Thanksgiving Dance
at the Canadian-American Club
in East Watertown, Massachusetts
Event Description
- Date
- Friday, 2006 November 24
- Time
- 20h-0h
- Venue
- Canadian-American Club of (Boston) Massachusetts, 202 Arlington Street, East Watertown, MA
- Description
- Gabe Arsenault presents a dance with music by Kimberley Fraser, Brenda Stubbert, and Bonita LeBlanc.
- Admission
- $13
Photos
Kimberley Fraser and Brenda Stubbert on fiddles
accompanied by Doug MacPhee on piano
Doug MacPhee on piano
Brenda Stubbert on fiddle
Kimberley Fraser on fiddle
Bonita LeBlanc step-dancing
Step-Dancer
Judy McKenzie step-dancing
Kimberley Fraser step-dancing
Step-Dancer
Step-Dancer
Step-Dancer
Step-Dancer
Bonita LeBlanc on fiddle
accompanied by Kimberley Fraser on piano
Brenda Stubbert on fiddle
accompanied by Doug MacPhee on piano
Dancing the Boston set
Norman MacEachern “prompting” the Boston set
Kimberley Fraser on fiddle
accompanied by Brenda Stubbert on piano
Brenda Stubbert on fiddle
accompanied by Kimberley Fraser on piano
Brenda Stubbert on fiddle
accompanied by Janine Randall on piano
Kimberley Fraser on fiddle
accompanied by Janine Randall on piano
Doug Lamey on fiddle
accompanied by Doug MacPhee on piano
Bonita LeBlanc on fiddle
accompanied by Janine Randall on piano
Kimberley Fraser and Brenda Stubbert on fiddles
accompanied by Doug MacPhee on piano
Kimberley Fraser and Brenda Stubbert playing each other's fiddle
accompanied by Doug MacPhee on piano
Review[1]
On Friday, 24 November, Gabe Arsenault sponsored a Thanksgiving dance at the Canadian-American Club in East Watertown, Massachusetts. It featured three Cape Breton musicians, a fiddler from the Ottawa Valley, and two local musicians with Cape Breton roots playing in the Cape Breton style.
Shortly before 19h30, the evening’s music began with Doug MacPhee on piano accompanying Kimberley Fraser and Brenda Stubbert both playing fiddles. With the lively music pouring forth, it did not take long before step dancers took to the floor. After playing a few sets together, Kimberley and Brenda then traded off, with Doug still on piano, with one playing one set and the other the next. This portion of the evening, cèilidh rather than square dance, wrapped up with Kimberley doing a step dance while Brenda played.
Bonita LeBlanc, who lives in the Ottawa Valley but whose family has roots in the Boston area, then took the stage accompanied by Kimberley Fraser on piano. She said that she had grown up listening to the tunes and that she had long wanted to play at the Canadian-American Club, where her mother was a regular before the family moved away from the area. She said she doesn’t consider herself as playing in either the Ottawa Valley style or the Cape Breton style, since she thinks she doesn’t sound like either. To my ears, however, she sounded very much in the Cape Breton tradition, with its characteristic ornamentation prominent in her playing, though, on occasion, one could hear background hints of the Ottawa Valley style in her music. She clearly was at ease both with her fiddle and the tunes she played, nearly all of which were familiar to me from the Cape Breton repertoire. I enjoyed her playing and would be happy to hear her again. Before she started to play and at several points during the evening, she also proved herself to be a talented step dancer as well.
Brenda Stubbert and Doug MacPhee then came back to the stage and the square dancing started. Norman MacEachern, who, I was told, learned to “prompt” from his late father-in-law, Allan McMullen, called a Boston set; that was followed by an (unprompted) Inverness set. Kimberley then took over the fiddle and Brenda moved to the piano, giving us more sets of tunes. During this time, the audience profited from the music with interspersed dances, both individual step dances and two more square sets, one of each variety. Next, Janine Randall took over the piano and Brenda moved back to the fiddle, playing a number of strathspey sets during which several step dancers from the audience and Kimberley once again took to the floor demonstrating their steps. Kimberley then spelled Brenda, while Janine continued at the piano, giving us another memorable performance of Tullochgorm, among many other great tunes.
After a brief pause, Doug Lamey and Doug MacPhee took over the stage and gave us some fine sets. Bonita LeBlanc then returned and, accompanied by Janine Randall, gave us yet more toe-tapping sets, attracting still more step dancers to the floor.
As it was now growing late, Kimberley and Brenda returned with Doug MacPhee on piano and finished up with a few dual fiddle sets, during the last of which Kimberley and Brenda played each other’s fiddles, i.e., each fingered their own fiddle whilst bowing the other’s fiddle!
Sadly, the crowd was not as large as when Andrea and Troy were here earlier in the fall, though there were enough square dancers to fill two squares for each of the evening’s four dances. And many left around 23h, leaving only twenty or thirty that stayed to the end—something I find very hard to understand as the music was superb all night long; I assume it must have been the obligations of the Thanksgiving week-end that called them away. In any case, I am grateful to Gabe for assembling such a fine group of musicians who gave us four and a half hours of very fine Cape Breton music beautifully played.
[1] This review was not posted to the Cape Breton Music List as it was completed too late to be timely.↩