Mairi Campbell

Mairi Campbell was born and raised in Edinburgh, attended local schools and had violin lessons with Miss Gavin, until she changed to viola aged 11 to form a string quartet with her three sisters. Playing Elgar’s Serenade for Strings at the Edinburgh competitive festival in 1976 was the highlight for the Campbell String Quartet! Mairi was 11 years old and her little sister Sarah was only 8 years.

She finished school at Broughton’s City of Edinburgh Music school having studied with Michael Beeston of the Edinburgh String Quartet. Four years at the Guildhall School of music and living in a commune in Bethnal Green provided a good balance and a rich learning environment in and out of music.

Her time in London was hugely influenced by her viola teacher, Csaba Erdelyi, MPCS, a course new to classical musicians at that time, which encouraged the musicians to do workshops in the ‘community’, learn about improvisation and generally come out of the concert hall and into the real world with their music. Peter Renshaw and Peter Weigold shaped this course.

She joined the Kreisler String Orchestra in 1988 which rehearsed like a string quartet , with no conductor, the major classical works, and she toured all over Europe and Russia with them for the next five years. Throughout all this was a love and a longing to play traditional music and song of Scotland.

All her childhood holidays were spent on the Isle of Lismore in Argyll, where she heard the dance music and songs at ceilidhs.
“I loved all that, totally loved it–I could have danced all night, and often did. An embarrasing memory however, is being asked to contribute a turn in a ceilidh when I was young, maybe 10 years, and not knowing any Scottish tunes. I had to play Mozart duets with my sister. It was an awful feeling, not having anything to play from there, and knowing that it was a place so rich in culture–it just felt wrong and I felt really bad! All that effort we put into music and not having ever been taught anything from our own country and traditions!”

She withdrew from classical music and London and returned to Scotland in 1990 to learn about and start her apprentiship in traditional music and song. As one of her sisters’ lived in Canada, she visited Cape Breton Island and heard for the first time fiddle music that totally hooked her.
“I can’t describe the feelings when I heard the music and felt the pulse and swing of it, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, it felt so familiar to me, like a river that had run dry suddenly being filled with water, water rushing through it.”

She came home to Edinburgh and teamed up with Dave Francis–they met at the Fiddlers Arms in the Grassmarket. They joined the Ceilidh Collective, a dance band in Edinburgh and also worked as a duo, making demos which finally produced two albums on the Culburnie Records label. They got married in 1994 and have two daughters.

Mairi has been involoved with much teaching for the Adult Learning Project as fiddle tutor, step dancing tutor, and now MD of Sangstream a folk song choir. She and Dave have a dance band called Bella McNabs which regularly plays for dancing.

In August 2007 they brought out their third CD, Greengold, which is a collection of self penned and traditional material.

Mairi continues to play viola with various ensembles, and enjoys forays into free improvisation as well as writing songs and arrangements for Sangstream.