Celtic Connections, Glasgow, January 2006

Paul Jennings and Fraser Stone

As a result of spending a significant part of his time in Sweden these days, Shetland fiddler Aly Bain has formed an excellent duo with Swedish bouzouki player Ale Möller.

In this concert, though, we heard only one set of combined Shetland and Swedish tunes from the duo before a plethora of guests invaded the stage, mainly from Möller’s own highly regarded World Heritage Orchestra, bolstered by American fiddler Bruce Molsky and guitarist Russ Barenberg.

What ensued was eclecticism run wild. In various combinations they served up Greek, Indian and West African songs from the three featured vocalists in Möller’s band, and tunes from Appalachia and various points of the Celtic compass.

They added a combination of Hot Club swing-meets-Eastern Europe from yet more guests, Glasgow trio Koshka, featuring violinists Lev Atlas and Oleg Ponomarev and guitarist Nigel Clark (who also shared a final night bill with Croft No Five – see below), and a Russian Gypsy Band. Even the opening act, the Glasgow-based Kurdish trio Newroz, added yet another flavour to the mix.

Some of the combinations of seemingly incompatible musical idioms were very deftly achieved, blending Celtic tunes with Indian, Greek and African song in surprisingly compatible fashion.

The highlight, though, was a version of ‘The Hangman’s Reel’ played by Bain and French-Canadian bass player Sebastian Dubé, with the bassist eschewing any notion of accompaniment to match the fiddler note for note in melodic virtuosity. No mean feat on another fiddle, far less on double bass.

While Koshka looked a little out of place in The Arches, this is exactly the kind of setting that Croft No Five and their fans relished.

The Sunday lunchtime slot in the Strathclyde Suite allotted to these commissions isn’t always the appropriate time or setting for the often experimental music they produce, and that was more true than most in this case. It was much more geared up to a late-night club gig or a slot at a venue like The Arches, but the musicians made the best of it.

It was hard to escape the feeling that the drummers had tried to cram too much into a single project, possibly on the basis that nobody would let them get so upfront and in command again.

There was not much in the way of folk in the driving, densely textured music, which fell somewhere between jazz-funk and jazz-rock, with a bit of Cuban ‘montuno’ and even a touch of prog-rock thrown in. Stone sang several songs with genuine commitment, but he is no great singer.

The instrumental sets were stronger, with a fine band that featured three musicians – Skye-based horn players Nigel Hitchcock (saxophone) and Rick Taylor (trombone) and guitarist Kevin MacKenzie – who are primarily regarded as jazz players, plus fiddler Adam Sutherland, pianist Andy Thorburn and bassist Duncan Lyell, whose pulsating electric bass lines were a notable strength.

Stone, from Grantown-on-Spey, and Aberdeen-born Jennings swapped roles on a variety of instruments, including drum kit, marimba, side drums and hand drums, while Jennings also played the Zendrum midi-trigger unit, based on the synth axe and slung over his shoulder in appropriate guitar hero fashion.

A mixed bag in the end, but with promising avenues for development. A more sympathetic slot for next year’s repeat performance might create an even more favourable impression. Special mention, too, for Rick Taylor, who is something of an arranging guru for Scotland’s young jazz and folk musicians.

He had a hand in all three New Voices commissions this year (he performed and helped arrange in Martin Green’s Green Machine and advised on Anna Wendy Stevenson’s ‘My Edinburgh’), and made a big contribution to all three.

CROFT NO FIVE were originally scheduled to perform on a double bill with the Afro-Celt DJs, but the withdrawal of the latter and the postponement of Koshka’s proposed orchestral collaboration at the City Halls until 2007 led to this re-arranged pairing of rather odd bed-fellows, musically speaking.

Koshka had to contend with a noisy crowd, but the vibrant rhythms and biting melodies overcame any difficulties. They have moulded their trademark fusion of Russian Gypsy music, Hot Club-style swing and classical influences into an exciting and dramatic hybrid idiom that is both virtuosic and energised, but also makes room for humour.

The audience swelled in size for Croft No Five, a band dedicated to bringing their music to a younger audience by underpinning their folk-oriented melodies with contemporary rhythms, taking in hard rock backbeats, slamming funk grooves, pulsating drum ‘n’ bass, and a few more besides.

The original Inverness-based line-up is now more geographically diverse, with the core trio of founding members – John Somerville on accordion, Misha Somerville on whistle and saxophone, and Barry Reid on guitar now joined by Paul Jennings on drums, Duncan Lyell on electric bass and the most recent recruit, Innes Watson on fiddle.

While Koshka looked a little out of place in The Arches, this is exactly the kind of setting that Croft No Five and their fans relished. Jennings and Lyell stoked the fires behind the front line instruments, and the intensity levels of the band’s music remained relentlessly high as they worked their way through several tunes from their last album, with a couple of newer pieces thrown in.

© Kenny Mathieson, 2006