SORREN Maclean spent much of his childhood in and around An Tobar, Tobermory’s renowned arts centre where his father Gordon is Artistic Director.

LISTENING to a comprehensively wide range of musicians, the younger Maclean has forged his own musical path, informed by traditional Scots music but also incorporating dollops of Americana, jazz and pop. He is also a founder member of indie-pop outfit Kitty The Lion.

Sorren MacLean

That he’s comfortable with a wide-ranging musical palette is evident from the first chord, where he sings conversationally, accompanied by his own guitar, Luciano Rossi’s piano and later Danny Grant’s restrained percussion. It’s country-ish and jazz-y all at the same time, and very beguiling. Other songs also show an alt-country influence, like the fine ‘Way Back Home’, which fits into the territory of infectiously catchy songs also occupied by the Delgadoes and Biffy Clyro, with nicely shaped lyrics “Glimmering, shimmering in the Northern Lights”.

Fiddle players Hannah Fisher and Seonaid Aitken and cellist Su-a Lee (well known to fans of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Mr McFall’s Chamber) are thanked for their help arranging the strings, which have some interesting dissonances and unpredictability. Lee switches to the musical saw, Aitken to the piano and Rossi picks up lead guitar for the next song, the impressive ‘Rows and Rows of Boxes’.

Written over Christmas and Hogmanay on Mull, his collection of songs for this Celtic Connections commission is entitled Winter Stay Autumn. The title track is particularly lovely, with smooth warm vocal harmonies and lots of space, restrained percussion offsetting passionate cello and building to an ecstatic resolution before jumping sideways into a fast driving rock-style finish. Maclean demonstrates in his addition to the new:voices strand that he completely understands the craft of song-writing.

Last year’s winner of the BBC’s Young Traditional Musician of the Year competition, Oban’s Rona Wilkie, debuted her new:voices commission Ceangailte (Connected) the previous week. Starting with a setting of the Carmina Gaedelica sung by clarsach player Rachel Newton accompanied by Patsy Reid (fiddle), Marit Fält (octave mandolin), Hayden Powell (trumpet), Colin Nicolson (accordion) and Allan MacDonald Jr (pipes/percussion/vocals) and Wilkie herself, it was a delightful musical exploration of the history of the Highlands.

Competitors in this year’s Young Trad final included very impressive showings by Inverness fiddler Graham Mackenzie and Argyll pianist Andrew Dunlop, while Lewis singer/songwriter Miss Irenie Rose’ debuted at Hazy Recollections; for those who haven’t had the pleasure of hearing her, imagine the fusion of Nick Drake, Amy Winehouse and Joni Mitchell with flashes of gospelsinger fervour.

Meanwhile entrants on the Danny Kyle stage included Charlie Grey, currently a student at Plockton and tipped as one to watch by a noted radio producer…. On the strength of these and many other performances, including the traditional music students at the Royal Conservatoire in their annual show, shared this year with students from Stockholm, the future of traditional music is looking very bright indeed.

© Jennie Macfie, 2013

Links

• Celtic Connections
• Sorren Maclean on Facebook

THE elaborately corniced, portico’d and vaulted hall of the Kelvingrove Art Gallery soars high above row upon row of chairs.

SOLD out for months, tonight the Strathglass Suite is the hottest ticket in rainy Glasgow; extra rows of seating have been squeezed in wherever possible and people are crowding on the balconies above. It’s also being filmed for later transmission on BBC Alba.

Duncan Chisholm (photo John Smith)

No pressure, then, on Duncan Chisholm and his band – Matheu Watson (guitar), Martin O’Neill (bodhran), Jarlath Henderson (pipes and whistles), Ross Hamilton (bass) and the statutory member of the Henderson family, Allan (piano and fiddle).

Accompanying them are a string & brass ensemble conducted by Gary Walker and led by Greg Lawson, known to some from Blazin’ in Beauly but here in his capacity as a freelance classical violinist.

One wonders, idly, what Donald Riddell would have thought, sitting in his croft in Abriachan, of the success enjoyed by his pupils who, as well as Chisholm, include Bruce MacGregor, Iain MacFarlane and Adam Sutherland.

In case you hadn’t noticed (and if you hadn’t, don’t worry, you will), this is the Year of Natural Scotland whose logo flashed up on the screen behind the performers. The Strathglass Suite is Chisholm’s musical tribute to the place of his birth and the home of his ancestors, where the valley of the Glass river widens out between Glen Affric and Aigas. It is drawn from a trilogy of CD releases, recorded over six years, Farrar, Canaich and the most recent, Affric.

Written in the thrall of what the Welsh call ‘hiraeth’, the deep love of one’s homeland, the Strathglass Suite inhabits an area of music thronged with popular favourites like Sibelius’ ‘Finlandia’, Smetana’s ‘Ma Vlast’ and many of the works of Vaughan Williams; on this showing Chisholm’s work is worthy of inclusion in the canon.

The opening notes are played by Jarlath Henderson – is there any sound more wistfully haunting than the Uillean pipes? – before the ensemble join in with some meltingly lovely strings. The suite would be a fine enough piece played only by Chisholm’s selection of traditional musicians, but with the addition of the ensemble’s rich musical textures it becomes a thing of great and lasting beauty.

Scottish Opera’s Stephen Adams has been in charge of the arrangements, which successfully bridge the folk/classical gap, the strings often echoing the cadences of the pipes and not merely framing the folk sections but weaving all the strands together. You can see it’s going well from the grins on the faces of the musicians; even the classical musicians are allowing themselves to tap their feet and nod their heads when the music heads off into the folkosphere.

The audience quickly abandons the stultifying classical convention (only introduced in the Victorian era) of not applauding between sections – to the extent of giving a standing ovation half way through after a fast, furious section driven by the great, lolloping beat of O’Neill’s bodhran.

Yes, the man from Wolfstone can break your heart with a slow air but he also knows how to rock. The barriers between classical and folk have been trampled over and it’s all just music. Things quieten down enough for Allan Macdonald to declaim, in Gaelic, an extract from Neil Munro’s ‘To Exiles’ before the last section, followed by a rapturous repeat of the standing ovation and a final, reprised encore. Magnificent.

Pride of New York, led by Cherish the Ladies’ force of nature, Joanie Madden, had the unenviable position of support band but gradually managed to win the audience over, delivering a knockout blow with an irresistible 400-year old tune on the whistle from Madden. If only the stage had been a little higher, it’d have been possible to see as well as hear them. The sound, too, is against them; Madden’s introductions, like Chisholm’s after her, are almost incomprehensible in the echoing acoustics.

© Jennie Macfie, 2013

Links

Duncan Chisholm

Jennie Macfie

FIRST on stage in the vaulted hall at the Glasgow Art Club was folk singer Ian Smith, originally from Kilmarnock but now resident in Donegal.

One self-penned song lamented the decline of his home town’s once vibrant city centre with a sad litany of shops and cafes that are no more. It must be some time since Smith went home as, ironically, on the other side of Scotland at St Andrews, Kilmarnock had just won the major Creative Places Award for 2013 for its transformation of closed retail and industrial premises into ‘thriving arts venues and their year round series of festivals’.

Fiona J. Mackenzie

The biggest of these music festivals is the Kilmarnock Edition, named for the famous 1786 collection of Burns’ poems in the Scots dialect, and one which inspired the name of the second act, a kaleidoscopic assembly of musicians from all sorts of genres who as individual winners of the Burnsong International Songhouse of 2009 were brought under one roof for a week of intensive songwriting collaboration. They’ve continued to make music together ever since, though chances for rehearsal for this far-flung crew, each busy with their own individual careers as singer-songwriters, are few and far between.

As a result their performance isn’t what you might call polished, but amid the gloriously exhilarating con-fusion of musical styles on stage, it simply didn’t matter. Yvonne Lyon, Lisa Rigby and Fiona J Mackenzie’s voices melted together irresistibly in beautiful harmonies strengthened by the warmth of Alex Hodgson’s voice and guitar, Roberto Cassani’s bass and Stuart Clark’s percussion textures. Additional delights were provided by Sarah on fiddle and producer David Lyon on box.

From Latin-y jazz to Gaelic song, from doo-wop to dub beats, it was a rich feast of musical elan. Hodgson’s humourous introductions were only outdone by Cassani. As he said, “My songs sound serious in my head, but when I sing them, people laugh”,and his lament for the angst of empty nest syndrome proved his point; comedy gold.

Dingwall-based Fiona J Mackenzie is the driving force behind the band; amid the cheers and whistles, her soft sweet unaccompanied Gaelic song had the power to hush the audience in seconds. As a complete contrast her paean to the smartphone, or little black box “Bocsaig beag dhu” was foot-tappingly catchy and, as with ‘Pay It Forward’ (the title track of their first album) the audience clapped along without any encouragement. That’s a cast iron indicator of a good gig, and the Kilmarnock Edition is certainly that.

© Jennie Macfie, 2013

Links

• Celtic Connections
• Jennie Macfie

NOW approaching its 20^th year, Glasgow’s Celtic Connections festival has grown from what was deemed an improbable idea to the largest winter festival in the world.

It is an event that inspires music makers and creators: each year people from all over the world turn their eyes and ears to Glasgow for inspiration and ‘connections’. The 2012 line-up included artists from Mali and Senegal, Cuba, Israel, Japan, Bosnia, Canada and Ireland.

A fact worth noting is that among a total of nearly 180 main-programme shows, more than two-thirds featured a wholly or substantially Scottish line-up, with over a third of these featuring artists from the Highlands and Islands, including Lochaber Gold, Skipinnish, Cuairt nan Eilean, Session A9, Kris Drever, Blazin Fiddle and The Wrigley Sisters.

Session A9 (photo Martin Heron)

Scottish music really is the backbone of this Festival. Another fabulous thing about Celtic Connections is that it allows artists to stretch their creative wings, experiment with boundaries and explore new musical territories. Partnerships, collaborations and connections are all at the heart of the festival.

I attended this year as a delegate of Showcase Scotland. Now in its 13th year, it is the nation’s largest international meeting of music industry professionals. “An integral element of Celtic Connections, Showcase Scotland offers artists a unique opportunity to perform in front of over 200 promoters, record labels and agents from 20 different countries,” says Festival Manager Jade Hewat.

Showcase Scotland is a five-day event, scheduled during the busiest weekend of Celtic Connections (as if the organisers hadn’t enough to be getting on with!). Produced by Active Events, with support from a steering group of 22 industry professionals from across Scotland, Showcase Scotland is an opportunity for promoters, record labels, agents and festival organisers to meet both the Scottish industry and each other, as well as seeing and hearing Scottish artists from a wide swathe of genres in optimum performance conditions.

Ian Smith, the Portfolio Manager of Music and IP Development for Creative Scotland, who are a key funding partner for Showcase Scotland and Celtic Connections, said in his welcome speech to visiting delegates: “We want you to be inspired and enthused and most importantly to book our artists!”

