Laura Risk

Join Laura's mailing list here:

Triptych in Brattleboro, VT

Triptych at the Saratoga Dance Flurry Festival (NY)

What's new...

Debut CD from Triptych!

The long-awaited debut album from Triptych! Laura on fiddle, Paddy League on guitar, voice and bodhran, and Kieran Jordan on percussive dance. With a mix of songs and tunes from the Irish, Scottish and French-Canadian traditions, plus some originals, this CD showcases the fluid, improvisational energy of the trio. Available for purchase and download at the website store. For more info about the band and the CD, see the new Triptych website.

Now available: The Glengarry Collection: The Highland Fiddle Music of Aonghas Grant

This collection features the music and stories of renowned Scottish Highland fiddler Aonghas Grant. I had the great honor of collaborating with Aonghas, Boston fiddler Barbara McOwen and Stirling-based ethnomusicologist Peggy Duesenberry on this project over the last few years, and I am thrilled to announce that the book has just been published by Mel Bay.
"The Glengarry Collection contains 164 slow airs, marches, strathspeys, reels, jigs and hornpipes, plus stories, history and photographs. It focuses on the core of Aonghas' music: Highland fiddling, with its links to pipe tunes and Gaelic songs. Some of these tunes have never been published before, while others are available only in out-of-print books or in pipe settings, and the collection also includes a number of tunes composed by Aonghas himself, and tunes composed in honor of Aonghas. The tunes are fully chorded in a style appropriate to Aonghas' band experience. All these are richly illustrated by transcriptions of Aonghas' bowings, grace-notes, stories, and photos of scenes and people from Aonghas' varied life careers, including old family photos. Finally, there is an accompanying DVD with videos of Aonghas' impromptu and passionate performances of 61 of the tunes in the collection."
Available at Mel Bay. For more about Aonghas Grant, see his website.

New website store: Teaching CDs now available as digital downloads

I now have a website store where you can purchase Triptych, 2000 Miles, Les Joueurs de Bon Accord and my two-disc teaching sets, Tunes 2001 and Tunes 2003. Everything is available both as hard copies and digital downloads.

Research page: Studying the diffusion of the chop

I am currently enrolled in the PhD program in musicology at McGill University and have added a web page about my research interests. Now featured: my ongoing study of the diffusion of the chop through North Atlantic fiddling genres.