Betty Beaton

Betty Beaton began playing the piano at the age of five. Although she has a couple of years of piano training, all her Cape Breton piano playing is done by ear. At fourteen years of age, she started playing dances with her brother Buddy MacMaster and has been accompanying fiddlers for dancers ever since. Betty has taught at the Ceilidh Trail School of Music in Inverness, Cape Breton, at Fiddle Tunes in Port Townsend in Washington, USA, and Ceolas in South Uist, Scotland. She has played on numerous recordings including the Smithsonian Folkways recording "The Beaton Family of Mabou: Cape Breton Fiddle and Piano Music."