Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh, 12-14 November 2010

THE ANNUAL Scots Fiddle Festival’s 15th year was a good one in which to roll out an especially strong programme, as Edinburgh’s historic Assembly Rooms, which have housed the event since its inception, are soon to close for an 18-month refurbishment.

With the festival having evolved to fill that venue’s array of accommodation, from the imposing Music Hall and Ballroom for the main performances and ceilidhs, to numerous small rooms for workshops and talks, finding an alternative home for Fiddle 2011 won’t be easy.

While there’s no word yet as to the organisers’ plans, a healthy attendance and merrily buzzing atmosphere throughout the weekend – including a complete sellout for Saturday’s centrepiece concert – with fiddles, fiddlers and fiddle music fans thronging every corner of the building, left a firm impression of a festival easily robust enough to meet the challenge.

Angus Grant Jr and Charlie McKerron (photo Ros Gasson)

Friday night’s Heat the Hoose show was opened by Californian-born adoptive Highlander Gabe McVarish, stepping out from his usual role in Dàimh after releasing his first solo album, Eclection, last June.

Joined by two of those regular bandmates, guitarist Ross Martin and Angus Mackenzie on pipes and whistles, plus accordionist Luke Daniels and double bassist Duncan Lyall, McVarish used the opportunity to explore his wider repertoire, including several traditional and contemporary Irish tunes and a Cape Breton-style duet with Mackenzie, in acknowledgement of the latter’s birthplace.

A predominance of uptempo material vividly highlighted the fiddler’s bright, fine-honed tone and crisp, nimble articulation, snugly in synch with Daniels’s and Mackenzie’s parallel lead melodies, buoyed by vibrant chords and taut, springy grooves from the rhythm team, although his delivery of a Scott Skinner slow air was markedly less fluent in its phrasing.

Although Shooglenifty formed and are still based in Edinburgh, their collective heart remains substantially in the Highlands, as underlined here by numbers like ‘Glenuig Hall’ and longtime classic ‘The Pipe Tunes’ – a brilliantly extended version of the opener from their 1994 debut album – as well as the self-styled “teuchter Balkan funk” of ‘The Eccentric’, by turns darkly ferocious and gracefully lyrical.

The absence of ailing mandolinist Luke Plumb, as partner to Angus Grant’s fiddle, left their sound without one of its central elements, but Capercaillie/Session A9 fiddler Charlie McKerron was an apt choice of substitute given the occasion, maintaining the band’s signature creative tension between melodic lushness and bare-knuckle rock-style aggression, a mix further energised by dashes of dub, prog, African and Greek influence.

The following morning, Grant’s father, the iconic Highland fiddler and teacher Aonghas Grant – also namechecked by McVarish as one of his tune sources – launched his long-awaited tunebook The Glengarry Collection, containing 164 reels, jigs, strathspeys, marches, airs and hornpipes from his legendary repertoire.

He introduced the publication with a few choice anecdotes and reminiscences associated with the tunes, or recalled from his long career, dating back to the days of playing for dances “without a microphone in sight – nor an accordion”, when one of the perks of being in the band was glimpsing girls’ knickers as they were birled off their feet amidst a quadrille.

In reference to that pre-amplification era, Grant Sr observed that some of today’s young players never really learn how to “pull a tone” out of their instrument with the strength or vigour required of his generation – a charge that certainly couldn’t be levelled against Shetland fiddler Jenna Reid, who performed unplugged with her sister Bethany (on piano and fiddle) to launch their new CD, Escape.

The recording features a suite of new compositions originally premiered at this year’s Celtic Connections, commemorating the heroic story of Jan Baalsrud, a Norwegian resistance fighter during the Second World War, whose mission formed part of the secret maritime operation known as the Shetland Bus, and who survived a two-month Arctic trek to freedom in Sweden following a Nazi ambush.

Even without the narration included on the CD, the three sample pieces played by the Reids, accompanied by flautist James Thompson, double bassist James Lindsay and percussionist Iain Sandilands, potently evoked key points in the tale, from the drama and peril of Baalsrud’s initial flight to the exhilaration of his final deliverance.

The power and sophistication of contemporary Shetland fiddling were also thrillingly exemplified by another of its leading young exponents, Ross Couper, of the band Bodega, teamed here with guitarist Tom Oakes in one of Sunday’s daytime recital slots. Setting about the tunes with a force and intensity that left both him and his audience breathless, Couper nonetheless matched attack with finesse and precision, displaying audacious improvisational flair and some excellent original tunes, deftly complemented by Oakes’s exhilarating drive and agility.

Martin Hayes, Angus Grant and Gerry O'Connor (photo Ros Gasson)

This Highland and Island contingent featured in the festival alongside two of today’s top international fiddle stars, who between them pulled in that capacity crowd on Saturday night. Denmark’s Harald Haugaard, accompanied by guitarist Perry Stenbäck and percussionist Sune Rahbek, was in typically captivating form, his dazzling technical virtuosity infused with infectious joie de vivre, while guest singer Helene Blum’s crystalline yet gorgeously sensuous vocals added the icing to a mouthwatering musical cake.

And rarely have I seen so many leading Scottish fiddlers so excited as they were about hearing the justly revered Irish player Martin Hayes, whose duo performance with guitar partner Dennis Cahill rendered the description spellbinding about as literal as it gets.

© Sue Wilson, 2010

Links

• Fiddle 2010

• Sue Wilson

• Ros Gasson