Stornoway Town Hall, Wednesday 13 July 2005

THIS YEAR’S Heb Celtic Festival opened with a set by traditional Gaelic singer James Graham and his band, and on this evidence the Assynt-born singer would doubtlessly have come to prominence without the BBC Young Traditional Musician of the Year gong he received in 2004.

Graham has the same power of effortless engagment in his voice that Art Cormack brought to the Gaelic stage nearly twenty years before, and for this reviewer Graham’s emergence is all the more welcome for the fact there are far too few male Gaelic singers on the concert circuit.

As a writer who over many years has held that Gaelic traditional music is as much about the Gael’s way with melody as it is with words, it is a pleasure to review a singer whose faith in the strength of the traditional melody is as strong as his love for the Gaelic lyric.

Graham is, as such, a welcome addition to a set of contemporary Gaelic musicians and singers whose new take on the tradition does not seem to be at the expense of any of its key elements, and which seems to be free of the insecurity that forces some others to clone the alien in order to justify the survival of the native.

That said, Graham’s performance at the opening concert cannot be separated from that of his accompanists. Pianist James Ross and cellist Neil Johnstone are both equally as confident as Graham in their surety of this music’s beauty, and throughout they combined to support the singer with restrained harmonic passages and colourations that were nothing short of sensational.

There is a real freedom in the way Ross approaches the issue of piano accompaniment to traditional music, seeing no justification, especially in the airs and laments for fixing steady rhythm or constant parallel melodies or chord voicings, his accompaniment constantly worked at pointing up the emotion of the lyric. When it came to puirt a beul his presence was equally as sophisticated in approach.

Cellist Neil Johnstone, son of the great Barra piper Duncan Johnstone, was a relatively late addition to the billing but no one present would have guessed that without being informed of the fact by James Graham!

Johnstone has a formidable reputation as a teacher within the parishes of Stornoway, Lewis and Harris, and on this display it is easy to see why he would acquire such a reputation for inspiration among his pupils. Combing the understanding of his heritage with the knowledge of his learning, Johnstone’s restrained melodic dialogue with the singer was a joy.

Mention must also be made of Graham’s performance on the Border pipes which not only brings another dimension to proceedings but on this occasion underlined his versatility.

This was the set of band that have great communication and understanding and one can only hope that they have the opportunity to further perform and document their music.

Of the set itself, which opened with a MacKenzie sisters’ tune, continued with a number from the MacDonald brothers via Alasdair Boyd’s (Barra and Oban) ‘A Bhrisgais Uallach’, and closed with a bracing round of puirts in which Graham’s vocal dexterity shone, there were many highlights. Chief of these must be the poignant melancholy of the Falklands war lament, ‘Nam Aonar Le Mo Smaointean’ by Rev. John Macleod of Oban.

© Peter Urpeth, 2005