Royal Concert Hall / Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow, 20 January 2007

Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq Gillis

FÈIS ROIS celebrated their 21st anniversary by opening the lengthy and ambitious Celtic Connections Youth Concert. The Ross-shire-based Fèis mustered a large complement of young musicians for the occasion, drawn from current participants and former alumni who have gone on to make careers in music, including multi-instrumentalist Anna Massie, accordionists Mairearad Green and John Somerville, guitarist Barry Reid, and singer Rachel Walker, who opened the show with a lovely solo Gaelic song from Skye, ‘Bràigh Uìge’.

Others, like clarsach player Katie Mackenzie, fiddler Lauren McColl and accordionist Roya MacLean, are making their own impacts on the wider scene, and more will doubtless follow. The Fèis has been an excellent development laboratory for such musicians, but for many others not destined or intending to make a career in music or Gaelic, it has also been a profoundly significant experience.

Some of that sheer pleasure – mixed with a spicing of apprehension – in taking part came through in the closing performances featuring the massed ranks of participants in two instrumental sets. The earlier fiddle set had sounded a little tentative, but the closing flourish delivered a stronger finale to crown their portion of the show.

They were followed by the immensely impressive Comhaltas from Glasgow, celebrating their own 50th anniversary this year. Glasgow was the first branch of the organisation outside of Ireland, and they mustered a huge array of young musicians in a well-organised and lively set of Irish music.

Both the under-15s group and the subsequent over-15s group mixed tight ensemble discipline with expressive spirit in fine style, and came together – along with a few guests over from Ireland for Comhaltas’s own birthday celebration – in a rousing finale.

The concert finished with the inaugural performance by the Celtic Connections Youth Orchestra, made up of students from various Scottish universities, conducted by Mark Sheridan. They performed two orchestral works written by musicians associated with folk music, the late Martyn Bennett and Dick Gaughan.

Bennett’s ‘MacKay’s Memoirs’ has been performed here before, and his music revealed greater understanding of how to use orchestral instruments than Dick Gaughan was able to muster in his work. Bennett employed a characteristic rhythmic underlay inspired by contemporary club culture, and the rising intensity of the music was well-realised by the orchestra, with Finlay MacDonald as soloist on Highland pipes.

Dick Gaughan’s specially commissioned reflection on the Act of Union, ‘Treaty 300’, never really took off. Orchestral writing is not his forte. The music was a little weak structurally, and revealed no real flow or continuity of ideas amid a plethora of musical quotations. As with his earlier orchestral piece for this festival, the music lacked the fire and passion he brings to his best singing and song writing.

The late night concert at the Old Fruitmarket allowed a chance to catch up with Shooglenifty as they launched their new CD, ‘Troots’. The band were in sizzling form, and if their longevity and pervasive genre-expanding influence has conspired to ensure that their music no longer packs the sheer surprise it once did, they have developed a notable coherence and assurance both on stage and in the studio, and the new tune sets (all by the band other than Donald Macleod’s pipe tune ‘Walter C. Douglas’) are well up to standard.

The energy levels remained as high as ever, and the inclusion of Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq Gillis added a remarkable and unorthodox vocal virtuosity to the mix (her solo demonstartion of the art was astounding). A rousing night in front of an appreciative audience.

© Kenny Mathieson, 2007

Links

• Celtic Connections