Breabach (photo Martin Heron)

Five days, 12 venues, over 60 performances plus seminars, discussions, talks, networking events and a trade fair: Showcase Scotland is no free, slap-up easy ride. Here results are expected – acts are booked, record deals are negotiated, partnerships formed, all playing a significant role in the development of the Scottish music industry both nationally and internationally.

Two hundred delegates from 21 countries attended this year. In 2011, each delegate booked an average of four Scottish artists for their own festival, venue or event. An estimated overall spend on artists was between £1,528,871 and £2,222,721!

Seudan (photo Martin Heron)

Another ‘connection’ made via Showcase Scotland is that each year the event features an international partner – this year the spotlight was on Catalonia. Supported by Catalan Institute for the Cultural Industries, six of Catalonia’s top musical acts were featured in the weekend’s programme.

The Minister of Culture of Catalonia said that “our presence at Showcase Scotland will also reinforce the networking between Catalan and Scottish professionals and open new possibilities for collaboration.”

Celtic Connections is all about connections – connections with friends, connections with music, family connections, national and international connections, industry connections, connections through stories, song and music, and most importantly meaningful and lasting connections.

I returned home to Moray and – as well as having tired feet from dashing from venue to venue and a croaky voice from talking and sharing ideas with the other delegates – I was truly inspired from hearing a range of musical talent from Scotland.

I have secured bookings for acts; I have raised seed-money and support towards an event currently being planned to showcase Moray’s artistic community (watch this space!) and rekindled business relations and networks. Showcase Scotland – money well invested!

Kresanna Aigner grew up in Findhorn Village, and now lives in Moray once again, where she works with the Moray Art Centre and is part of a vibrant artistic community in the area.

© Kresanna Aigner, 2012

Links

• Moray Art Centre
• Celtic Connections

IT MIGHT seem a totally insane idea, transporting the entire 17-strong line-up for Celtic Connections’ flagship [amazon_link id=”B0065GQW32″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]Transatlantic Sessions [/amazon_link]concerts all the way up to play in Shetland, in between their two sellout dates in Glasgow – not least since the festival’s artistic director, Donald Shaw, was one of the band – but it turned out to be a wholly inspired one.

Shetland’s 20,000-strong population includes a lot of extremely devoted and discerning Americana fans – as well as fans of quality music in general – and not a few world-class exponents of US roots styles, so it was small wonder that the gig, funded as part of the ongoing Scotland’s Islands promotion, sold out in record time, with fully five percent of that population excitedly packed into the islands’ largest venue. Shetland is also arguably the perfect locale in which to explore and celebrate the musical interplay between America and the British Isles, past and present, positioned as it is at a literal transatlantic crossroads.

Transatlantic Sessions debutant Ruth Moody

Besides the premier-league calibre of each individual musician involved, a key element in the Transatlantic Sessions’ long-running success – both the Celtic Connections live version and the BBC Scotland/Pelicula Films TV series – is the adroit balance between regular participants in the project, led by its joint musical directors, Shetland fiddle supremo Aly Bain and dobro legend Jerry Douglas, and first-timers.

Among the latter here were Wailin’ Jennys singer and banjo player Ruth Moody, majestic-voiced Mavericks frontman Raul Malo and the brilliantly original Irish singer-songwriter Declan O’Rourke. Besides Bain, Douglas and Shaw, other old lags (I’m sure they’ll pardon the expression) included the Scottish vocal dream-team of Karen Matheson and Eddi Reader, and the equally mouthwatering ‘house band’ of fiddler John McCusker, Michael McGoldrick on uilleann pipes, flutes and whistles, revered US guitarist Russ Barenberg and his similarly sublime Irish co-instrumentalist John Doyle, double bass deity Danny Thompson and drummer James Mackintosh.

Also in the veteran category, and doubling up on vocal and instrumental duties, were Grammy-winning fiddler, mandolinist and singer Tim O’Brien, and the vibrantly eloquent old-time specialist Bruce Molsky – who brought the house down with the comment, while introducing a lonesome logging-camp ballad: “I heard there used to be loggers here in Shetland – but I guess they did a bit too good of a job.”

Thanks to this mix of established camaraderie and mutual familiarity with the shot-in-the-arm freshness supplied by each year’s debutants, the Transatlantic Sessions original strapline – “the ultimate backporch session” – has only held truer as time has passed. Add to this all the 2012 performers’ excitement at being in Shetland, be it for the first time or as previous initiates into the islands’ unique charms, together with the audience’s rapturous reception – culminating in two standing ovations – and the result was a truly unforgettable night.

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With the now traditional quasi-lounge area set up in a back corner, all the performers were onstage throughout the whole show, visibly delighting in the numbers they weren’t actively contributing to, with “spare” singers repeatedly inspired to jump up and chime in on backing harmonies – even when this clearly hadn’t been rehearsed, with choruses of up to six outstanding voices forming in the course of a song.

This year’s range of participants also richly expanded the stylistic palette to encompass everything from the blissfully distilled romance of Malo on the old Neil Sedaka hit, ‘I Found My World In You’, to Michael McGoldrick’s spine-tingling delivery of the Irish slow air ‘I Am Asleep'; from the ensemble’s round-robin rendition of ‘This Land is Your Land’, in honour of Woody Guthrie’s centenary, to a stunning, genre-roaming solo workout from Douglas which opened the second half.

Other highlights included Moody’s self-penned selection from her debut solo album The Garden, particularly its beautiful title track, and O’Rourke’s compelling Irish/calypso/country-pop composition ‘Lightning Bird Wind River Man’, while the arrangements were distinguished throughout not only by their crème de la crème instrumental calibre, but their judiciously varied deployment of lushness and sparseness.

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© Sue Wilson, 2012

Links

• Celtic Connections

IF THE Tron allowed standing, it would have been standing room only for this contrasting double bill. It’s two years almost to the day since Northings reviewed what was then known as the Lauren MacColl Trio.

It is now the snappier MacCollective, but retains the same lineup of Lauren MacColl on fiddle, Mhairi Hall on piano and Barry Reid on guitar. The main difference is not the name but the added smoothness, assurance and maturity that time has added.

Maccollective, featuring Mhairi Hall, Barry Reid and Lauren McColl

Mhairi Hall is developing into one of the great piano accompanists, reminiscent of Andy Thorburn in her rapport with her fellow musicians and evident pleasure in being onstage, but also sharing with Barry Reid a delicacy of touch combined with the ability to make feet not just tap but stamp when required.

MacColl is fulfilling her youthful promise, both musically and in increasingly confident, clearly articulated introductions and thanks. She has an ear for a great tune, as her forays into old Highland Collections has already shown, supported by the undoubted talent to do it justice.

The well-chosen programme includes her own compositions, favourite traditional discoveries and an interesting selection of works by others, including the Canadian Oliver Shore. Durham accordionist Shona Kipling joined the trio for several numbers, including a sparkling ‘God is an Accordion’. (“Yes!,” says Kipling, punching the air).

As a few MacColl relations leave to accompany her to her next gig at the Festival Club, their seats are immediately filled by supporters of Kathleen MacInnes. She sweeps onto the stage in her “Lewis wellies” (high heeled knee boots) and jeans and wraps the audience in her distinctive warm brushed cashmere voice, launching straight into a cappella Gaelic song.

She’s soon joined by Laoise (pronounced, roughly, ‘Leesha’) Kelly on clarsach, and then Iain MacFarlane, Iain Macdonald and Ross Martin join for a sea shanty or two. Rehearsals the previous day, she confides, soon led to the pub where some chance-met musicians (Angus Nicolson, Megan Henderson and James Bremner) were persuaded to join them for a couple of tunes, and they duly appear.

It’s all amiably chaotic, more like a kitchen session than a formal concert, and none the worse for that. In fact, when the Tron management indicate that it’s time to leave the stage, “Would you all like to come home with us?” asks MacInnes, and “Yes!” comes the emphatic answer from an audience eager for more puirt a beul, sprightly reels, footstomping jigs, heartwrenching ballads, and well timed gags.

Lewis singer Kathleen MacInnes

“I’m pregnant and depressed”, she announces suddenly, which hushes the room for an instant before she giggles at the thought of husband Tommy’s face if she were. No, it’s just another Gaelic song about a barefoot pregnant lass waiting vainly on the quay.

MacInnes has a glorious voice, with shades of Fado or Flamenco heavy in the more passionate tunes, but it’s her open friendliness that keeps her fans coming back for more.

© Jennie Macfie, 2011

Links

• Celtic Connections

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

Links

• Celtic Connections

TAKE four fiddlers, add a clarsach and a couple of guitars and you have the magical Fiddlers Bid. We in the Highlands were treated to some magical gigs, including a very special one in Oban with Catriona MacKay and Chris Stout earlier in the autumn, but as Stout says, “Fiddlers Bid is a whole different thing again!”.

They were celebrating 20 years of frenetic fiddle music here, and demonstrating that they remain at the very top of the game. Reels, marches and waltzes followed in a tour de force of the Shetland tradition. Willie Hunter Junior and Senior were celebrated in music, and thanked for their encouragement and influence in the musical development and growth of Fiddlers Bid over the two decades.

Shetland band Fiddlers Bid

Astrid’s Waltz gave us room to draw breath with a tune written for a Swedish friend, but normal service was resumed with a blistering tune celebrating the survival from a Bonxie attack on a Scandinavian friend. The birds did not take kindly to anyone on their headland. The runner, who was visiting the northern shores for the first time, had to run faster to escape. It further demonstrated that the Shetlanders often look east rather than south for inspiration and fellowship.

Further east still, a trip to Japan led to a Celtic Connection that none of us expected, Japanese duo Humbert and Humbert. The oriental duo was spirited on stage and made beautiful music with and without the band, and with almost a Gaelic air to their songs. Gentle and graceful music from the Orient that could have easily come from Oronsay.

Then came the finale, and the Shetlanders moved up a notch which should have warned us of something special coming. Not one of the near full Royal concert Hall expected seventeen Vikings in full battle dress to come down through the audience and join on stage. Up helly aa had come to the city, and what a sight it was. “That’s the kinda festival Celtic Connections is,” mused Stout; “when you ask for a bus load o’ Vikings and twa flights from Japan – they just do it!” The next 20 years will be marvellous.

Elsewhere in the festival, the The Henry Girls and Foxhunt made a strong impression in the Strathclyde Suite the previous evening. Take three girls from Donegal and add four boys from West Virginia and mix them all together on a Glasgow stage and the blend is Celtic.

Well, more Americana, actually but foot stomping none the less! All of a sudden we realise what Celtic Connections is all about – collaboration. They met at a festival last year and the magic began. Original and cleverly mastered round just one big old-style microphone, the bands take turns to lead throughout the songs in a musical merry-go-round that delights the Royal Concert hall regulars and first timers alike.

