Seated at her grand piano next to him, Shauna Pickett-Gordon creates a graceful musical foundation over which the tune ranges.
After a few measures, Fischer stamps his feet, Picket-Gordon tosses her head, the bow dances over the strings and the piano swings along merrily.
 Pianist Shauna Pickett-Gordon and fiddler Colyn Fischer play music together in the Montara home where they will be holding house concerts on August 15th and 16th. |
It’s followed by Fischer’s original “Selkie,” capturing the seal-turned-fairy and lovelorn fisherman of Scottish legend in a yearning melody flowing and urgent piano backing. They conclude with Pickett-Gordon’s “Fregishe Fancy,” with elements of folk, world and Scottish music. She begins it with a sly “Fasten your seat belts!”
This scene will replay this weekend with two house concerts featuring Fischer and Pickett-Gordon. Scheduled at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 15, and 3 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 16, in Montara, they feature traditional airs and Scots-flavored originals.
But much of the music is amalgamations of jazz or classical knitted into a Scottish framework.
“I enjoy playing onstage,” said Fischer, “but this music doesn’t belong there. It belongs here, in a living room or a pub with a pint.”
Just as the pair intertwines genres, their own musical paths merged from worlds apart.
“Scottish is the basis we work from,” said Pickett-Gordon, meaning dances, airs, laments from the mid-1700s on, when it sprang from folk and courtly roots. It was recorded in the 1800s at a time when even the poorest read their Bible.
She came from pianist roots, studying voice and classical piano at the University of Southern California. She founded Scottish Fiddlers ensembles in southern and northern California with late husband Colin Gordon, and establishing herself as a composer and performer.
But Fischer, from a Pittsburgh, Pa., family with Scottish roots, started to play fiddle at 3 and discovered Scottish fiddling at 5 through a John Turner album. “As soon as I heard it, the light bulbs went on,” he said. “I wore the grooves out of it.”
Enthralled by what he calls “a very honest music … the thing (in which) I feel (I) most comfortably express myself,” he went on to win a Junior National Scottish fiddling championship at age 16 and a U.S. Open fiddling championship in 2005 and 2006. He also earned a degree in violin performance and taught music to elementary-school children on a Southern California Army base before coming north in August 2006.
A year later, when Pickett-Gordon sought a fiddler for a Peninsula Scottish Fiddlers concert, she invited Fischer to step in. It took only a few melodies for the group to beg him to move to the area.
Fischer’s meanderings into classical and jazz dovetailed with Pickett-Gordon’s flair for varied, complex music. “We became each other’s vehicle for expression,” he said.
But it was not without some readjusting. Fischer, proficient in juxtaposing Scottish and seemingly disparate styles like jazz, drew Pickett-Gordon into new vistas. “He dragged me kicking and screaming into the jazz era,” she laughed.
But it works. The couple have so far made two CDs, “The Light of Day” (2008, titled to capture the delight both felt at having found their long-sought musical match) and “Nocturne,” (2009,) which is more a patchwork of styles.
Admission to their concerts is $12 and visitors are encouraged to bring a snack to share. For reservations and directions, call Pickett-Gordon at 728-0862.
w