Scottish fiddler Aidan O'Rourke is a member of Lau...and a group called Blazin' Fiddles. But it was a solo album by O'Rourke that caught the ear of The World's Ken Bader. He has today's Global Hit.

Bader: Aidan O'Rourke took his first fiddle lesson when he was seven years old. He says music just came naturally.

O'Rourke: "I think having traditional music in the house from Day One was a good thing. I think that the music was always in my head, so then when I picked up the instrument I'd be hearing all the time and playing the music that I'd been brought up with, I think it just made more sense."

Aidan O'Rourke

Bader: O'Rourke learned to play in the Scottish "West Coast" style. As opposed to the Scottish East Coast style. Or the Shetland style. Or the border style. Or any number of other styles of Scottish fiddling.

O'Rourke: "The West Coast style, which I was brought up with, is a bit more lyrical and quite influenced by the bagpipe playing, quite influenced by the Gaelic singing and Gaelic language. So all those things kind of form the style from the West Coast. I'll play you a little bit from the style I was brought up with. And I'll play you a little bit of a tune from the East Coast, which has, you know, the kind of classical influences from there. (laughs) There you go."

Bader: O'Rourke was playing and touring with Blazin' Fiddles, when he was commissioned to write music for a festival in Scotland in 2003. O'Rourke composed a suite and later assembled a 13-piece ensemble to record it. The resulting C-D is called "Sirius."

O'Rourke: "Sirius is the star -- basically, the Dog Star. It's one of the most important stars for navigating for sailors and travelers all over the world. So it became, like, a focus. That became home, I guess, was the star, the navigational star. And I was the musician that was traveling around."

Bader: "Sirius" is something of a musical travelogue. This track takes us to People's Park, in Berkeley, California.

Another song on "Sirius" takes its name from the German city of Hamburg.

O'Rourke: "The track "Bah, Hamburg" was written about quite a hectic tour, where three Scottish bands got together and travelled through Germany for a month on the same tour bus. All quite young musicians.

It was in January, so it was quite bleak and quite dark.

That was the basic melody line, and, from there, I kind of expanded it to make it much more chaotic and using the horn sections and a lot of repetitive parts and quite chaotic sections of music.

Bader: Aidan O'Rourke remains a busy man. He's on the road now with his band, Lau. The band will tour England, Wales, Germany, and Scotland in November.

For The World, I'm Ken Bader.