It’s like being back in the Fifties (I imagine) and listening to American radio on the short wave. We meet the girls and boys later back at the hotel – a dram or two were had (networking, I call it), and I think we will see them in the Highlands before long – watch this space.

The Highlands were well represented that opening weekend, with Skerryvore and Manran at the O2 ABC on Sunday, and also Iain Thomson in a supportign slot at the City Halls’s Recital Room with Marc Duff on the Friday. Skerryvore, the Tiree Celtic rockers, always get the ABC dancing. They upped their game again, and they had to ­ Manran will have helped their cause .

The gig was opened by the infamous Calum Iain Ceilidh Band featuring Malcolm Jones of Runrig on the box, and Calum Iain rotating between accordion and fiddle. What a star the man is: humour style and dancing – all the while bowing as he goes.

Gary Innes and Norrie MacIver make a fine front for Manran, and Ewen Henderson adds to their sparkle. Calum Stewart came all the way from France with his pipes and Ross Saunders on bass says its “the best band I have ever played in! – there is something new in every gig.” With the audience ready for it ,the wee festival super group turned big in Glasgow!

This was only there sixth gig, and they wowed the audience with MacIver’s distinctive vocals and the superb playing of Scotland shinty captain, Innes, on the golden box. The new single ‘Latha Math’ made the audience sing, and became the first Gaelic song to make the UK charts in the new millennium. The boys also made number 6 in the Scottish Top 40, number one in the UK singer songwriter chart, and number 6 in the Radio 1 Indie chart, a great result for Gaelic music.

The band were delighted at the support they had received from throughout the Gaeltacht. Their set gives them several more tracks with the top 40 written all over them and one biggie, the vocal athletics of a great peurt a beul finale from MacIver, is my favourite.

The band also opened for Kepa Junkera at the Royal Concert Hall (13 January), with a more subdued audience than the Ceilidh hooligans that populate a Skerryvore gig. This was going to be a tough one … or so we thought. As a fully paid up hooligan, it falls to me to advance the case. Age has nothing to do with it – its attitude that counts!

Calum Iain (the dancing fiddler) and his ceilidh band had proved that at the ABC O2, having got the audience all warmed up by the time Manran came on stage. Not so at the Concert Hall. All that was warm were the scarves to ward out the winter chill that had befallen Glasgow as the fog descended.

However, a few wisecracks from Gary and Norrie softened the “cultured audience” that had re- assembled. This is the type of audience that threw not one pair of knickers toward Tom Jones earlier in the week. “it is a cultured audience” says Donald Shaw – the festival director.

Cultured or not – after half a dozen tracks and an explanation of John Smeaton’s “terrorist downing” tactics by way of an intro to the set of tunes bearing his name in honour, and Manran had convinced the audience to part with 79p and download the track Lath Math. A good day indeed – in fact a result, boys – a reel result!

Iain Thomson, Mull’s singing shepherd, and Marc Duff the Capercailie founding flautist, had a busy time with three concert spots in six hours, playing tunes from the new album Fields of Dreams to the appreciative audiences. Then Iain was back on Tuesday to record some songs for later showing on BBC Alba.

He was delighted to be able to play the title track of the album, supported by Donald Shaw on accordion. Donald wrote the tune ‘Calum’s Road’ which features at the end of the title track.

Ten million pounds were generated in 2010 by Celtic Connections for the City of Glasgow, and nearly twelve million if you include the rest of Scotland in the sums. This year numbers are holding up – bucking the trend elsewhere. As Europe’s greatest winter festival – it’s not just the music that warms the cockles of your heart.

© Campbell Cameron, 2011

Links

• Celtic Connections

ORKNEY came to Glasgow with a flourish in this warm-hearted, life-affirming show that had all the finest hallmarks of a community project deeply rooted in its northern archipelago. For more than two years Orkney song enthusiasts have been collecting, cataloguing and recording up to 1000 songs of the islands, many of them unknown until now, some barely kept alive by the oral tradition, and others brand new.

In the course of the first year-long series of SongShare concerts and workshops throughout the islands they encouraged folk to bring along and share their songs which, together with those unearthed in dusty archives, are now available for future generations of singers in the Big Orkney Song Collection in the Orkney Library and Archive. School workshops and contributions to the Orkney Folk and St Magnus Festivals were a major part of the second year of this Heritage Lottery funded Project which has revitalised singing in many of the islands.

Saltfishforty's Douglas Montgomery and Brian Cromarty

At the heart of the Project and this showcase concert were Aimee Leonard, Sarah Jane Gibbon and Emily Turtin who, as the Song Shop Trio, kicked off the night in splendid fashion with a clutch of songs whose titles alone – ‘The Greenland Whale Fishery’, ‘Worn, Wounded and Weary’, and ‘The Dreadful End of Marianna for Sorcery’ by Karine Polwart – let it be known that life on the islands was not quite as idyllic as some folk think.  Their harmonies were as well-honed and rich as the song seam they’d been mining for over two years, and they popped up in various roles throughout the night.

A key feature of the Project, and a real highlight of the show, however, was the encouragement it gave to contemporary song-writing, and nowhere was this more apparent than in the outstanding set by Frank Keenan and his group Login’s Well. His five self-penned numbers ranged from a modern take on time, the wind and the whaling (The Wind Blows Cold) to a love song for his daughters full of sound advice and hope (The Road), a tribute to Flora MacDonald (Steel on Steel), ‘The Cotter’s Lament’, about the lairds who profiteered from those who laboured collecting the kelp, to ‘The Curlew Song,’ that beautifully called the traveller back home to Orkney.

Steve Miller on flute and the aptly named Mark Shiner on clarsach and mandolin were the perfect foil for Keenan’s fine tenor voice and the whole band shone like the gold leaf that adorned the stucco on the ceiling of this beautifully restored old church.

Thora Linklater also sang a couple of her own songs, ‘Orkney Magic’, and ‘The Isles of Orkney’, a song about the Millennium which had some good lines in it: ‘what better place to be, winter dark always seems night, but spring will soon be coming in a new century’.

Brian Cromarty of Saltfishforty was similarily inspired by the Project to write a tune for the poem ‘The Cock o’ Byam’ and the song ‘A Ring on her Hand’ about the sad fate of the Maid of Norway. Along with Douglas Montgomery on an at times almost hoedown fiddle they had the crowd whooping and cheering with an instrumental ‘song without any words for which Douglas wrote the lyrics’. Accompanied by Aimee Leonard on bodhran and lovely harmonies, they even managed to turn the Ethel Findlater tale of murder, suicide and loss, ‘The Hamars o’ Syradale’, into an upbeat celebration of life. Theirs was a highly professional performance.

Life and love was epitomised for me, however, in  a trio of songs by the women’s choir Loomashun, accompanied on guitar by Alex Leonard: a jaunty version of ‘The Nobleman’s Wedding’, the bittersweet ‘Hoy’s Dark and Lofty Isle’, and another Findlater song, ‘Oh Dear Oh’, of cheerful longing for ‘a sailor with his tarry trousers on’.  There was a passion and joy about their delivery that is seldom found on stage – here was the real thing, the simple pleasure of throwing yourself into the singing of songs – it made for a very moving experience.

When the whole company assembled at the end for ‘The New Year’s Song’, the oldest preserved song in the Orkney Collection from the twelfth century AD, and sang ‘We Are All Queen Mary’s Men’ wishing all our yowes would lamb and our hens would lay, we felt blest indeed. An Orkney Cradle Song provided a fitting encore, with its mix of 19^th century lyrics by Robert Menzies Fergusson, a tune by Brian Cromarty and harmonies arranged by Aimee Leonard.

It was only left for the irrepressible (equally well named) Billy Jolly, who had cheered us all night with his pawky tales and ditties, whilst mikes and stands were reset behind him, to send us off into the night with the songs of Orkney ringing in our ears.

The funding for the Project may have run out but I’ve no doubt that a CD will be forthcoming and the work of collecting and singing the songs of Orkney will go on. On this showing it certainly deserves to, and we will be all the richer for it.

© Norman Bissell, 2011

Links

Celtic Connections

Orkney Singers

FÈIS ROIS has much to celebrate in this its Silver Jubilee year, and this gigantic gathering of players and Gaelic singers at Celtic Connections proudly showcased the tremendous range and depth of the work it has produced since it began in 1986.

Around 50 young people came to that first weekend, and since then thousands more throughout Scotland have learnt to play a galaxy of traditional instruments, to sing Gaelic songs, to step dance and to write poetry and songs. Many have gone on to successful careers in the music world and the Fèis movement has grown to an all-year round phenomenon which has extended far beyond its native Ross-shire and helped to reinvigorate all aspects of Gaelic culture.

Harpist Corrina Hewat owned up to participating in the first Féis Rois 25 years ago

Four of those who came to that first Fèis were part of the twenty-five strong ensemble who filled  the Old Fruitmarket stage, but they were keeping quiet about who they were and you couldn’t really tell. Only Musical Director Corinna Hewitt (who led from behind in a sparkling phalanx of five women on clarsachs) owned up and the array of prime young talent which she had assembled was reminiscent of her Unusual Suspects band with at various times 5 accordions, 9 fiddles, 3 guitars, 3 pipes and whistles, as well as piano and percussion on stage.

Their playing was spirited and at times rousing in a series of strathspeys, jigs, reels and a waltz, some of which were composed in honour of Fèis Ros founder Kate Martin by Blair Douglas, and of its former Chairman Neil MacKechnie by accordionist John Somerville. Their versatility was also impressive with, amongst others, Rachel Walker moving easily from clarsach to Gaelic song to accordion and Dougie Beck and Alex Urquhart-Taylor excelling on bagpipes, small pipes and whistles.

Guitarist Mike Bryan, who played with considerable flair and obvious enjoyment throughout, introduced the jaunty little tune ‘Rita Hunter of Aultbea’ by saying that as their Manager from 1991 to 2008 she had done an unbelievable amount to develop Fèis Ros and had been very inspirational to many musicians when starting out.

A female quintet that included Rachels Newton and Walker sang the Ross-shire Gaelic song ‘Màiri Lagach’ with real passion, and were later joined by Fèis Ros Ambassador Julie Fowlis for a lively puirt-a-beuil. It was a pity that she was so underused, contributing only one solo performance to the show; another song or two from her and some step dancing would have provided some elements of contrast to the highly proficient ensemble playing.

Fiona Dalgetty, Feis Rois manager and Julie Fowlis, Feis Rois's first ambassador

During the puirt-a-beuil, Aonghas MacNeacail could be seen prowling the long, dark corridor beside the stage like some bardic bear in his lair before emerging with a navy bunnet clamped to his mighty white thatch and read a poem in Gaelic, ‘Òran an Fhèis’ (Song of the Fèis), which came out of a creative writing class he had led at a Fèis in 2007.

