Laura Light

Laura Light is a fiddler, singer, and composer from Virginia, to whose music I had the pleasure of contradancing a few years ago. (She snuck in a swing tune as well, which was a fun surprise.) For those of you in the Bay Area for Thanksgiving, she'll be out here again this weekend, playing at the Palo Alto Contra Dance on the 29th. Come dance off the extra calories!

I've got her album No Gravity (Amazon, eMusic, iTunes), which has a lot of good fiddle tunes and a few good couple-dancing tracks to call out:

• Two Rivers - Cross-step Waltz, 121 bpm
  This is probably my favorite of the batch. Really lovely.
• This Was Meant to Be - Swing, 145 bpm
  "How can I explain this incredible feeling? / Feet on the ground, I'm dancing on the ceiling...."
• Mid-Winter Waltz - Rotary Waltz, 174 bpm
  A great Larry Edelman tune that I remember from one of the first cassettes of "real" music I ever owned.
• The Last Waltz of the Millenium - Cross-step Waltz, 111 bpm
  Probably won't be relevant again for a while, but it's a waltz, nonetheless. :-)

Also, in the process of writing this post, I found that she has another album, called Katchemak Bay Waltz, which is entirely waltzes. Unfortunately, I can't find anywhere to buy MP3s -- it looks like you can only buy a CD here. So I haven't listened to most of it yet, though there are a couple sample MP3s on that page. (Including an interesting version of "Scarborough Fair.")