OneTouch Theatre, Eden Court, Inverness, 22 March 2012

WINNER of the Young Trad Musician of the Year Award 2009, Nairn’s latest fiddle star Rua Macmillan should be set to follow in the footsteps of so many of his fellow award winners who have forged strong careers in the business, including local hero/ine, Anna Massie.

UNDOUBTEDLY he has the ability – his high-speed playing is astonishing, laden with apparently effortless trills and ornaments. His eponymous trio includes the redoubtable Tia Fyles from Oban, a guitarist whose solid talent is reminiscent of the young Massie and Adam Brown from Cambridge whose mastery of bodhran is astonishing. So here we have three precocious virtuosi. What could possibly go wrong?

Rua Macmillan Trio

Somehow, the first half of the evening is curiously unsatisfying. The most memorable moments are Brown’s jawdropping bodhran solo, Macmillan’s slow air ‘Halves’, where Boris the bass fiddle and plain, unadorned playing create magic, and a set of tunes from Macmillan’s tutor, the legendary Lochaber fiddler Aonghas Grant.

Partly to blame may be the guitar having been set unbalancingly high in the mix and a tendency to have all three instruments playing nearly all the time – compare, and contrast, Liz Carroll and John Doyle. There’s also the choice of material; it is not enough to structure and play one set well, the show has to be paced like a play and what works in a village hall doesn’t always translate to a more formal venue. Playing for the first time in a hometown professional venue with one’s entire family in the audience must be at the least slightly intimidating, too.

The sound seems to be slightly better at the start of the second half and all three performers have relaxed. The first set comprises two sizzling Macmillan-composed tunes, ‘Hard Core Prawn’ and ‘Bloody Tia Maria’, and then things really catch fire with some sets of reels, before Macmillan calms it down with an exquisitely beautiful lullaby learned at his granny’s knee.

More reels follow with flashes of pure brilliance, particularly on that fine staple of the modern traditional repertoire, the Gordon Duncan tune ‘Jock Brown’s 70th’, paired here with Jay Unger’s ‘Vladimir’s Steamboat’, and the encores are greeted with uproarious applause.

© Jennie Macfie, 2012

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• Rua Macmillan