Laura plays in a powerful, percussive style, with tight control and beautiful tone but bursting with energy and passion, turning reels into romps and slow airs into soul-searches.

A rare level of grace, vivacity, and emotional depth.

[Laura Risk] has that absolutely uncanny knack, not of knowing how much to put into a tune, but rather how little. She wrings every drop of passion, heartache or melancholy from most every note she plays... Just magic.

[Laura Risk's] inflections of pitch, explosive ornamentation, firm phrasing and robust tone charged her playing with both nuance and muscle.

A virtuoso fiddler. Her fluency in fiddle styles from Cape Breton to Appalachia is remarkable.

It was thrilling to hear [Risk's] expressive treatment of reels, jigs and country dances. She led off the second act of the program with a Scottish tune that had the elegance of a sonata, as if Mozart had come from the Isle of Skye.

Laura Risk plays her fiddle with passion and finesse...Capturing a glimpse of emotions seldom expressed on any instrument, Risk bows the strings with a delicate grace, yet draws unbridled passion from them... Startlingly beautiful and deftly executed. [Her fiddling] gives spark, vitality, and grace to these unforgettable tunes.

A formidable player with a clear stylistic vision.

Brilliant... Risk's fiddle dances through the music like a live thing, and you can't help but wonder if her nimble fingers have ever missed a note. Her playing is emotional, sincere, gorgeous.

A great album... Teaming up with some of Quebec's finest, [Laura Risk] has produced an album of Scottish music that has a decidedly different feel to it. A very individual fiddler, she wrings every last drop of emotion from the tunes.

A benchmark... This album has established Montreal - and Quebec - as the new leading edge of acoustic Celtic music.

A fine CD with a wide mix of tunes, all played with a delicious touch, reflecting hours of experimentation and judgment. "The Sound of War from the Glen" is an aching slow air from the Simon Fraser Collection, a tune to build a career on. Scottish reels like the "Nine Pint Coggie" and "My Kindly Sweetheart" swing like the clappers and have a modern syncopated style related to that of many young fiddlers in the USA and in these Islands. Strongly recommended.

Incredible... Laura's music is truly from the heart, with a passion too deep for words.

2000 Miles finds [Risk's] crack fiddling backed by four capable friends from the Quebecois folk and jazz scenes. It's a collection of mostly traditional Scottish tunes set in simple, complementary arrangements with combinations of guitar, piano, bass, and percussion that emphasize the often complex melodies while not slighting the fact that most of them were meant for dancing. The 18th-century reel "The Miser" is full of big, playful, percussive strokes, while the strathspey "Mr. Martin's Compliments to Keith Norman MacDonald" steps along with all the delightful dignity its name implies. There are also some lovely slow tunes, like the aching "The Bonnie House of Airly," where Risk's quietly intricate bowing taps a deep well of emotion.

Made in Quebec, 2000 Miles is an excellent, imaginative new album of Scottish music... Verve and lyricism are both abundantly evident.

Top 10 CDs of 1999... At once pastoral and sweeping.

The first notes sound classical, with lush and proper piano chords meeting the high sweet arc of a violin. As the rhythmic pulse thickens, you're sure it's traditional music, some dark, ancient Celtic air. Then, Laura Risk's fiddle pushes the melody's pedal to the floor, and you don't care what it is. It's just beautiful... Celtic Dialogue is a gently daring new CD of Scottish traditional music... It sounds unlike any music you've heard before, because it is: Most of its eighteen selections have not been performed for more than 200 years. Yet they seem almost to have been composed with the 24-year-old Risk's gifts in mind...

These are soul-stirring tunes. Jacqueline Schwab's genius at the piano is known to me-delicate, bare, and utterly expressive. But Laura Risk's fiddle is a revelation and achingly beautiful.

Beautifully performed... Fiddler Laura Risk and pianist Jacqueline Schwab give a refined chamber music treatment to some exquisite 18th-century melodies.

Gorgeous... Celtic Dialogue helps unearth a forgotten era in Scottish fiddle music. This CD is always expressive, freshly contemplative, hauntingly emotional.

The tunes have a dreamlike quality that charmed me-and haunted me long after the disc was over.

[Laura Risk and Ken Kolodner] play with the soul, emotion, inspiration, and (when needed) the oomph that should be the envy of many a Celtic band... The repertoire runs the stylistic gamut from hornpipes to polkas to slow airs to jigs to strathspeys, and the geographic gamut from Ireland to Cape Breton to Scotland to Chicago, and even to Finland... Fresh, authentic, invigorating.

Exceptional musicians... [Their] approach combines a loving respect for tradition and a thoroughly playful sense of creativity. The result is controlled artistry that should appeal to all fans of Celtic music... Clearly this is a 'must have' album for Celtic fans.

Ken Kolodner and Laura Risk played an inspiring set of tunes on Thursday, Aug. 16, at beautiful Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pa. The perfect summer evening was a fine complement to the musicianship of these two, which, as always, was first-rate. Opening with two Kerry polkas, "Salmon Tails Up the Water" and "Knocknaboul," they moved seamlessly through French-Canadian, old-timey, Scottish and Cape Breton styles, as well as an original tune by Kolodner... The interplay between the hammered dulcimer's precise percussive qualities and the graceful fluidity of Risk's fiddling was a real treat... This was a fine performance by two veterans who obviously enjoy working together.

A Roof for the Rain is an instrumental CD that sparkles through excellent musicianship, a great selection of tunes, and superb production... [It] is assertive but not overbearing, a delight to the ears.

[Walking Stones] explores the spirit and soul and mysticism of Irish music and kindred styles... The combination of Kolodner's deft touch and the dulcimer's shimmering tones inevitably conjure contemplative and sometimes courtly moods, but not before we're treated to a lively set of Irish, Scottish, and Irish-American reels. Risk's aggressive attack, which accounts for much of the music's rhythmic force early on, is later supplanted by a bittersweet lyricism, but it returns again, vigorously. The beauty and the beat of Celtic music are always well served.

If traditional American music has a future, it's probably Cordelia's Dad, a former rock band that discovered the joys of the traditional American vocal form of shape-note singing and fiddle tunes and became an acoustic marvel with copies of The Sacred Harp in hand... The foursome brings dazzling exuberance to this material, along with interpretive thoughtfulness.

Folk Album of the Month (Spine)... [Cordelia's Dad] examines the full, rich depth of the American folk tradition with startling conviction... Tim Eriksen is a charismatically disturbing focus, but he has profound support, notably from Laura Risk's authentic fiddle, and Steve Albini's courageously stark production. Absurdly good.

Tim Eriksen, Cath Oss, Peter Irvine, and Laura Risk have been dusting off the reputation of tradition American tunes as mere 'folk' music and electrifying them with all the fire, heartache, and lust that befits the growing pains of a country and its endless personal comedies and tragedies. Spine is a revelation, a record rich with voice, fiddle, guitar, banjo, drum, and dulcimer that is so raw, naked, real and up front that if it weren't for the instruments and singing style, one could easily crown it the year's only true punk record.

Laura and Athena play with fury and excitement, weaving together dazzling harmonies and intricate patterns in strathspeys, jigs, and reels.

Tergis and Risk have become the toast of northern California's Celtic renaissance... Preeminent promulgators of the Scottish fiddling tradition.