Review: Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas Showcase Their Mastery on ‘Meridians’

By Greg Cahill | From the May/June 2026 issue of Strings

After 25 years as a performing and recording duo, Scottish fiddler Alasdair Fraser and cellist Natalie Haas have teamed up on their seventh album, their first since 2021’s Syzygy. But don’t expect a set of standard fiddle tunes. The opener, “Rise Up,” is Haas’ Celtic music–inflected, instrumental rallying cry inspired by the widespread political protests that have swept American cities. In a sort of musical call-and-response, Fraser answers with the solemn closer, “Peace Longing,” reportedly inspired by a mother’s satellite phone call with her son on the Ukrainian battlefield. The interwoven fiddle and cello passages serve to evoke the two-part conversation.

Those tunes bookend 11 other tracks that range from the sprightly “Highland Hoedown” to “The Sleeping Lady of Tamalpais,” an elegant and Baroque-tinted tribute to the majestic mountain that rises above southern Marin County in California’s San Francisco Bay Area, not far from the Valley of the Moon where Fraser and Haas instruct a new generation of string players at a fiddle camp. Haas’ songwriting chops, and especially her ability to pen engaging new tunes that sound ancient, come to the foreground with “Strathree/Polska Dot.” Not to be outdone, Fraser digs deep into his kitbag with the nuevo-trad medley “Burning the Midnight Oil/Turbulence.” String masters at play.