Biography
Praised for his “athletic” and “impressive and stylistically Scottish playing” (Dr. John Turner & Dr. Melinda Crawford), Tim Macdonald is a regular performer, scholar, composer, and teacher of early Scottish fiddle music.
Tim was the first US National Scottish Fiddling Champion to win on a Baroque violin, and his performances with Trio Settecento, Concerto Caledonia, The Newberry Consort, and many others have taken him from New York City’s Frick Collection to the villages of Indonesia, countless country and contra dances, Scotland’s Blair Castle, and beyond.
Favorite projects include helping to perform Scotland’s first opera, The Gentle Shepherd, in full for the first time in over two centuries, lecturing on applying the rhetorical ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment to modern fiddling, playing fully-staged Elizabethan jigs with Steve Player, joining classical superstar Rachel Barton Pine for an encore of traditional tunes following her performance of Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy, and serving as music and dancing master at a thoroughly-researched recreation of a 1770s American tavern. His radio appearances include WQXR classical radio (New York City), BBC Scotland’s Take the Floor, WGN & WDCB (Chicago), and WBOM (Rockford).
His debut album, The Wilds (with cellist Jeremy Ward), celebrates the diversity of Scottish fiddle music in the 18th century, and has been described as “fresh and yet authentic sounding” (Dr. John Purser) and “a belter” (Dr. David McGuinness).
Dancing
Tim is a past chairman of the Chicago Branch of the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society and is in demand for SCD balls, dance weekends, and "Playing for Dance" music workshops in the US, Scotland, and Continental Europe. He recorded a CD of new dances for the Edinburgh Branch Centenary with Muriel Johnstone, Pete Clark, and Peter Shand. He is perennially in charge of dance music at The Jink and Diddle School of Scottish Fiddling and has also played for Scottish Sessions, English-Scottish-Contra Week (ESCape) at Pinewoods, Scottish Weekend, and overnight dance weekends for the Paris, Lyon, Youth, and several American branches. He's performed with most of the top dance pianists in the US and Scotland, including Muriel Johnstone, Susie Petrov, Dave Wiesler, Andy Imbrie (Reel of Seven), Kate Barnes, and Karen Axelrod.
Tim is also the former Musician-in-Residence for the Oak Park English Country Dancers and current musical director for the Edinburgh Quadrille Society (historical country dances and quadrilles) and Autrefois (French Baroque dances).
Teaching, Summer Camps, and Academia
In addition to performing, Tim runs a private teaching studio and teaches at fiddle camps and clubs, including one he founded. He teaches every summer at The Jink and Diddle School of Scottish Fiddling and as a sail-aboard tutor for Sessions & Sail.
He is a music tutor for Edinburgh Napier University and has taught workshops or master classes at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, the National Centre for Excellence in Traditional Music, Northwestern University (Bienen School of Music), the Wheaton Conservatory of Music, and High Point University.
A "remarkably capable" researcher of Scottish-Baroque music (Dr. Johann Buis) who "combin[es] the intelligence of a talented scholar with the experience of a top-level performer" (Rachel Barton Pine), Tim was an Arthur and Lila Weinberg Fellow at the Newberry Library, has presented papers at the Musica Scotica, North Atlantic Fiddle Convention (NAFCo), and British Forum for Ethnomusicology conferences, and received a master's degree by research (distinction) from the University of Edinburgh for his thesis on the use of rhetoric in eighteenth-century Scottish music. He's given lecture-concerts for students or for the general public at several universities, St Cecilia's Hall (Music Museum), RSCDS Winter School, Old Fort Niagara, Valley Forge, the Scottish American History Forum, the Dutchess County Historical Society, and many other venues. Tim is currently a part-time PhD student at the University of Edinburgh doing research on the music of the Gow family.