Alair

Although flute player Vicki Waterman and harp player Jennifer Midkiff don't trace any Irish or Scottish heritage in their respective family trees, they're active purveyors of Celtic music as members of Alair.
Waterman and Midkiff say their performance schedule often is busiest in the weeks leading up to St. Patrick's Day, and Alair is booked at two different venues March 8: 1 p.m. at the Indianapolis Artsgarden and 7:30 p.m. at the Phoenix Theatre as part of preshow entertainment for the play "The Lieutenant of Inishmore."
Previously a quartet, Alair is a duo in search of additional players. Violin player Julane Lund will appear as a guest at the March 8 performances.
Last fall, Indy Irish Fest awarded Waterman a scholarship to study Irish flute. Last month, the Lilly Foundation awarded Midkiff a fellowship to continue harp studies.
The duo recently talked to Indy.com about Celtic music and what drew them to the style:
On the name: "The word 'Alair' is Gaelic, and it means lively or cheerful," Midkiff says. "It was chosen for the group partly because that describes our music pretty well, since we mostly stick to Irish traditional music and a lot of it is dances. It's also one of the few Gaelic words that we could relate to music that's actually pronounceable by the non-Gaelic speaker when they look at it."
On the size of the group: "You can have as many or as few people as you want," Waterman says. "There's no traditional number of musicians for a group," Midkiff adds. "It's whatever you can put together. The Chieftains had five."
On discovering Celtic music: "A friend introduced me to the tunes," Waterman says. "She said, 'Look at these cool tunes. I want you to check this out. It's something you haven't done before.' I was classically trained only. At first I thought, 'They look so simple, it's just a melody. How could that be that interesting?' But once I started playing it, I thought, 'Hey, there's a lot of possibilities here -- ways to harmonize and ways to do ornamentation that I'd never tried or thought I could do.' I was hooked right off the bat."
On dancing: "We have a few friends who do (traditional Irish) dance. We can usually persuade them to get up and do a slip jig or a reel or a regular jig for us," says Midkiff, adding: "When we played the Carmel International Arts Festival last year, this little girl got up and just started twirling around in front of all the seating. It was just so beautiful, because she was responding to the exuberance in the music. I kind of get the impression that some of the adults wish they felt that uninhibited, too."
On Celtic Woman, "Riverdance" and "Lord of the Dance": "I think all those things are fabulous," Waterman says. "They're consummate professionals. They're wonderful players, and of course they bring only the best kind of attention to this style of music."
On Canadian musician Loreena McKennitt: "Her voice range and mine are fairly similar," Midkiff says. "She also plays the harp. She really was one of my big inspirations when I started trying to sing and play at the same time, which uses a lot of the same brain cells. That was a little tricky at first." - indy.com

Although flute player Vicki Waterman and harp player Jennifer Midkiff don't trace any Irish or Scottish heritage in their respective family trees, they're active purveyors of Celtic music as members of Alair.
Waterman and Midkiff say their performance schedule often is busiest in the weeks leading up to St. Patrick's Day, and Alair is booked at two different venues March 8: 1 p.m. at the Indianapolis Artsgarden and 7:30 p.m. at the Phoenix Theatre as part of preshow entertainment for the play "The Lieutenant of Inishmore."
Previously a quartet, Alair is a duo in search of additional players. Violin player Julane Lund will appear as a guest at the March 8 performances.
Last fall, Indy Irish Fest awarded Waterman a scholarship to study Irish flute. Last month, the Lilly Foundation awarded Midkiff a fellowship to continue harp studies.
The duo recently talked to Indy.com about Celtic music and what drew them to the style:
On the name: "The word 'Alair' is Gaelic, and it means lively or cheerful," Midkiff says. "It was chosen for the group partly because that describes our music pretty well, since we mostly stick to Irish traditional music and a lot of it is dances. It's also one of the few Gaelic words that we could relate to music that's actually pronounceable by the non-Gaelic speaker when they look at it."
On the size of the group: "You can have as many or as few people as you want," Waterman says. "There's no traditional number of musicians for a group," Midkiff adds. "It's whatever you can put together. The Chieftains had five."
On discovering Celtic music: "A friend introduced me to the tunes," Waterman says. "She said, 'Look at these cool tunes. I want you to check this out. It's something you haven't done before.' I was classically trained only. At first I thought, 'They look so simple, it's just a melody. How could that be that interesting?' But once I started playing it, I thought, 'Hey, there's a lot of possibilities here -- ways to harmonize and ways to do ornamentation that I'd never tried or thought I could do.' I was hooked right off the bat."
On dancing: "We have a few friends who do (traditional Irish) dance. We can usually persuade them to get up and do a slip jig or a reel or a regular jig for us," says Midkiff, adding: "When we played the Carmel International Arts Festival last year, this little girl got up and just started twirling around in front of all the seating. It was just so beautiful, because she was responding to the exuberance in the music. I kind of get the impression that some of the adults wish they felt that uninhibited, too."
On Celtic Woman, "Riverdance" and "Lord of the Dance": "I think all those things are fabulous," Waterman says. "They're consummate professionals. They're wonderful players, and of course they bring only the best kind of attention to this style of music."
On Canadian musician Loreena McKennitt: "Her voice range and mine are fairly similar," Midkiff says. "She also plays the harp. She really was one of my big inspirations when I started trying to sing and play at the same time, which uses a lot of the same brain cells. That was a little tricky at first." - indy.com