The beautiful music by his niece Anna-Wendy Stevenson which accompanied him, and the line in the poem “anns gach oisein dhen sgire bha ceòl: in every corner of the parish there was music” must have gladdened the heart of Culture Minister Fiona Hyslop, who was present.

Another feature of the work of Fèis Ros which has wide political appeal is its work with young people, with additional support needs like those of St Clement’s School in Dingwall who performed in the first half. Led by James Ross on piano, Mairearad Green on fiddle, Alpha Munro on percussion and fiddle, and conducted by Matilda Brown of Drake Music, they played ‘High Five’ and ‘Spring March’, two pieces which emerged from improvisational workshops in their school. Matilda conducted the six teenagers in playing specially designed pitched instruments which were activated by their hand movements and outstretched arms wafting the air to create percussion and electronic sounds.

They were finely accompanied by some of the young musicians from the current Ceilidh Trail, who tour some 20 performances round the Highlands and Islands and Festivals in Ireland, England and Wales each summer over a four week period. Occasional sounds of birds and running water and a recording of a girl (from a special needs project in Dingwall) singing punctuated the music.  Unfortunately some of the performance was uneven, and in my view the Feis’s decision to include it was the wrong one. Nonetheless, this was clearly a very worthwhile project which must have done wonders for the youngsters’ self-esteem and their enjoyment and confidence in making music, but it did raise issues about whether it reached the standard required to showcase it at this level.

That said, there is no doubt that Fèis Rois is in good heart and that all those who have taken it from small beginnings to its current colossal stature in the world of traditional music have every right to feel proud of their achievement. Slàinte to its next 25 years!

© Norman Bissell, 2011

Links

• Fèis Rois
• Celtic Connections

HAZY Recollections started nearly a year ago as a bi-monthly get together in Glasgow to explore that musical space where folk, roots, jazz and indie overlap, or to give it another name, Nu-folk. Shaking off the constraints of traditional genre-ism, it’s a place where experimentation, innovation and traditional musicianship are equally celebrated.

Boston band Joy Kills Sorrow opened the show

It’s a very pleasant way to spend this second Celtic Connections Sunday afternoon, relaxing on sofas and stools in the smaller of the ABC’s venues, a lounge bar with a small stage attached. The aptly named Joy Kills Sorrow from Boston, Mass., open with a mesmerising set inspired as much by The Beatles as by the bluegrass they grew up playing. Boston was the destination of many Irish emigres, as bassist and chief tunesmith Bridget Kearney’s name hints at, and the band’s kinship with the current Scottish nu-folk scene is palpable.

The afternoon ends with the Staves, three sisters who share with Elton John, who also comes from Watford, the knack of crafting a catchy tune and singing it rather beautifully. They begin with an arresting a cappella tune accompanied by sharp fingersnaps and manage to grab the entire room’s attention and hold it.

But the heart of the afternoon, at least for this reviewer, is the set by Iain Morrison and Daibhidh Martin. Morrison, who cut his milk teeth in the piping tradition of the Western Isles before going on to indie success with Crash My Model Car, is a musician who could well claim to be one of the original pioneers of Scottish Nu-folk, were he at all interested in that kind of thing.

Martin, accompanied only by an imperturbable cellist and Morrison’s guitar, breathes lyrics in the inimitable accents of Lewis and stills the room. Morrison curls over the microphone and tears his songs straight out of his heart; it’s hard to keep a dry eye during “Angel Wings in the Closet”. The presence of most of the Hidden Lane Choir in the audience helps considerably when he asks for vocal help on a chorus. “You are the only one”, sings the audience. It’s true – there is only one Iain Morrison.

© Jennie Macfie, 2011

Links

• Celtic Connections

THERE ARE many great singers, many great songwriters, and a fair few great singer/songwriters. There aren’t, however, all that many singer/songwriters who start pulling in the superlatives while still in their teens (sorry, kids, Justin Bieber doesn’t count). There is a not insignificant weight of other people’s expectations resting on the slim shoulders of Carrbridge’s Rachel Sermanni, still only nineteen but widely hailed as the Next Big Thing. You’d never guess, though, as she steps onto the Strathclyde Suite stage.

Rachel Sermanni (picture by Paul Campbell)

Sermanni’s New Voices commission for Celtic Connections is Tramping, a title which encompasses the travels of both the body and the soul. For the occasion Martyn Hodge (percussion), Joe Rattray (double bass) and Siobhan Anderson (fiddle) join her regular ensemble of fiddlers Laura Wilkie and Louise Bichan, plus pianist Jennifer Austin to add further finesse and brio as required.

The songs include the self-explanatory ‘Waltz’, an ‘Ode to Bed’ (she is, of course, still a teenager), naturally followed by ‘Sleep’, somewhere we all travel alone (no bad thing, she says). She moves to the piano to play a tune inspired by the Grey Man of Ben Macdhui; it could be the soundtrack to a Tim Burton movie, with a ghostly chorus supplied by the white-clad Hidden Lane choir. It’s massive, and massively impressive, but “That was very fun” is Sermanni’s laconic verdict.

It’s only when she speaks – but not when she speaks verse – that her youth is apparent, though her artless approach is preferable to stage-school polish. ‘Fox’ was inspired by a possible previous incarnation, she confides, while ‘Coming Home’ deals with that time when all you want is the comfort and familarity of the place you know best. Everyone’s certainly been there.

She has a deft touch on both guitar and piano (apart from a fluffed capo change) but the voice is her major instrument. Comparisons with the unrestrained musical adventuring of Bjork, the humour and theatricality of Jacques Brel and the wistfulness of Nick Drake would not be out of place. Added to the songwriting talent, it’s a recipe for an interesting journey ahead.

Rachel Sermanni’s tramping through life will be worth watching.

© Jennie Macfie, 2011

Links

• Celtic Connections
• Rachel Sermanni

THE PROGRAMMERS may have thought that this was a companion concert to the evergreen Transatlantic Sessions, but anyone who has ever been to a concert during ‘Blazin’ in Beauly’ would have recognised it as basically ‘ Blazin’ in Buchanan Street’. A plethora of fine musicians on stage playing exhilarating music in a laidback kind of way with a liberal sprinkling of jokes of all colours, usually (but not always) from Allan Henderson.

Fiddle Alasdair Fraser and cellist Natalie Haas

One major difference was the inclusion of some of the finest living Gaelic singers. The first of these was Margaret Stewart, accompanied by the fine musicians of Daimh, augmented by Donald Shaw on harmonium. Her pure silver tones aided by precise diction and breath control, simply soared off the stage and captivated the Concert Hall despite the first song being even less cheerful than is usual for Gaelic song; lamenting those burned in a church during a clan feud. She was followed by Kathleen MacInnes and, as though that weren’t riches enough, Cathy Ann Macphee, followed by the peerless Julie Fowlis and her band. Ringing the changes with their equally fine tenors were Daimh’s Calum Alex Macmillan and Darren MacLean.

This was, as Jenna Reid announced, her first Scottish festival gig as Catriona Macdonald’s replacement in Blazin Fiddles. No nerves were displayed and none needed; like her predecessor she’s a terrific fiddle player, and the injection of new blood seems to have rejuvenated the rest of the band, judging by the energy with which they tore into the music. Whether well-loved favourites like The Fashion o’ the Lasses, or new – the Norwegian waltz set – all the sets were freshly polished and sparkling. Sharing introductions, and interjections, it was no matter that the audience was measured in thousands rather than a few hundred; they were as relaxed as they would have been in Beauly – though with slightly more decorum.

The second half opened with a brief display of classic, delicate perfection by Alastair Fraser and Natalie Haas. Throughout the evening, they and the rest of the deck of singers and musicians, including such talents as Gabe McVarish, Martin O’Neill, the Duncans Chisholm and Lyall, were shuffled and dealt onto the stage in a dizzying number of permutations, the way things happen at any session. Richly rewarding in every way, the Highland Sessions are likely to become a fixture – and a very hot ticket – in Celtic Connections.

© Jennie Macfie, 2011

Links

• Celtic Connections

IT’S ALWAYS fascinating watching seedlings grow from first green shoot to full grown plant. Something similar applies to musicians. As Professor Phil Cunningham reminded us, this was the third year that the RSAMD has showcased its students at Celtic Connections, so the rather nervous class of 2008/9 are now rather more confident third years.

Things got off to a flying start with the half dozen pipers of the current first and second years; a great credit to their tutors (see link below) who would have surely have been pleased to hear the professionally smooth transitions from tune to well-played tune, nicely set off by accompaniment from piano, guitar and flute. In many cases students were not introduced at all, and as a result it’s hard to give particular praise where it’s due, but the guitarist was later introduced as “Calum”. There was also some fine but sadly anonymous harp playing.

Singer Claire Hastings performs in last years' concert

The extra polish that each year gives was again evident, particularly in the fourth years who launched into their Big Pipe Set at a spanking pace. For reasons that were not explained, more than half of them were missing; and though the delivery was still powerful it lacked the potential to damage roofs and buildings which was there last year.

They were joined for a set of songs by Claire Hastings (whose voice, mentioned in both previous showcase reviews in Northings, has continued to blossom), Robyn Stapleton and Ainsley Hammill, both the latter also blessed with voices whose development it will be interesting to listen to.

The second half featured an exuberant set by a group of tutors and pupils from the Spanish school of traditional music in Vigo (a place most of us are probably more familar with in a Shooglenifty title) which blazed like a beacon in the Glasgow gloom. Even the casual listener cannot fail to notice that the music of Galicia shares much of its DNA with our own; hearing it is like meeting long lost cousins. The similarities – pipes, fiddles, pentatonic scale – and the differences – much more percussion, including castanets, of course, but also what looked like a pair of scallop shells – are equally fascinating. During the final sets they were joined first by all the pipers, then the rest of the RSAMD students, and finally by Professor Phil himself.

Congratulations to the organisers, RSAMD’s Josh Dickson and Finlay Napier, and very particularly to Jenn Butterworth for some delightful musical arrangements. However it was notable that the students were generally subdued compared to, say, Feis Ceilidh Trailers or Plockton pupils. As the Vigo contingent demonstrated, part of our shared musical DNA is ‘oomph’.

© Jennie Macfie, 2011

Links

• Celtic Connections
• RSAMD Tutors

CLAN Campbell’s perfomers for this Celtic Connections concert, Mod gold medallists all, were Kenna and her brother Seumas, Kenna’s daughters Wilma and Mary Ann Kennedy, and their cousin Maggie Macdonald; something of a testament to the enduring strength of the female line in Gaelic culture.

They began by unleashing their weapon of mass delectation – their unaccompanied voices – in “Cnoc an Cruive”, a hymn to a small hill on the way to their family home. A home “at the end of the road beyond the end of the road” which is also, said Mary Ann Kennedy, the centre of the known universe. Are there other cultures who have such a deep connection with their landscape that they write lovesongs to it? If so, they’re probably all here at Celtic Connections.

