KVMR's annual Celtic festival is fast approaching, and in the spirit of all things Celtic music, we've got the scoop on the festival headliner, Fiddler Natalie McMaster, who was raised and still resides in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Cy Musiker and Joyce Miller spoke with McMaster for their public affairs show Curtain Call. KVMR News correspondent, Lydia Thomas edited part their interview and shares it with us now.

For more from Natalie McMaster, remember to tune into Curtain Call with hosts Cy and Joyce next Friday, May 2nd at 6:30 p.m.

This week hear how a retired Federal Reserve economist keeps up with the current state of the US economy before KVMR News Correspondent Sherrie Cunningham brings us a look at how psychedelics are being used by researchers at the University of California, Davis, to treat a variety of brain conditions. We hear from KVMR Celtic Festival headliner, world-renowned fiddle player Natalie MacMaster, and poet Molly Fisk dictates how drama plays out through the daily observations of small town life.

KVMR public affairs correspondent April Glaser sits down to interview Liz Pelly, author of a new book and hard-hitting investigation into Spotify entitled Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify & The Cost of the Perfect Playlist. Joining the conversation as well is local composer Alexis Alrich.

Spotify pays artists fractions of pennies per stream. But Liz Pelly's book goes even deeper to reveal how Spotify has quietly worked to remove bands and artists from its most popular playlists and replaced them with fake or ghost content commissioned for cheaper than paying actual artists. What happens when we think we're listening to a band, but it's actually just content made by a company to keep us streaming for longer?

Many thanks to Alexis Alrich for providing her original composition for this story, "Bell and Drum Tower," recorded in 2020 by the Janacek Philharmonic.

Learn more about Alexis' work at her website.

More information on Liz Pelly's book can be found at her publisher's website here.