EdPearlman.net Bio

Ed's playing blends a feel for Scottish and Cape Breton listening and dance music. Before moving to Maine in the 1990s, Ed played a central role in developing the Scottish music scene in Boston. He directed the Boston Scottish Fiddle Club from 1981-1999, leading leading monthly workshops, group tours and many performances, including an annual concert series called the Scottish Fiddle Rally with soloists from Scotland and Cape Breton (highlights CD available from Paddledoo Music). He founded and directed the annuall Celtic Festival at Boston’s Hatch Shell, presenting the best in the Boston area’s Irish, Scottish and Cape Breton musicians and dancers to an audience of up to 8,000 plus a live radio audience. Fiddle Club soloists and workshop leaders included Alasdair Fraser, Buddy MacMaster, Aly Bain, Natalie MacMaster, Jerry Holland, John McCusker, Joe Cormier and many more.


Teaching. Ed has taught countless students in private lessons, classes, workshops, and music camps, bringing great fiddlers from Scotland and Cape Breton to teach with him at the Ohio Scottish Arts School for 16 summers, and performing and teaching at Maine Fiddle Camp, Pinewoods dance camps, Blazin-in-Beauly fiddle camp in Scotland, Swannanoa Celtic Week, Rocky Mountain Fiddle Camp, and serving as music director for the Ashokan Celtic Week.


Since 2014, Ed has developed and hosted fiddle-online.com, exploring ways to make the internet useful to learners of various fiddle styles, with live workshops via Zoom (years before Covid!), offering concert/workshops with top fiddlers from around the world, as well as Ed’s regular online workshops and classes, unique interactive sheet music, and a series of unique technique videos. His patented Finger Finder is a slide rule displaying violin fingering

relationships in all keys, available from this site, from retailers such as Amazon and Shar Music,

and in an online app format on fiddle-online.com.


He also writes a regular series of articles on Substack about learning fiddling and other

musical musings.


Compositions. Ed published a book, The Pine Street Collection, with 150 tunes composed by himself and his family, with audio on Bandcamp. He has composed music for Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Strindberg’s Miss Julie, and Burns’s Tam o Shanter, and performed for many theatrical productions including musicals, plays and dance performances.


Recordings. Ed’s first solo album, Boston Hospitality, with Beth Murray on piano, and several guest musicians, was released in 1987 on LP, and on CD in 2007, offering both listening music and music for RSCDS dances written by prominent Boston area teachers.  Comments included “milestone album for the Boston Celtic community” (Boston Globe) and “precious artistic jewel” (TACtalk Canada).


With Neil Pearlman on piano, Ed made two CDs: On the Edge, which Ian Green, founder of Scotland’s Greentrax Records called “a cracking album of tunes on mainly fiddle and piano. It demonstrates clearly the love that Ed and Neil have for the music of Scotland, Cape Breton and elsewhere, with Neil's jazz influences shining through. A real gem." And American Scottish, which is rooted in traditional fiddle music as Neil’s piano playing weaves an astonishing tapestry of innovative harmony and rhythm.


Neil, Lillie and Ed made a 5-track CD with original and traditional tunes, called HST  (for Highland Soles Trio).


Music & Walking Tours. With an experienced walking guide from Stirling, Ed co-led music and walking tours to Scotland from 2009-2022, giving small groups a chance to walk beautiful and historic areas in four major areas of Scotland, while incorporating private performances by great Scottish musicians local to each area, along with visits to public musical events and festivals. These included a visit to the private library at Blair Castle, where the Duke of Atholl’s office approved Ed as one the few fiddlers allowed to play Niel Gow’s violin for people. He always brought hand-crafted gut strings to keep the violin in playable condition.


Publications.  Since 2022, Ed has been writing weekly online articles on Substack with stories, photos and music from 23 music & walking tours to Scotland, along with occasional relevant chapters from his book, MusicScapes of Scotland: Vignettes from Prehistory to Pandemic, which compiles writings from his 24 years as music columnist for Scottish Life magazine. The book was called “an invaluable companion” by Fiona Ritchie, host of NPR’s The Thistle & Shamrock, and was nominated by the Association for Recorded Sound Collections for a 2022 Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research.


Distribution of Recordings. In 1991, Ed started Portland America Distributing to address the lack of available recordings from Scotland and Cape Breton in the USA.  Portland America ended up distributing most of the artists and labels from Scotland and Atlantic Canada as well as selected titles from Ireland, Brittany and Wales, to stores of all sizes, from Mom & Pop shops to large chain stores, throughout the USA. He passed this business to a new owner in 2003 in order to focus on his own music and family band.


Music Styles & Competitions. Ed has enjoyed learning and working with various styles of music in addition to Scottish: classical, pit orchestras for musicals, klezmer, jazz, Hungarian, bluegrass, and contradance music. He has played for countless dances and dance classes in Highland, Cape Breton step, Scottish country, and contras. Until 1978 his training was classical, studying with Everett Zlatoff-Mirsky (Chicago Fine Arts Quartet), Perry Crafton (Chicago Symphony), Dan Stepner (Yale University, Boston Museum Trio), and Roger Shermont (Boston Symphony), but since 1979 he became intensely involved in fiddle music for dancing and listening, particularly fiddle music of Scotland and Cape Breton. In the 1980s, he got into Scottish fiddle competitions in the US, placing as high as 3d in the US Nationals (1st and 2d that year went to John Turner and Alasdair Fraser) and later adjudicating at countless local competitions and many US National Scottish Fiddle Championships.

Ed Pearlman has performed, taught, and promoted fiddle music, particularly that of Scotland and Cape Breton for over 45 years. He has performed throughout the US, in Canada and Scotland, and has worked with many of the top fiddlers from Scotland and Cape Breton, both as a performer and as a promoter of greater appreciation for the music through in-person and online events, distribution of recordings, and published articles. Ed has toured as a duo with his son Neil Pearlman, an accomplished professional pianist who seamlessly melds Scottish traditional tunes with Latin, funk, and jazz.  Ed’s wife, Laura Scott, is a Highland dancer and former SOBHD judge who focuses on the artistic rather than the competitive, embracing traditional Highland dances along with Cape Breton step, Highland folk, improvisation and new choreographies. Their family band, Highland Soles, used to tour and perform regularly, in the US and internationally, with Neil on piano and stepdance; Lillie on fiddle, piano and dance; and Jesse on whistle and dance.