Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow, 27 January 2011

SHOWCASE SCOTLAND is a long standing institution at Celtic Connections, a sampler of representative acts on the Scottish music scene aimed partly at international promoters who congregate in Glasgow for the last weekend of the festival.

However, the multi artist format is disadvantaged by the logistics of getting artists on and off stage not once but many times (as evinced even more clearly in the following night’s Celtronika, featuring no less than fourteen bands over a mindnumbing five and a half hour period).

That said, the Showcase has given many a lesser-known artist a leg-up in their career, and it’s a useful taster session which often encourages audiences to extend their taste a little wider. Hopefully some of those who came to see such long established acts Mick West and The Poozies will have been entranced by the jazz inflections of the Halten Quartet.

Nairn fiddler Mike Vass (photo Archie MacFarlane)

Formed by duo Angus Lyon and Ruaridh Campbell with the addition of guitar whizz Adam Bulley and mandolinist Chaz Mackenzie, aka Wingin’ It, after the two duos met on board the MV Halton during the 2007 Orkney Folk Festival, the Quartet is steaming steadily into the territory mapped out by Fraser Fifield and Lau, where world music merges with jazz and minimalism, a voyage in search of beauty aided by superb musicianship. On the evidence of an all-too-short set, in which the breathtaking dynamic and tonal colour range of Campbell’s fiddle work was particularly noteworthy, plain sailing seems assured,

Rachel Sermanni and her band followed, recapitulating much of the setlist already reviewed during her New Voices commission earlier in the week but sans the Hidden Lane Choir or fiddler Siobhan Anderson. The cavernous Fruitmarket is a harder nut to crack than the relatively intimate Strathclyde Suite, and the delicate pizzicato intros and outros were almost inaudible. Laura Wilkie & Louise Bichan compensated by pushing their fiddles into Velvet Underground mode for the final number, supporting the full belter of a voice which is one of the not-so-secret weapons in Sermanni’s armoury.

An impressive and effective set, another step on the road to major stardom, but the Poozies, following, exuded that indefinable something that only flourishes in a band whose time playing together is measured not in months or years but in decades. The first ladies of fusion have inspired many others in their two decades but their short, sweet, gleamingly polished set was a reminder of the oft-forgotten value of experience. During the closing “Tammienorrie” set, Eilidh Shaw’s fiddle brought the Fruitmarket to life as for the first time that evening, the collective impact of tapping feet made itself felt.

Mike Vass took it back down at first, opening with slow, rhythmic intensity before unleashing the sprightly delicacy which shows the influence of his tutor, Bruce Macgregor. A good night for Scottish music, a particularly sweet one for the Highlands.

© Jennie Macfie, 2011

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