Gaelic singer Joy Dunlop

The Campbells’ voices, comfortably, naturally and seamlessly interwoven, were the centrepiece of the evening and the most moving sets were those where they were either unaccompanied or where the accompaniment was at its most restrained and minimal. The sound of voice, feet and hands – nothing more was needed to fill the full height and breadth of this lovely old venue. So the wonderful special guests, from Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas who seem incapable of playing a note that is not perfectly beautiful, to that very fine young piper from Argyll, Lorne MacDougall, were the icing on the cake.

Cheers and whoops accompanied Canadian stepdancer Nic Gareiss’ every appearance. He must have had a pair of wings, or at least a helium bodybelt, judging by the height, ease and lightness of his leaps, twists and turns, though Wilma Kennedy who joined him from time to time, was no slouch herself. Their dance to a Lughnasa puirt from Uist seemed to open a window in time to an age where every season was marked by its especial song and dance. Scotland’s cultural wealth is greatly enriched by families like the Campbells who are so generous in handing down their lovingly curated heirlooms. A book of their will be launched in the summer

Earlier, willowy 2010 Mod gold medallist Joy Dunlop had set the scene singing waulking songs, puirt, strathspeys and reels. A natural performer, she was accompanied by a trio (which included Breabach’s Patsy Reid) who produced some unusual and interesting musical underpinnings to create a fine setting for the lovely richness of her voice’s lower register.

© Jennie Macfie, 2011

Links

• Celtic Connections

IT’S OFFICIAL. Andy M Stewart still has what it takes. On the strength of this virtuoso performance at a packed Tron Theatre, the former Silly Wizard frontman must be regarded as one of Scotland’s finest singer-songwriters in the folk tradition, and a very funny guy to boot.

Gerry O'Beirne and Andy M Stewart (photo - Irene Young)

Not literally you understand, as he might have joked in one of the many hilarious intros and outros that placed his keen, dry wit somewhere between Arnold Brown and Chic Murray, whose crack about taking whisky with your water he recalled with evident approval.

When he broke a guitar string early on his quip was “There’s the profit on the gig gone”, and you felt from this and a remark that he was carrying on the family tradition of not making any money out of singing that he’s finding it hard to understand (as we did by the end of the night) why he hasn’t been heard much more often at Celtic Connections or elsewhere lately.

For he’s still got the voice for beautiful ballads like The Loch Tay Boat Song and The Valley of Strathmore, which expressed a love of his native Perthshire and had us all singing along. His poignant Where Are You Tonight, I Wonder, about regrets of lost love and the questions you shouldn’t ask yourself, was also a high point.

But this was a sterling, upbeat performance from start to finish with his driving, classic The Queen of Argyll and the ‘pretty raunchy for its day’ Take Her In Your Arms instilling that all important feel-good factor that’s fairly rare amongst folk performances these days.

An even rarer breed, indeed almost an endangered species, is the art of singing comic songs and the telling of hilarious tales between them. Here, particularly, Stewart showed he still has the master’s touch with The Errant Apprentice and The Rambling Rover, his story of American ladies who asked him about the line in Gallant Murray where they put the white rose in their bottoms (instead of bonnets), and his relief that the happy ending to the Irish ballad Matt Hyland meant he didn’t have to psyche himself down for half an hour before the show reading about the Clearances and perusing his old bank statements.

Gerry O’Beirne, who accompanied him throughout, also provided a masterclass in guitar accompaniment and song arranging with his fingerpicking runs reminiscent of Bert Jansch and his subtle, delicate playing. His own set featured his sweet elegy for the great whistle player Michael Russell, The Shades of Gloria, an excellent blues-talking ukulele in The Glass Boat, and The Holy Ground, his grand song about the Irish who fought in the Mexican War of Independence with lines like “And the wilderness took my breath away” and “where the sage brush grows and the desert wind is blowing free” that put to shame the lacklustre effort in that regard of Ry Cooder and the Chieftains earlier in the week.

Shona Donaldson, who kicked off the night along with Innes Watson on guitar, also chose well in the ever popular openers Green Grow The Laurels and The Lakes of Ponchartrain, and had us joining in the chorus of Slip Jigs and Reels about the dancing ladies’ man Billy the Kid. She has a fine Scots voice in the rich North East tradition of Jeannie Robertson and Jock Duncan, and used it to good effect on her own composition Bogie’s Banks and Braes and Matt McGinn’s The Rolling Hills O’ the Borders.

Her fiddle set was less effective, and probably only there to break up the ballads because, as she told us, she didn’t have the breath for faster numbers since she was expecting. Her current singer residency with the enterprising Deveron Arts in her native Huntly promises well for the writing of more Scots songs based on the Greig-Duncan Collection, and she is very much a voice for the future. Innes Watson, who kept popping up in lots of places at this year’s Festival, was in uncharacteristically subdued mood and could have done with some of Gerry O’Beirne’s flair on guitar.

However, the biggest mystery of the night was why there have been no Andy M Stewart CDs recorded since Donegal Rain in 1997, and only his Songbook was on sale after the show. He remains highly popular in the States and is something of a folk deity in Germany, but his undiminished talents deserve much greater exposure and appreciation at home. It would be great to see this marvellous Stewart and O’Beirne partnership touring the Highlands and Islands one day soon.

© Norman Bissell, 2010

Links

• Andy M Stewart
• Shona Donaldson
• Celtic Connections

PART OF the fun of Celtic Connections is spotting the stars of tomorrow. The feeling of anticipation and excitement at the 2010 BBC awards is not unlike standing round the saddling enclosure before the Derby.

Daniel Thorpe (© BBC Scotland)

The audience in the intimidatingly imposing Grand Hall includes new Minister for Culture Fiona Hyslop, some stellar names in traditional music, sundry reviewers, promoters from around the world, and the Head of Radio Scotland, who are broadcasting the whole show – live. For the young runners backstage, waiting to be introduced by Mary Ann Kennedy, the pressure is definitely on.

Not that Kyle Warren, who was first of the six on stage, showed it. A veteran of the estimable Scottish Youth Pipe Band and a relaxed, engaging stage presence, his choice of tunes included masters like Fred Morrison and Allan Macdonald of Glenuig. The sustained notes in the latter’s beautiful, poignant ‘We’re a Case, the Bunch of Us’ are a test of piping skill which Warren passed with flying colours.

A hard act to follow, unfortunately for Mairi Chaimbeul from Skye. Despite lovely strong harp playing and a confident choice of tunes rooted in widely different cultures, her voice betrayed the weight of pressure on her 16-year old shoulders.

Accordionist Paddy Callaghan from Glasgow, on the other hand, appeared completely comfortable with both the audience and accompanists Adam Brown and Julia Reid as he delivered a rousing set. A long successful career seems certain.

Hannah Phillips looked every inch the clarsach diva, corsaged in white with silver tights which sparkled as brightly as her playing. Only the last tune, which felt somewhat hurried, let her down. Lorne MacDougall was last on, another very likeable piper whose gracenotes were jawdroppingly fabulous, but not quite enough to see off Daniel Thorpe.

Thorpe’s apprentice piece of fiddle styles ranged widely from a Grappelli-esque ‘Nana’s Walkabout'; Cape Breton and Jonny Hardie through that most eldritch of Riddell tunes, ‘Lament for King George V'; ending in high style with some Fraser Fifield, Shooglenifty and the Earl of Craufurd. The judges had an unenviable task, but the eventual winner, Daniel Thorpe, has potential stretching far beyond Scottish traditional music.

He and MacDougall had been in even more impressive form the previous day in a concert featuring the TMSA Young Trad musicians of 2009, all of them names we will be hearing from for a long time to come. They were preceded by current students at Plockton High School who opened with a bravura pipe trio.

These self-confident youngsters then demonstrated superb instrumental and vocal skills, managed the hitherto impossible feat of making ‘Auld Lang Syne’ sound fresh and exciting, and are a credit to all their tutors, including Marc Duff and Andy Thorburn.

Despite starting at 1pm in the Strathclyde Suite, this concert had all the excitement and energy of a major evening event – a real highlight of Celtic Connections for many of the promoters and professional musicians in the audience.

The Future of Our Past the previous Saturday showcased students at the RSAMD with a strong showing on the vocal front, particularly third year Claire Hastings who made Richard Thompson’s ‘Vincent Black Lightning 1952′ entirely her own.

The ebullient third years apart, the RSAMD students lacked some of the confidence and polish of their guests, Catriona Macdonald’s fiddle group from the renowned Newcastle traditional music course.

Entirely at home on stage, this multinational group delivered beautifully crisp ensemble playing. Bouquets all round, especially to Chloe Merriott, an elegant cellist who is also a dab hand – or should that be foot? – at clog dancing.

© Jennie Macfie, 2010

Links

• Young Trad Musician Award
• Celtic Connections
• Jennie Macfie

IF THERE’S one trio to keep your eye on this year it’s Mhairi Hall’s. The Aveimore-born pianist has, for what seems like eons, been content carving out a career as an accompanist for others, tinkling the ivories for the likes of Lauren McColl and Shona Mooney amongst others. Now, though, she’s stepping out on her own, finally taking the plunge to front her own outfit. And my, has it been worth the wait.

Mhairi Hall Trio (photo -Allan Law)

The modest Hall put on an exemplary performance here, showcasing a plethora of highly inventive, innovative tunes inspired by the many people and places centered around the mountains of the Cairngorms.

From ‘The Source’ (which features one of the finest aural representations of what falling rain sounds like) and the self-explanatory ‘Strathspeys From Strathspey’ (groove-laden tunes in an easy-to-count 4/4 time signature), to the jaunty rhythms of ‘A Good Winter’ (where notes hang in the air like snowdrops from a tree) – soon it will be hard to think of the Cairngorms, or indeed Strathspey, without hearing these tunes repeat in your head.

She can’t do it all on her own, though, so credit must also go to drummer Fraser Stone (also from Strathspey) and acoustic guitarist, Ullapool-bred Mike Bryan, who, despite being session musicians themselves, have taken on Hall’s tunes as if they were their own.

Indeed, between Stone’s polyrhythmic percussive skills and Bryan’s subtle-yet-effective strumming patterns, Hall is even given ample opportunity to show off some fine mazy jazz runs, conjuring up flashes of Steely Dan-esque brilliance. However, it’s the delicately handled reworkings of tunes from a hundred years ago or more that made up the majority of this short, compelling set.

A giant screen behind the back of the band projected a slide-show of images from the Cairngorms, complimenting the music to great visual effect. Close your eyes, though, and you could just as well imagine yourself wandering up Spey Valley on some shiny Spring morning, or witnessing a sunset from a Badenoch hill.

Visual aids or not, this was a great start to what one hopes will be a fruitful year for Hall. Having released her debut album, Cairngorm, just a few short months ago – produced, incidentally, by Planxty and Bothy Band alumni, Dónal Lunny – if there’s any justice, Hall and her two fine lads will go on to entertain and inspire anyone who comes under their fine spell. We wish them well.

