Ashley MacIsaac
Ashley MacIsaac
Toronto, ON, CA
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Ashley MacIsaac is, in a sense, the musical representative of the pre-millenial generation of Eastern Canada. An ardent traditionalist with a penchant, nevertheless, for experimentation, this 29-year-old Nova Scotian native has been taught to play the fiddle the working-class, pub-stomp Cape Breton way: fast, furious and with phenomenal precision. Alternately considered a rebel, taking the old fiddling conventions in newfangled directions they were never meant to go, or a champion, reforging and recreating Celtic music with an updated, mass-appeal quality, MacIsaac has unarguably put his own spin on the sounds he was brought up with. This headstrong approach has led to MacIsaac working with an impressive array of talent: David Byrne, the Chieftans, Mary Jane Lamond, and others.
Already considered something of a local legend and prodigy by the time of his impressive 1992 debut Close To The Floor, MacIsaac was not really introduced to Canadian audiences at large until he released the genre-bending Hi!, How Are You Today? in 1995. Along with nation-wide radio play for the first single, "Sleepy Maggie," featuring the dream-like Gaelic vocals of Mary Jane Lamond, and a regular slot on Canadian video channel MuchMusic, MacIsaac was soon recognized coast-to-coast as something of a minor national icon.
Already considered something of a local legend and prodigy by the time of his impressive 1992 debut Close To The Floor, MacIsaac was not really introduced to Canadian audiences at large until he released the genre-bending Hi!, How Are You Today? in 1995. Along with nation-wide radio play for the first single, "Sleepy Maggie," featuring the dream-like Gaelic vocals of Mary Jane Lamond, and a regular slot on Canadian video channel MuchMusic, MacIsaac was soon recognized coast-to-coast as something of a minor national icon.
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