Kate MacLeod may have grown up in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., but after moving to Salt Lake City in 1979 at age 18, she quickly developed a greater affinity for the country’s more picturesque areas than for its concrete jungles.
Decades later, the folk musician’s love of the environment proved the inspiration for her latest album, “Deep in the Sound of Terra: Landscape-Inspired Viofiddle Music.”
Friday night, MacLeod will acknowledge the album’s release with her “Celebrating the Land” event, a “CD celebration concert” at Memory Grove Park’s Memorial House in Salt Lake City.
Well-known as a solo singer-songwriter who plays acoustic guitar, harmonica and violin, as well as a fiddle player in the Celtic group Shanahy and the Americana group Triggers and Slips, MacLeod said her two stints as an artist-in-residence at the Torrey-based Entrada Institute, a nonprofit organization that bridges art and environmentalism, were the genesis for doing something different musically.
“I started to compose a handful of pieces about the Colorado Plateau, and so once I got into that, it just expanded from there,” she told The Salt Lake Tribune in a phone interview from New Hampshire. “I started this habit of creating violin pieces from the landscape that I was in — I wrote all kinds of pieces from all over the country: up in the Northwest, in the Northeast, places I’ve traveled, I’ve got one from Iowa. And so, I compiled them, because I had not recorded a full-length violin recording of my playing.”
Kate MacLeod: “Celebrating the Land”<br>Folk musician Kate MacLeod will hold a “CD celebration concert” for her latest album, “Deep in the Sound of Terra: Landscape-Inspired Viofiddle Music.” There will be adult beverages, refreshments and hors d’oeuvres. CDs and other merchandise will be sold at a discount during the event.<br>When • Friday, 7:30 p.m.<br>Where • Memorial House, Memory Grove Park, 375 N. 120 East, Salt Lake City<br>Tickets • $20; katemacleod.brownpapertickets.com
The album, which has been in production for about two years, features tracks such as “Sunrise on the Colorado Plateau,” “Desert Rain,” “The Moon and Mount Rainier,” “Maxfield Parrish Sky” and “Apology to the Native Rock.”
MacLeod said immersing herself in specific landscapes opened the floodgates to her creative side.
“Well usually, I go into it — I actually go into the place. I’ll sit on a rock or I will sit by a creek. It’s a little bit more than looking out the window, it’s actually being in it,” she said. “And then I sit with my violin — I play my violin every day, I have to practice, so to dispel the boredom of that, I do things like go outside with my violin and play. And what happens is I ask myself, ‘If my violin could describe what this landscape is, what would my violin say?’ That’s how I go about that. So then I really try to conjure up a melody or a feeling that might evoke what it is that I’m experiencing with the landscape.”
The album features an array of contributing musicians and varying styles.
Regarding the former, MacLeod noted, “There are at least 12 guests on this recording. Some of them are guitar players, I have mandolin players, I have a cello, piano and a couple of other instruments.” As for the latter, she added that she wanted it to “include sounds of the different styles I’ve played all my life,” such as traditional fiddle playing, American style, old-time and bluegrass, as well as a derivative of the fiddle style from the British Isles and Europe.
Meanwhile, her performance Friday night (which will be followed by an after-concert jam session) will be accompanied by Salt Lake City musicians Otter Creek, Mark Hazel and Bob Smith, as well as Nashville’s James Scott.
MacLeod is looking forward to the performance. She’s also looking forward to letting people finally experience an idea she’d been carrying around for a long time but that, up until recently, she wasn’t sure she should do anything about.
In the end, she’s glad she got over her trepidation and did it.
“Well, I’ve been playing the violin for 50 years, and I guess it was just really important to me. I didn’t want to put out a violin recording without really thinking about it, maybe making it unique,” MacLeod said. “There’s so many great fiddle players, really amazing violin players, and I felt as though there were so many people playing music that was already written. … And I’ve studied that fiddle music all my life, but I didn’t feel like I had anything original to say in those genres of music. And so I decided once I compiled enough of these landscape pieces, that I could put together something that I thought would add to the repertoire a little bit for the fiddle. Also, it’s celebrating 50 years of playing for me. It’s my longest relationship ever!”