© Barry Gordon, 2010

Links

• Mhairi Hall
• Celtic Connections
• Barry Gordon

Mike Vass

THERE’S much to like about Celtic Connections. For most music-lovers, it means staving off the January Blues until at least February. The popular Glasgow winter festival has its critics, too – ever-increasing ticket prices, a poor excuse for a festival club, and some bands whose Celtic links are dubious at best. Nevertheless, if there’s one thing worth dragging yourself out of your bed for on a Sunday, it’s the fantastic New Voices series.

With a strict 1pm start, sadly, for debutant Mike Vass, it meant only a dedicated glut of followers bothered to show up (filling just about half the hall). Indeed, about half of those who would normally frequent the Strathclyde Suite for this event were probably still nursing hangovers or just awakening from their slumber.

Which is a shame, because Mike Vass’s hour-long commissioned piece deserves an audience. The Malinky fiddler might not exactly be a ‘New Voice’ either; still, it’s (probably) the first time the Nairn musician has ever had total control in composing and leading a large ensemble of musicians.

“We got together for the first time last Friday,” Vass half-apologised. It certainly didn’t sound like it as the band whistled into action with ’42 Beach Avenue': a 15-minute piece that was delivered with all the confidence of a group who sounded like they spent the last five years living in the same house together.

With tunes inspired by films, New York bartenders, and a book that Mike discovered in an Oxfam bookshop about a Holocaust survivor, this was more like a straight-ahead gig than some cutting-edge, innovative showcase. No challenging leaps of instrumental daring nor any pretentious exploration of extraordinary themes – just good tunes played with precision, subtlety and attention to detail.

‘Man’s Search For Meaning’ was a dreich but always interesting segment inspired by the Jewish psychiatrist mentioned earlier, who survived and later wrote about the Nazis’ Final Solution. It’s not quite the sort of tune you’d want to listen to in a dark room all alone; nevertheless Vass’s mournful and utterly compelling piece was uplifted, courtesy of Calum MacCrimmon’s highland bagpipes, which (despite being slightly out of tune) gave the work a colourful, if eerie twist.

Later on, some triple unison fiddle playing alongside Anna Massie (also on guitar and funky banjo) and Megan Henderson (who doubled on accordion), plus a double-bass riff from James Lindsay – that, dare I say, sounded like a White Stripes tune – pricked up the ears to fine effect.

Complemented by Mike’s twin sister Ali’s dextrous piano playing, it was nice to see fellow Malinky cohort Dave Wood showing off his bouzouki playing as well as his nice tie, alongside Stevie Fyvie’s live drums and percussive tappings.

Then, just as everyone was getting into the swing of things, it all came to a sudden halt. The band returned for a deserved encore; but their apparent lack of rehearsal time meant they had no option but to return to a section from a previously-played piece. However, the benefit of that was ensuring the tidy wee segment stuck firmly in the minds of the audience as they headed for the exits.

At the end of the day – or should that be afternoon? – for me Mike Vass’s New Voices slot was, arguably, the most direct and honest since the idea was first conceived. That said, while this outing may have succeeded only in giving Vass the rare opportunity to hear his music played by other musicians within such comfy confines, unlike those who have used their New Voices commission as an opportunity to try and stretch the creative bar that little bit too far, it’s to his credit that what Vass did here totally reflects him, and his nimble fiddle playing: nice, charming, uncomplicated and dedicated.

© Barry Gordon, 2010

Links

• Celtic Connections
• Mike Vass
• Barry Gordon

Catriona MacDonald (photo - Leila Angus)

WHILE the adage “If you’re good enough, you’re old enough” is more commonly associated with football, the same could be said about folk music – such is the amount of young, talented folk musicians on the scene today. For every Innes Watson (Treacherous Orchestra) and Rachel Newton (The Shee), there is a Jeana Leslie, Jenna Reid or Dave Wood (Malinky), too.

All of the aforesaid musicians studied traditional music at the RSAMD (in Glasgow) and Newcastle University, and numerous others like them have also gone on to forge a career within what is an extraordinarily difficult profession to make a living from.

So, with these two institutions responsible for churning out such an abundance of talent, it was only fair (and not before time) that the two came together to showcase today’s folk stars of tomorrow.

First up, then – and introduced by Phil Cunningham – the RSAMD’s first year Scottish Traditional Music group were given the task of opening the two-hour spectacle. Loaded up with the full gamut of folk instruments (fiddles, accordions, harps, pipes, etc.), the youngsters were clearly – though only naturally – nervous.

However, if there were any blips, trips or missed cues during their 20-minute blast of Gaelic songs and Strathspeys, then it wasn’t apparent. An arrangement of Silly Wizard’s ‘Lover’s Heart’ was an early highlight, but if that wasn’t impressive enough, you only had to look toward the second year’s offering.

Having heard several stunning voices echo over the Strathclyde Suite during their wee stint, it came to everyone’s surprise to learn that despite the strength of singing involved, none of the second-year students study singing as their lead subject. If that truly is the case, Karine Polwart and Emily Smith might be wise to start looking over their shoulder.

Before the third and fourth year students took to the floor, though, it was time to take a look at what tutor Catriona MacDonald had prepared for us with her Geordie bunch. Sporting 14 fiddles onstage, plus double bass, mandolin and a cellist who also dabbles in a spot of nifty clog-dancing, the wide variety of nationalities amongst the group ensured a wider variety of styles, including Swedish polskas. Dark, yet slickly executed, it is to MacDonald’s credit that she has inherited and honed such a tightly-knit unit.

Back to Glasgow, then, and the fourth year students, who, stripped back to just a seven-piece, were forced to recruit former RSAMD graduate, Findlay Napier, on guitar to provide accompaniment aboard a stage lop-sided with pipers. They didn’t look the happiest bunch, nor did they sound incredibly in-tune, either. Then again, they did have to play – no pun intended – second fiddle to the third years, whose bossy attitude proved they also have a bit of rock and roll in them, too.

Regimented though relaxed, tight but loose when it mattered, they brought things to a fitting end before everyone – and I mean everyone – returned to the stage for some bombastic, big-band show-stoppers that, to my eyes and ears anyway, echoed a junior version of The Unusual Suspects.

Overall, then? A high-quality showcase of talent full of outstanding instrumental flair and cutting-edge arrangements. Granted, it would have been nice to have heard more self-penned numbers in the sets – it should also be mentioned that it is a little rude to announce the sets and not tell us who wrote the music, or where it came from – but that’s just nit-picking.

And while it’s fair to say that a large amount of the audience was made up from proud family and friends, with the RSAMD and Newcastle University turning out talent like this year after year, it won’t be too long before these traditional music students start packing the place out off their own backs.

© Barry Gordon, 2010

Links

• Celtic Connections
• RSAMD
• Newcastle University
• Barry Gordon

Catriona Watt

IT’S NOT always the all-singing, all-dancing large scale events at Celtic Connections that capture the imaginations – and wallets – of festival-goers. Sometimes the smaller, more intimate venues can throw up gems of culture which on the whole may well fit the title of a ‘Celtic’ connection better than most of the big affairs.

This is nowhere more true than at the CCA on Sauchiehall Street, which was the venue for the series of three Scottish and Irish Gaelic events, coming under the banner of ‘Cèol is Craic’- music and chat – the Glasgow-based organisation which exists to promote the Gaelic cultural calendar in the city.

The Friday and Saturday events were jointly hosted by the Colm Cille organisation, and showcased new and more established artists with a variety of traditional and more contemporary styles. Friday saw established singer Rachel Walker launch her new CD Air Chall, a mix of traditional and more contemporary Gaelic and English songs.

She was preceded by a lengthy set of Irish ‘seann nos’ (old style) singing from Lorcan Mac Mathuna, with occasional support from whistles and pipes. We might have appreciated this fine style (and fine voice) of traditional singing had we been given more succinct – and distinct – introductions.

Glasgow University’s Gaelic Language Development officer, Fiona Dunn, delivered a set of new arrangements of well-known Gaelic songs, supported by Hamish Napier on keys and James Lindsey on bass. Sparsely arranged, ‘Nochd gun Chadal’ (Night without Sleep), a Skye song beloved of Mod music committees, was particularly effective, and a world away from the competition platform style.

Irish born, but Edinburgh adoptee – and recent Burnsong winner – Nuala Kennedy and her band also delivered fresh and upbeat sets, and left the audience wanting more – and no doubt heading for one of the two Celtic Connections Festival Clubs.

Saturday’s set began with more Irish seann nos – this time from Noleen Ni Cholla, accompanied by fellow countryman Brian Ó hEadhra for some of her songs. Brian himself then delivered his own set of engaging and audience-interactive songs, both traditional and self penned, inviting Noleen to duet on several items. Interesting that Brian, now living in Inverness, admitted that he now finds himself almost more at home writing and singing in Scots Gaelic as opposed to his more native Gaelige.

Catriona Watt, the Young Trad Musician of the Year in 2007, showcased some of the well-known songs from her recent album Cadal Chuain, together with her band of Fiona Macaskill, Gillian Chalmers and Lauren Tait. This rather lengthy evening concluded with a set exhibiting the multi-faceted musicianship of Griogair Labhraidh.

A dynamic and charismatic performer, Griogair possesses a voice of no great classical beauty but with an immense ability to communicate passion and story to the audience, Gaelic speakers and non-speakers alike.

The diverse variety of styles and performers was testament to the policy of Cèol is Craic to showcase the talents of singers and bands who might not perhaps get a platform at other Celtic Connections gigs.

The CCA is a good venue for such events, although these evenings were marred for many by the layout of the stage area, which effectively meant that at least one-third of the audience could see nothing of the performers, blocked as they were by the PA stacks.

This was an intimate programme of genuine, pleasant sets, largely presenting familiar material, celebrating the true ‘Celtic’ connections of Celtic Connections.

© Fiona MacKenzie, 2010

Links

• Ceol’s Craic
• Celtic Connections
• Fiona MacKenzie

Bethany and Jenna Reid

THE SHETLAND BUS is the nickname given to the fishing boat service which sailed the heavy seas between Shetland and Norway during the Second World War, ferrying supplies and reinforcements to the Resistance in Nazi-occupied Norway, and spiriting refugees back to Shetland.

It’s not a journey to undertake lightly even today, but then, sailing at night without lights, evading German submarines, destroyers and aircraft, the voyage was hazardous to a degree unimaginable to us, cushioned as we are by decades of peace.

All credit, then, to Shetland sisters Jenna and Bethany Reid, for devising a programme of music and narration to commemorate these heroic, perilous missions, in particular the exploits of Norwegian commando Jan Baalsrud MBE, only survivor of the Braatsholm, which was sunk in March 1943.

Baalsrud managed to swim to shore, and evade capture, dodging bullets despite having had half a big toe severed and consequently trailing blood in the snow. All the other survivors were either tortured to death or shot.

