Photograph by Mark Taylor
After nearly 30 years of performing, hosting house concerts, and teaching the traditional music of Ireland, Atlanta-based musician Bella Issakova is releasing her first album. Come in from the Rain, a collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Randy Clepper, offers a fresh take on Irish dance tunes. It largely features Issakova on the fiddle and Clepper on the Irish bouzouki, an instrument in the lute family that is originally from Greece.
“Subtly enchanting” is how Issakova describes the mostly instrumental album. “We play with energy and flow,” she says. “Listeners may say, This is very simple, and yet I’m not bored. Its fascination is in the understatement.”
A self-described “cultural mutt,” Issakova is a classically educated violinist who was born in Bulgaria and came to the United States in the mid-1990s, at age 22. Once here, she continued teaching and performing classical music but also began exploring new genres such as bluegrass. Then a friend introduced her to Irish music.
“I was intrigued, because the fiddle was played in a way that I had never heard,” Issakova says. “Irish music has a measure of approachability and mystery.”
She started playing in Irish music sessions in the early 2000s, punctuated by a weeklong workshop in Ireland’s County of Donegal in 2003. “After that trip, Irish music was pure addiction,” Issakova says. Back home in the U.S., “I would play a gig with a few musicians, and afterward, we’d go to a pub and play more music and chat. We really liked what we were doing.”
Irish music gradually shifted from a side project to an integral part of Issakova’s professional work. From 2005 through 2018, she played in and served as the music coordinator for Kerry Irish Productions’ An Irish Christmas tour, performing dozens of shows nationwide during the busy holiday season each year.
Issakova’s collaboration with Clepper, an accomplished Irish traditional musician, who plays the bouzouki, fingerstyle acoustic guitar, tenor banjo, and hammered dulcimer, began unexpectedly. In 2019, Issakova was slated for a slot at the Berea Celtic Festival and Gathering in Kentucky when her guitarist dropped out at the last minute. When she arrived that Friday, expecting to perform the following day, she learned her performance slot was in an hour. Scrambling for a replacement, festival coordinator Sune Frederiksen suggested Clepper, who ran from the dining hall to meet her.
“I was convinced this would be my worst performance,” Issakova says. They scribbled out a set list, picked a key for each song, and figured out the rest onstage. “Within a split second they connected,” Frederiksen recalls, “like they’d played together for 25 years.”
That serendipitous meeting turned into an enduring musical partnership. After a 2023 Nashville concert, Issakova and Clepper decided to record a demo to distribute for future gigs. “We threw a couple of mics around my studio for the natural feel of us playing together,” Clepper says. They liked what they heard. After five days of recording, spread over two sessions, they had the bones of their album.
“Every track feels like a story to me,” says Issakova, whose lyrical playing style emphasizes the melody with an emotionally expressive quality. “My fiddle is my singing voice.” The album’s simplicity allows their musical chemistry to take center stage. On most tracks it’s just the two of them.
“I hope listeners come away with the same joy we felt playing,” Clepper says.
The duo plans a 2026 tour of festivals and listening rooms across the South. Andy Kruspe—concert organizer of the Tangled String Studios guitar shop and concert venue in Huntsville, Alabama—is eager for their return performance. “The audience loved them,” Kruspe says. “The variety in their repertoire, from faster jigs to slower laments, makes it feel so new.”
This article appears in our December 2025 issue.
