What the guitarist adds to a fiddle tune

Follow the other instrument

Hello New Canaan,

Try a small experiment the next time you hear a fiddle and guitar together. Follow the tune for a few moments, then move your attention to the guitar. Listen for the low notes and the pattern underneath. What changes when you follow that part instead?

That is a useful way into Rakish, the duo coming to New Canaan Library on Saturday. Guitarist Conor Hearn combines bass and rhythm in his playing; fiddler Maura Shawn Scanlin brings Scottish competition experience and classical violin training. Between them is an interesting question: how much of what you love about a melody comes from what the other musician does around it?

You don’t need to read music to investigate. You just need to listen to the same piece twice.

How a tune becomes a journey

In a 2022 interview with WBUR, Scanlin and Hearn described an early connection over taking their time with melodies. They met in the Boston-area Celtic music scene in 2015. Amid its fast jigs and reels, they shared an interest in a more patient approach.

Scanlin’s composition “The Lucky One” offers a specific example of how she thinks about a tune. She told WBUR that adding a third or fourth section to the familiar two-part form opened up more possibilities for harmony and changes of key. Put simply, she was giving the music more places to go.

That makes the guitar’s role worth following. The melody is the line you might hum afterward. The bass is the low part; rhythm is the pattern that gives the music its movement. Hearn brings those last two jobs together on one instrument, according to the duo’s own account of his playing.

Here is a way to listen: first, see whether you can recognize a phrase when it returns. Then focus on what happens beneath it. Does the guitar keep a steady pattern, leave a little space, or move to a new low note? Does the return feel like arriving home or setting off again? Those are questions to try with a recording or in the room, rather than a checklist of things a performer must do.

You can find “The Lucky One” on the duo’s 2022 album Counting Down the Hours. Use it as a starting point if you want to get acquainted before Saturday. The Library has not announced a setlist.

The two musicians bring quite different experiences to that shared work. Scanlin grew up in North Carolina’s Appalachian Mountains, became a two-time U.S. National Scottish Fiddle Champion, and earned a master’s in violin performance at Yale. Hearn grew up around Irish music in Washington, D.C., and Maryland. He also draws on literature: Rakish’s later album Now, O Now includes his settings of James Joyce’s poetry.

There is another reason a live performance can be interesting even after you know a record. In a December 2024 interview with Boston’s Celtic Music Fest, the pair described making that album in stages, from a first idea to a voice memo, demo and finished recording. Along the way, they have to decide which details belong at the heart of a piece and which were passing accidents. Sometimes an accident becomes a part they want to keep.

Then comes a fresh problem: how to perform the music live after building up layers in the studio. They described working that out as another enjoyable part of making music. A recording and a concert become different versions of the same idea.

So on Saturday, try giving the guitarist a little extra attention. You may come away remembering a part of the music you would otherwise have let slip into the background.

Hear Rakish at the Library

World Music Series: Unexpectedly Celtic with Rakish is Saturday, November 14, 3–4 p.m., at New Canaan Library, 151 Main Street, New Canaan, in the Jim & Dede Bartlett Auditorium. The concert is free, with registration required. The Library describes a program drawing on Scottish and Irish music, classical chamber music and improvisation. Concert details and registration.

Four more plans for November 12–18

Before you head out

Find more in the full New Canaan events calendar, and check the organizer’s page before booking or leaving home. For a downtown stop before or after a program, our New Canaan shopping guide can help.

What is a piece of music you heard differently once someone pointed out a detail? Reply with the title and what to listen for.

See you around town,
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