Embarking an epic journey lasting over two months, he continued to evade capture with the aid of the Resistance and his own stubborn nature, surviving an avalanche and three weeks in a snowhole (where he amputated nine frostbitten toes with a penknife to prevent gangrene), finally making it to safety in Sweden thanks to reindeer herders. He died in 1988, aged 71, a national hero of Norway.

This compelling story was told vividly and appropriately in the Shetland dialect, which sits somewhere between Scots and Old Norse, interspersed with tunes crystallising key moments in Baalsrud’s odyssey. Urgent, pounding heartbeats on percussion, augmented by pizzicato bass and the panting breath of the flute evoked perfectly the terror that he must have felt as he started running for his life.

The indomitable people of fjord and tundra were characterised by a harmonium-like drone from the bowed bass, while a fiddle tune of quite heartbreaking poignancy played to perfection by Jenna Reid accompanied his dazed recovery from the avalanche.

The inventive, sympathetic soundscaping by all the musicians is to be commended, especially percussionist Iain Sandilands’s creations – the white noise of hissing snow on the snare drum, bowing the vibraphone to avoid the sharpness of the cymbals.

A triumphantly joyous closing tune demonstrated that it was, however, very much a group effort which had brought into being this inspiring evening. The suite will be repeated soon in Shetland, but deserves to tour much more widely.

© Jennie Macfie, 2010

Links

• The Shetland Bus
• Celtic Connections
• Jennie Macfie

Colin MacIntyre (Photo - Paul Kirsop)

IS THERE another arts centre in Scotland which could muster a night of such quality and range of contemporary music as The An Tobar Sessions? I doubt it, but it’s no accident that An Tobar in Tobermory, the only arts centre in Argyll, could do so because in recent years all three bands on stage were commissioned to produce new work by its director, Gordon Maclean.

It’s not just the Wombles, Balamory, whisky and wildlife watching that have put Tobermory on the map, as the kilted presenter of the show, ‘Uncle Eric’ MacIntyre, reminded us, but the ability of An Tobar to attract and inspire artists, both visual and musical, of the highest calibre.

The innovative verve of the much-loved Martyn Bennett, who mixed much of his genre-crossing music in a garret of this former primary school, lives on in the jazz composition Shops by the Dave Milligan Trio, who were first up here; the ground-breaking An Tobar Suite of the Aidan O’Rourke Band who followed them; and the free-flowing melodies of Colin MacIntyre and his band, who finished the night.

The Dave Milligan commission centred around Tobermory’s shops, not just as subject and venue for the finished work, but as an eclectic source of found sounds which became integral to it. Duncan’s (outdoor clothes shop) featured a finely controlled drum solo by Tom Bancroft, whose driving beats at times threatened to overpower Dave’s understated piano and Tom Lyne’s coaxing and caressing double bass playing, but the balance was much better in If You Need a Painting in an Emergency that was so sweet you could almost see the paintings on the local artist’s gallery walls.

The inherent humour in the situation of a shop-inspired jazz trio performing in incongruous places like Tackle and Books and Catriona’s (Unisex Hairdressing Salon) came across in the interviews and found sounds that opened both numbers. Refrains like “What’s the strangest things you sell? Bloodworms” and “Isn’t there some awkwardness of men working in a beauty salon? Of course there is”, were accompanied by everything from bird cheeps to noisy hairdryers and in Brown’s Hardware Store we were conducted by Bancroft’s drumsticks in shouting out its name throughout the piece.

Looking like a saner version of Bill Bailey with hair, Dave Milligan pointed up the surreal classification of matter into tackle and books, and the irony of playing jazz to ladies sitting under hairdryers who were engrossed in their magazines. His seemingly effortless piano mastery with Bancroft on bodhran on Closing, which was composed by Tom Lyne, beautifully finished the set with the kind of weary rumination on the day that had gone of which Arkwright in Open All Hours would have been proud.

Aidan O’Rourke’s An Tobar Suite also featured strong jazz influences in the sax playing of Phil Bancroft and backing tracks by his Lau buddy Martin Green “on accordion and other strange noises” in the title track, and in One for Martyn and Sea, which was part-written on the Mull ferry.

In each case the traditional ear-worm tune first set out by Aidan on fiddle, Catriona McKay on harp and Martin O’Neill on bodhran and percussion was taken deep into new territory somewhere between the Balkans and Chicago, leapt around in these foreign parts, and returned all the more powerfully for having made the journey.

It’s always fascinating to watch this most energetic of fiddlers ducking and reeling as harp and fiddle, fiddle and sax played off each other intimately, while Martin Green sat Buddha-like holding on to extended chords. By turns lyrical and dark, plaintive and evocative, together they created a wonderful kaleidoscope of sounds and tempos light years ahead of your familiar medley of jigs and reels.

There’s little doubt that with An Tobar Aidan O’Rourke has pulled off the elusive feat of crossing genres and breaking new ground, and that it was the commissioning of the Suite by Gordon Maclean to mark the Centre’s 10th anniversary that gave him the opportunity to do so. All the more surprising, then, to be told that this was the first time it had been performed in over two years, and one must hope that the band’s forthcoming April-May tour with the Dave Milligan Trio will feature it in its entirety.

Tobermory’s own Colin MacIntyre, aka Mull Historical Society, and his tight young acoustic band brought yet another dimension to the An Tobar experience with his finely crafted songs and hip persona. With the rangy Gordon Maclean on double bass and his son Sorren on lead guitar and excellent harmonies, Seonaid Aitken on fiddle and Danny Grant on drums, it had all the feel of a real Mull house band who knew each other well, and how to play to their strengths.

Interspersed with some of his hits like the anthemic You’re a Star, the songs came mainly from the Island album which MacIntyre composed and recorded at An Tobar in his former school classroom with the same floorboards “regularly stained by one of my classmates”, and produced it in the head teacher’s wee room upstairs where Martyn Bennett mixed his music.

He introduced You’re a Star with a reading of his “pretty pathetic” school report card made up mostly of Cs in which he “spends too much time showing off to others” and rightly tossed it away before doing just that.

Best in my book were Cape Wrath, No Ordinary Queen (about Eliza, the girl every island has who never leaves it) and Stay Something (inspired on Calgary Beach) where he integrated intriguing features of land- and sea-scapes into his wistful love songs. Even more personal and poignant was his solo rendition of Samuel Dempster R.I.P about his Granny Tait’s loved one, whose child she carried as she waved him off to World War One and who never came back.

This encore and the final one, Ned’s Song (Brother), with all three bands on stage building the night to a rousing climax, wouldn’t have seen the light of day had it been up to some over-zealous Concert Hall jannie who put the lights up soon after the last set number, The Mull Historical Society, but true to form Gordon Maclean saved the day by coming out to tell us they had all these great musicians backstage ready to play some more for us.

Every arts centre needs someone with the vision and passion of Gordon to make things happen and it’s great that not only has all this terrific music come out of An Tobar but that it’ll be touring Scotland and elsewhere in the months to come. Definitely not to be missed.

© Norman Bissell, 2010

Links

• An Tobar
• Celtic Connections

Jarlath Henderson and Ross Ainslie

Strathclyde Suite, Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, 17 January 2010

IT IS THREE years since the Gordon Duncan Memorial Trust began raising funds to commemorate the life of a piper ranked as one of Scotland’s most innovative musicians and composers in recent times. Tunes for Gordon is the title of their annual concert held in Perth, for which new tunes are commissioned; this concert showcased the classes of 2008 and 2009, performed by members of the Treacherous Orchestra and Mairearead Green.

Mairearead’s 2008 compositions, ‘Baby Morgan’, ‘Expecting’, and ‘A House’ were first on the programme, as she was due on stage elsewhere with The Poozies almost before the last typically lyric, understated accordion note faded. John Somerville’s dramatic and poignant ‘Otherland’, showcasing both players’ formidable accordion skills, continues to impress, as do Jarlath Henderson’s trio of tunes.

Innes Watson opened for the Class of 2009, batting his complex, newly soundscaped ‘Quest of the Gentlemen of Folk Fortune’, which voyages into the open sea where traditional music meets jazz and modern classical. Edgy, brave, and very interesting.

Savage breasts were soothed by some lovely works for four flutes (composer Kevin O’Neill, Bo Jingham, Ross Ainslie and Ali Hutton), accompanied by guitar and percussionist, ending on a decidedly Latin note. Duncan Lyall’s tune for Ainslie and Hutton, ‘The Eigg Men’ has already become a rousing Treacherous Orchestra staple, heavy on the pipes and all the better for it.

The eye-opener of the evening was the closing work, Adam Sutherland’s magnificent, challenging wall of sound with Arabic overtones, full of contrast, textures, extraordinary chords and time signatures. It demands repeated listening.

Support band Tyskie, last year’s Danny Kyle Awardwinners, had earlier played their equally innovative take on Sutherland’s ‘The Pig’, despite having been warned off it by the composer himself as too difficult for the clarsach. Heather Downie’s skills proved equal to the challenge, in a set which marked this very talented young trio as ones to watch.

© Jennie Macfie, 2010

Links

• Gordon Duncan Memorial Trust
• Celtic Connections
• Jennie Macfie

AFTER Galician piper Carlos Núñez’s exploration of his own Celtic connections with Brazil two nights earlier, Chris Stout’s Brazilian Theory saw the Shetland fiddle ace teaming up with three musicians from São Paulo, plus four from these shores, in the superbly finished version of a show presented as a work-in-progress on a Scottish tour last spring.

Chris Stout

Where Núñez highlighted the centuries-old historical influence of Galician tradition on Brazilian music, Stout’s project carved out a whole new swathe of common ground, building on the interest in Latin music that he first developed working with Salsa Celtica, and then through the British Council-sponsored Orquestra Scotland-Brasil initiative in 2003.

It was the latter that first introduced him to his three Brazilian collaborators – Thomas Rohrer on rabeca, a flat-bodied rustic fiddle, and soprano sax; Carlinhos Antunes on guitars and cuatro, and Rui Barrosi on double bass; harpist Catriona McKay, guitarist Ian Stephenson, double bassist Neil Harland and Martin O’Neill on bodhran completed the line-up.

Stout and the Brazilians, in particular, had been hard at it right from the start of the festival last week, playing its first morning schools gig before guesting with the True North Orchestra not just at Thursday’s opening concert, but their second performance in Perth on Saturday.

In between all that, they’d also clearly been putting in some serious rehearsal time, diligence which shone through in a marvellously polished, assured, tautly cohesive yet vibrantly expansive performance, which took in not only Shetland and Brazilian material but also forays into Balkan, Nordic and Middle Eastern territory, plus a liberal element of adventurous jazzy improvisation.

