About

I’m Alison Cowie – I live in Edinburgh (UK) and I’ve been playing the fiddle on and off since 1970. I started out playing classical music but discovered North American fiddle music when I moved to Ottawa (Canada) in 1982 where I lived for ten years, teaching maths and computer science.

I began by trying to play bluegrass but I was rubbish at improvising. I spent a lot of time at Rasputin’s café in Ottawa, sitting in on sessions and listening to folk music from all over. After a while, I started playing for dancing (with the Ottawa Old Sod Contradance band). I also got the chance to play in an all-women group, playing some old-time music (with The Last Minute band) and I had some amazingly fun moments with a Ukrainian dance group in Montreal – although that was so high, fast and furious that I don’t remember being able to play much of it.

1992 – back in the UK, still teaching maths and computer science. Not so much contradance or old-time music around in Dorset but I had a great time playing for Morris/English Playford dancing (with Dorset Triumph). I moved to Edinburgh in 1994 and got invited to join the Belle Star Band – an all-women ceilidh band.

Here’s a link to a Belle Star Band video: https://youtu.be/WFj553A8H18

Playing for dancing has been one of the most enjoyable things in my life. It’s just the best thing being up on stage, looking down at a sea of smiling faces with everyone of all ages, backgrounds and ethnicities lost in a moment of social dancing – especially when they are dancing to a tune I have written! My tunes are not great tunes as such – they tend to be three-chord rhythm thingies but some of them seem to work well for dancing (e.g. Dots – Lynn’s Birthday Reel, played in the video above). Please feel free to use the tunes if you like them … some of them I can’t play any more and some I can’t even remember what I had in mind when I wrote them!

2010 – with my wonderful husband and the two best sons on the planet, it was starting to get really tricky fitting everything in – teaching full-time and keeping things going on the family front – so I stepped back from playing for dancing that saw gigs on many of the weekends.

Since then, I have had some lovely times playing popular classics with the Ladies Guerilla String Quartet and then, quite incredibly, in 2019 I found a brilliant old-time session with really talented players in, of all places, my local pub! Sunday afternoons in The Argyle on Argyle Place in Edinburgh. So, most recently, I have been playing old-time fiddle. It still seems to be difficult to find time to play fiddle but I have discovered that for me, when I do find time, it is old-time.

I have two fiddles – one which I acquired as an 11 year old to play classical music in orchestras. I alternate between this one and using another fiddle that I bought for $28 back in 1988 at a farm auction in Ontario. I like to think this Canadian fiddle gets happier the more I play it – my first fiddle digs its heels in a bit when asked to play old-time tunes.

Acknowledgements – of musical companionship and inspiration – in a weirdly chronological/alphabetical way: Tessa Cowie (pianist/organist, taught me all the music theory I know), Ian Cowie (cellist, eclectic taste in music from Palestrina to Deep Purple, Jimmy Shand fan). Canada: Ann Downey, Mary Gick (invaluable comments informing the editing of this website), Wendy Robbins, James Stephens, Tim Cutts, Ian Robb. England: Nick Crump. Scotland: Gica Loening (the instigator of some of the most extraordinary moments in my musical life), Lynn Sampsell, Cathy Wood, Jenny Gardner, Dave Cooper, Robin Galloway, Stan Reeves, Fin Loening, Herbie Loening, Sally Simpson, Daniel Jefferson, Jane Booth-Lewis, Ruth Bowen, Sarah-Jane Summers, Sarah McFadyen, Michael Starkey, Rachel Walker, Hannah Read.