Celtic Connections 2009: Homecoming All Star Ceilidh / A Highland Fiddler

28 Jan 2009 in Festival, Music

Main Auditorium, Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, / St Andrews in the Square, Glasgow, 24 January 2009

Duncan Chisholm

AN ALL STAR ceilidh band is still a ceilidh band. So in the end, no matter that the lineup across the capacious stage of the Royal Concert Hall contained such lustrous names as Phil Cunningham, Donald Shaw, and Charlie McKerron, it was still a ceilidh band, and has to be judged as such.

And though saying this will mean applying to join the witness protection programme to avoid being put in the stocks and having rotten haggis thrown at me at traditional music gatherings for ever more, I cannot put my hand on my heart and say it was the best ceilidh band in the world, ever.

This may once again have been down to the PA in the Hall which, apart from the Youssou N’Dour concert on Friday night where the sound engineer worked a miracle, has tended to sound a bit woolly and muffled. But more does not necessarily mean better.

It was, however, a very good ceilidh band, and those who had been lucky enough to secure dancing tickets downstairs were having a very good time doing the St Bernard’s Waltz, the Gay Gordons, Strip the Willow, the Dashing White Sergeant, Canadian Barn Dance and such other standard fare. Many of the dancers were dressed up, the women in party frocks, the men resplendent in trews and kilts to the delight of many of the overseas visitors seated upstairs in the balcony.

They were relishing this chance to see a quintessential Scottish social ritual in real life, with real life tartans of all descriptions from genuinely faded ancient to day-glo modern. There is quite a wide walkway behind the top balcony where couples feeling left out of the festivities below waltzed and marched up and down, bathed in a golden light. An usherette waltzed delicately, daintily, on her own. It was a perfect Jack Vettriano moment.

On the whole, watching a ceilidh dance is not high on the list of spectator sports, particularly after the perfection of A Highland Fiddler earlier in the evening at St Andrews in the Square, so it was time to wander off to the Strathclyde Suite to witness the closing moments of Burnsong, a marathon twelve-hour session in which every song the Bard ever wrote had been sung.

Even just before midnight, there were still a couple of dozen hardline devotees, many of them joining in as they approached the last few pages of the immortal Rabbie’s songbook.

St Andrews in the Square is a gorgeous confection of a church, taken over and restored as a venue with – slight shock in the ecclesiastical surroundings – a bar in the south apse. On the stage three of our greatest Highland fiddlers, Duncan Chisholm, Bruce MacGregor, and Ian MacFarlane along with Bryan McAlpine on keyboards, Jonny Hardie standing in for Marc Clements on guitar, and Rory Campbell on pipes and whistles, had assembled to pay tribute to the late Donald Riddell, Lovat Scouts pipe major, fiddle maker and tutor, and resident of Abriachan.

Wreathed in smiles, they launched into the tunes, interspersed with reminiscences and explanations (‘Ian Gow’, according to Donald, had a tune which he’d written to sound the way the man spoke), and jokes (‘The Falls of Lora’, written in Oban in 1938, was, said MacFarlane, named after the hotel).

After the laughter, the beauty, as MacGregor opened up the tune with an exquisitely lyrical solo, to be joined by Chisholm who added even more heartbreaking loveliness. When MacFarlane took up the strain there cannot have been a spine left untingled in the place.

The sprightly dance tune ‘Geordie Riddell’, written for his son, the composer and pianist, was given the Grappelli treatment by MacGregor before we were whisked off into a full old school-style reel straight from the Highlands. As was the first guest of the evening, Charlie MacFarlane from Lochaber, father of Ian and a perfect Highland gentleman of the old school himself in his ancient MacFarlane kilt (I am referring to the colours, not the vintage).

He performed a recitation on the origin of Donald MacLeod’s pipe jig, ‘The Hen’s March’, which captivated the audience and effortlessly stole the show. Deceptively cherubic Adam Sutherland, Riddell’s last pupil, joined for a set of reels including ‘The Great Cambridge Caravan Catastrophe’, during which MacGregor’s feet frequently left the floor at the same time; luckily he was sitting down.

The second half opened with a recording of Tom Muir interviewing Riddell in 1976, a fiddle tune in the background, which was carried on seamlessly by the fiddle trio before more anecdotes, some of them from the second guest of the evening, Aonghas Grant, the legendary left-handed fiddler of Lochaber.

Riddell had made a left-handed fiddle for his friend in 1965, saying “it would be fifty years before it sounds its best”. So, said Grant, “if you don’t like the playing, blame the fiddle”. Nobody could have quarrelled with a note of his playing as he effortlessly stole the second half of the show… the old ones are indeed the best.

Superb tune followed superb tune, with more hilarious anecdotes about anything from Yehudi Menuhin to a blazing cat. I have rarely if ever heard anything more deeply moving than their rendition of the eldritch magic that is Riddell’s ‘Lament for King George V’ or seen anything more inspiring than the ensemble finale. What an extraordinary collection of talents were there on stage for this extraordinary evening, one which will long blaze bright in the memory. Music from the very depths of the heart.

© Jennie Macfie, 2009

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