I knew right then I would someday make a whole record like that. I loved what that collaboration pulled out of me. вЂњBack when Donnell and I were recording One (their celebrated 2015 duo debut), Tim Edey and I were sitting in a room in our house and I just loved the sound of guitar and fiddle. The album is also the tangible realization of the more recent - and daring - abovementioned instrumental format.

Produced by MacMaster and husband/musical partner Donnell Leahy last spring at TorontoвЂ™s Loudmouth Studios with acclaimed engineer Vic Florencia (Jason Mraz, Steven Page, Five For Fighting to list just three credits), Sketches is in some ways the culmination of a lifetimeвЂ™s worth of influences and ideas, thousands of which were warehoused on MacMasterвЂ™s ever-present iPhone.

Yet all 12 tunes are propelled by MacMasterвЂ™s unmatched creative instincts which, alongside guitarist Tim Edey, she follows fearlessly into emotional territory that runs from gleeful to heartbreaking, a beguiling range perfected through countless gigs performed across the decades all over the world. The exhilarating mix of originals and covers, old tunes and new on Sketches can be labelled many things: Celtic, traditional, folk, instrumental, bluegrass. Sketches is also the highly decorated musicianвЂ™s first recording to feature fiddle with guitar but not piano as is customary with Cape Breton fiddle music. ThatвЂ™s how it is for superstar Canadian fiddler Natalie MacMaster, and thatвЂ™s exactly the spirit fuelling Sketches, her dazzling 12th solo studio album and first since 2011вЂ™s Cape Breton Girl.

Such a rarefied status allows an artist to make the kind of music she wants to make, knowing her audience is already deeply invested and along for the ride wherever things go. ThereвЂ™s something wildly liberating in having nothing left to prove, no commercial hurdle left to clear.

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