Empire Theatre, Eden Court, Inverness, 27 November 2009

AS SOON as the name Feisean nan Gaidheal is mentioned in connection with a concert you know that you are going to be entertained by the cream of young traditional musicians, and this was no exception. With a cast of hundreds from the Western Isles to the Central Belt, Arthur Cormack and company put on a dazzling display of the best of traditional music you are ever likely to hear.

Lauren MacColl

Celebrating the end of the Year of Homecoming, this was a fitting way to culminate the year’s celebrations. With musical direction under the auspices of Rita Hunter, formerly head of Feis Rois, and sorely missed on the Highland music scene, seemingly nothing could go wrong – but more of that later.

The evening kicked of with six pipers and a drummer from Feis an Earraich (Skye & Lochalsh). A great way to start the evening, and especially with the unusual sight of two left handed pipers! We then had contributions from Lewis and Sutherland, and then Sgiobalta from the central belt; two fiddles, a harp and guitar. A really intriguing set with bags of passion and depth. This was rapidly followed by some fast moving puirt from Deirdre Graham’s Gaelic singers.

Throughout the evening we were also entertained by some short sketches from the Gaelic Drama Summer School, the highlight of which was a piece about Granny driving to the Bingo and breaking down. Whether you had Gaelic or not this was pure entertainment, and beautifully carried off by the young actors.

The second half started with – in this reviewer’s opinion – the class act of the night; Feis Rois. This was a fantastic, polished, professional performance from what is probably the most experienced of all the Feisean. The layers of sound, changes of mood and tempo set this act apart in a class of their own, and they could easily stand alongside Blazin’ Fiddles or Session A9 as a professional act. Much of the credit has to go to Alpha Munro’s long-standing leadership of the Kiltearn Fiddlers, who are always at the heart of anything Feis Rois does.

The rest of the more professional second half (featuring more ex-Feis participants who are now full time musicians) contained some notable highlights, particularly from Lauren MacColl from Fortrose (who won another accolade at the Scots Trad Awards Music this year) and the whole Feisean na Gaidheal team accompanying leader Arthur Cormack.

This column is too short to give everyone their due so my apologies to those I have omitted to mention by name. But rest assured the “vibes” from the audience certainly indicate that you all did a superb job and I for one thoroughly enjoyed an evening of outstanding performances.

The only sour note on the evening’s entertainment was nothing to do with the youngsters, who, as I have already said, excelled themselves. The sound engineering was, to be charitable, appalling. Almost every set performed was affected by microphones not being switched on, poor mixing, and feedback of deafening proportions on at least two occasions. A couple of errors are acceptable for a production on such a scale, but frankly this was embarrassing.

Eden Court have advised us that the they were not responsible for the sound for this concert. Ceol Nam Feis hired an outside company to do the sound, and they provided the engineers who did both the front-of-house and monitor mix. Accordingly, we have removed critical comments on Eden Court which were originally part of this review.

© Donald Mackenzie, 2009

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