Village Hall, Carrbridge, 7 September 2006

Michael McGoldrick

FOLLOWING IN the wake of Capercaillie’s sell out performance in Aviemore on the opening weekend of Blas, the band’s flautist, whistle player and Uillean piper Michael McGoldrick and his musical associates provided an evening of scintillating music for another capacity audience in this more intimate venue.

McGoldrick was equally impressive on all of his instruments, with flute and whistle dominating proceedings. The Manchester-born Irishman was joined by his fellow Manchester-Irishman, fiddler Desi Donnelly, Capercaillie’s Donald Shaw, playing a harmonium-like miniature organ as well as accordion, and Irish guitarist Jim Murray, who favoured classical-style nylon rather than the more usual steel strings on his instrument.

McGoldrick alternated between instruments in the course of two sets. He drew on both traditional and contemporary material, with Irish tunes in the majority, leavened by a fair sprinkling of Scottish material. Just for variety, they also threw in a tune of his own influenced by Eastern European music, and a Finnish tune that he got from the playing of Sharon Shannon.

Their audacious, fast-and-furious rampages through the up-tempo tunes was breath-taking, and included dazzling solo features for both McGoldrick and Donnelly that vied with each other in both technical dexterity and invention. Jim Murray chose not to try to top their efforts, but played an Irish slow air twinned with the Scottish tune ‘The Dark Island’, which he had heard the youngsters of Fèis Spè perform in their short opening set.

The six young locally-based players (ranging from 12 to 14) made a respectable fist of their set, although they still have some way to go in developing their playing. They were remarkably confident in their spoken introductions in both English and Gaelic, however, and Seonag Buxton later performed a step dance to a reel during McGoldrick’s set.

Although a contemporary of the Fèis Spè players, Inverness’s Graham MacKenzie is a young musician on a different level, and has already performed on major stages across the country. Those appearances included participating with McGoldrick and Donnelly in Donald Shaw’s ‘Harvest’ at Celtic Connections, and they had the young fiddler join them here in a set which included a tune from that show.

© George MacKay, 2006

Link

• Blas Festival