impressed and happy with this music.
Alasdair himself shines on the fiddle, of course, and the album finale, the solo fiddle piece Springside, is a beautiful example of how a single instrument in this musical tradition can sound majestic and touching – noble, really.
On An Iuchair, he’s otherwise accompanied by a pretty stellar cast of top musicians in this genre and it’s just a joy to hear musicians of this caliber doing what they do best.
So, I absolutely love what I’m hearing in the 49 minutes of music. It even reminds me of the time a decade ago when I suddenly fell into the wonderful rabbit hole of Celtic music: inspiring, vivid, life-affirming.
My soul music. Maybe yours, too.
FolkNotes 