About Gabi and Alice
This album is a collection of tunes we love playing at home. After years of bringing music back from trips to share around our kitchen tables, it felt like time to set some of it down.
We first met playing for chamber groups and orchestras in Scotland. During one memorable weekend spent hashing through viol consorts in a castle, we discovered a shared love of old Scandinavian and Irish music. Neither of us got very good at the viol (it’s work in progress), but we kept playing other instruments together.
Gabi Maas plays modern and baroque violins, viola and nyckelharpa. Her passion for exploring different styles has led her to work with groups ranging from Concerto Caledonia and Istante Collective to Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and Scottish Chamber Orchestra.
For the last ten years Gabi has been learning various traditional styles. She is particularly interested in fiddle music from the west of Ireland and Scandinavian baroque dance tunes, and took up nyckelharpa in 2013 in order to explore the Swedish and Finnish repertoire further. Since then she has worked with nyckelharpa maker Bo Falk on developing other string instruments with keys attached, including a cello-pitch tenorharpa, gambaharpa, and clog-fiddle harpa.
She has also collaborated extensively with Algerian Berber musicians, played nyckelharpa at Sharq Taronalari festival in Uzbekistan, and enjoys the occasional treat of a ‘study break’ to try something new. Most recently she studied the rudiments of Carnatic violin in Chennai for a month with Sri Vittal Ramamurthy.
Alice Allen grew up in Banchory, Aberdeenshire and is now based in rural Stirlingshire. She was formerly young artist in residence with the Scottish Ensemble and has performed live on BBC Radio 3 and Radio Scotland. Alice has recorded with many leading folk artists including former BBC young traditional musician of the year Robyn Stapleton and MG ALBA Scots Singer of the year Iona Fyfe.
Her playing has taken her to the BBC Proms, the Wigmore Hall, Europe and India and she has worked with many of the country’s leading performing groups including the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Scottish Ensemble,
Concerto Caledonia, Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, London Concertante and the Brodick Quartet. Alice performs regularly with fiddler Alastair Savage and is Chamber Music Scotland's Ensemble in Residence 2019-21 as one half of the duo GAIA, with violinist Katrina Lee.
Her playing style is deeply rooted in both the Scottish music tradition and the classical music tradition and she is tutor of Scottish traditional cello at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