As samba, bolero and cha-cha met jigs, reels and slow airs, doubly anchored by the radiant conjunction of Stout’s fiddle with Rohrer’s rabeca or sax, and McKay’s dazzling jousts with Antunes’s masterly picking and riffing, this was music where you really couldn’t see the joins, just a sumptuously layered, restlessly shifting panoply of contrasting yet complementary colours, textures and rhythms.

It’s been a few years now since Celtic Connections welcomed the Danish fiddler Harald Haugaard, perhaps the smiliest man in folk music, and an audience favourite at several past festivals in his duo with singer-guitarist Morten Alfred Høirup. He was back this time with his wife, the singer and fellow fiddler Helene Blum, plus a classy backing trio comprising Rasmus Zeeberg on guitar/mandolin, cellist Kirstine Elise Pedersen, and percussionist Sune Rahbek.

In a set that interwove Danish and Celtic, traditional and contemporary material, it was a joy as ever to get reacquainted with Haugaard’s lightly-worn virtuosity, his playing – like his tunes – by turns impishly effervescent and majestically beautiful, matching all-out gusto with chamber-classical grace.

Blum’s limpid, luminous, honeyed yet piquant singing was an equal delight, while the pair of them were jointly responsible for the biggest “Aaww” moment of the festival so far, when he introduced and she sang a diddling-based number he’d written for her, “when I was so in love, I couldn’t speak a word” – a tune that sublimely captured just that unique quality of jubilation.

© Sue Wilson, 2010

Links

• Celtic Connections

Iain Morrison ensemble (photo - Fergus Feggans)

IAIN MORRISON, Stornoway-born singer/songwriter and guitarist of Glasgow indie band Crash My Model Car, has an alter ego as a piper. Taught by his pipe major father at the age of eleven using canntaireachd (the ancient Gaelic verbal notation of music, a subtler equivalent of solfège but with additional grace note functions), it is perhaps not surprising that in his Celtic Connections commission he has chosen to unite the various strands of his musical life, creating indie pop songs based on the melodies of ancient piobaireachd.

None more ancient, of course, than ‘Mackintosh’s Lament/Cumha Mhic an-Toisich’, the main theme of which was famously taken by Dvorak for his New World Symphony after he heard it sung as a spiritual by slaves in the United States. Thought to be based originally on an ancient keening song, sung by mourners at a funeral, in the hands of Morrison and his band it comes roaring off the stage in the raw, power–punk style of the Velvet Underground. and is one of the highlights of the evening.

Morrison’s music combines the anger of early U2, the poignancy of REM and the plangent loss and longing that is the essence of Gaelic song. ‘Ghost on the Water’ is about scarce fishing, the ache of hunger that was an everpresent threat in the past vividly evoked by “What’s under these waves, I need to feed my family”, lines sung with passionate intensity by Morrison in English, while guest Rona Lightfoot, that great singer and piper from South Uist, recites a Gaelic translation.

Introducing his other guest, his father, Pipe Major Iain M Morrison, the younger Morrison is overcome with emotion, stumbling over the words till he settles on ‘the old man’. “That’s what I always call him, anyway”, he explains, wiping sweat, or maybe a tear, away with his sleeve – after all, the concert started at 1pm and he has been up since the unconscionably (for a musician) early hour of 7am.

Father and son duets follow, weaving voices and pipes together with practised, sympathetic ease. Backed by a skilful ensemble – Seamus O’Donnell, Marc Duff, Iain Hutchison and Graham Neilson – Morrison mostly plays guitar but occasionally straps on the bellows and lifts up the smallpipes, choosing them to end the programme on a flamboyant, upwardly bent note.

© Jennie Macfie, 2010

Links

• Iain Morrison
• Celtic Connections
• Jennie Macfie

Blair Douglas

UNDER the exquisite white and gold plasterwork, Corinthian orders and elegant brass chandeliers of St Andrews in the Square, a breath of the Gaeltachd blew into Glasgow and magically transported the entire church, Tardis-like, to Eilean Sgitheanach… .

Or at least, that’s what it felt like to this reviewer, arriving in a state of slightly breathless punctuality only to find that the evening was running on Highland time. Starting a good few minutes late, without ceremony or fuss, a backdrop of projected photos by Cailean Maclean of Skye in all seasons strengthened further the illusion that this was a village ceilidh, not a Celtic Connections concert.

Arthur Cormack had invited a beguiling assembly of Sgiathanachs to celebrate the island. Blair Douglas accompanied Cormack in a song he had learned from his teacher at Portree High, Catriona (daughter of Sorley) Maclean.

This, in typical Gaelic style, imagined the death of a loved one on a cold moor. “As you do..,” added Douglas, accompanying Cormack’s singing with some beautifully delicate piano work, before moving to the accordion for some marches. “Two in 2/4, one 6/8; that equals… a barndance”, he quipped.

Kenna Campbell was introduced fulsomely by Cormack. “Ach, what a bletherer,” she responded, affectionately. It is 50 years since Campbell became a Mod gold medallist, but her voice still rose pure and clear, especially in a sorrowful lullaby sung by a father explaining to his children that their mother has died.

Were there a world market in dirges, the Gaeltachd would dominate it effortlessly, mining that rich, seemingly endless canon of songs which range from sad to soul-searingly tragic. Perhaps it’s because all sorrows are so easily expressed that Highlanders and islanders tend to be so happily philosophical about life.

Cherry on the Cream, two young musicians from Skye and one from Glenelg, raised the tempo with some spirited jigs, reels and marches on pipes, fiddle and guitar, and Darren Maclean, whose bell-like voice has already won him medals and titles galore, sang beautifully.

After a quarter of a century of the Feis movement, we take it for granted that young musicians will take up traditional instruments to sing and play traditional tunes in their own way, keeping Highland culture alive and growing, but we shouldn’t. It’s a marvel.

© Jennie Macfie, 2010

Links

• Celtic Connections
• Jennie Macfie

GALICIAN piping superstar Carlos Nunez walked on stage to close the first half of the first concert of Celtic Connections 2010 and remarked that around the world the perception is growing that “…something exciting is happening in Scotland..”.

True North Orchestra

It is, and one of the most exciting things that is happening is the True North Orchestra, brainchild of Jim Sutherland, fusing for the first time classical and traditional musicians. Oh, of course there have been collaborations and crossovers before now, but nothing that has been so fully unsegregated and inclusive. And big.

The theme of the evening turned out to be exploration; exploration of sound, textures, partnerships, by both the Orchestra and its guests – Chris Stout, the quintessential Shetland fiddler, foraying exuberantly into Latin jazz territory with two Brasilian musicians from Sao Paulo and one from Basle, and more Brasiliana from Nunez and his bodhranist brother Xurxo.

The consummately innovative, smartly besuited trio Lau, augmented by Stuart Nisbet on pedal steel and backing vocalists Inge Thomson, Corrinna Hewat and Bella Hardy; and Fraser Fifield’s untitled piece, which cannily tapped the potential of the National Youth Pipe Band, weaving mesmerising, echoing waves and rounds into a very fine work which deserves to be added to the repertoires of both classical minimalism and piping.

It takes a brave singer to stand in front of the True North Orchestra; both Kathleen MacInnes, utterly resplendent in scarlet stockings and shoes, and Grammy-nominated Maura O’Connell passed the test. MacInnes’ husky voice could wring tears from a lump of Lewisian gneiss, while O’Connell’s has so much power that it should probably be covered by the Geneva Convention.

TNO’s composition must be unique among orchestras. If I had any doubts about hiding a galaxy of trad fiddle talents, Chris Stout and Aidan O’Rourke among them, in a string section, they were instantly assuaged by the glittering perfection of the results.

At the back, the ubiquitous James Mackintosh was one of four formidable percussionists swapping drumkits, bells and vibes, the brass section included Ryan Quigley’s haunting trumpet, and the bagpipe and whistle section (how many orchestras have ever ventured into this territory?) featuring Ross Ainslie, Ali Hutton and Fraser Fifield.

Sutherland’s compositions succeeded in integrating the bagpipes fully into the orchestra. Usually it’s like a drunken uncle singing at a wedding; everyone freezes till it’s over, then tries to pretend it didn’t happen… here strings and pipes augmented each other. The Orchestra was conducted with care and panache by the thinking Scotswoman’s pinup, Greg Lawson, more usually seen in front of the podium as fiddler with Mr McFall’s Chamber, sundry ‘proper’ orchestras and Moishe’s Bagel.

The perennial trouble with the Opening Concert at this festival is that it is a sampler of concerts to come, which often tends to mean “a bit of a ragbag”, and so it proved. Such a fragmented programme renders pacing impossible, and to make things worse, lengthy confusions over leads caused many longeurs while singers and musicians frantically searched for words to fill the gaps.

However, it is a pleasure to report that there was none of the muddied sound that marred most of the concerts in the Main Auditorium last year. The sound was generally crisp, clear and nicely separated, no mean feat considering the unique orchestral ensemble on stage.

© Jennie Macfie, 2010

Links

• Celtic Connections
• Jennie Macfie

Christine Primrose and Brian Ó hEadhra

LOVE, EH? Does the light of your life’s singing make even the lark keep schtum? Are you besotted with someone who needs no cosmetically enhancing products? Would you never let this person carry peats, no matter how long you’d gone without a supply?

The late Lewis bard Murdo Macfarlane could apparently answer yes to all of these questions – and that gathering winter fuel rider was the deciding factor for Christine Primrose, whose soulful expression brought Macfarlane’s Mhorag to three-dimensional life in this latest airing of Dhachaigh.

Primrose was one of four Lewis singers featured in a celebration of the bard’s songs and his spirit, through works in sympathy with his own. It takes its cue from the Macfarlane exhibition staged in 2002 by the estimable Stornoway arts centre, An Lanntair, which in turn inspired an opening concert at the Hebcelt 2007 festival and the subsequent CD, Dhachaigh (Home), released last year.

Encompassing recordings of Paul Mounsey’s majestic overture and finale and notably sunny on-screen images that made one wonder why Macfarlane ever left Lewis in the first place – his homesickness and speedy return from Canada being a recurring theme – the concert gave the lie to the notion, often circulated by Gaels themselves, that Gaelic song is a miserablist’s paradise.

Sure, there were periods of longing and gory wartime images, the latter adding an element of defiance to Ishbel MacAskill’s calm, soothing tones as she sang Macfarlane’s World War 1 reflection, Naoi Ceud Deug’s a Ceithir Deug, with its depiction of young Gaels’ blood draining into the Flanders soil. But the overall mood conveyed was that, whatever disaster should befall, the joy of life, love and mischief (what on earth is happening to that goat in that closing puirt-a-beul?) will overcome it.

Joining Primrose and MacAskill on stage left, Fiona Mackenzie lent her youthful, almost girlish engagement, while Calum Alex MacMillan sang with typical richness and Dublin Gael Brian Ó hEadhra (guitar), Aberdeenshire’s Fraser Fifield (soprano saxophone and whistles) and Lewisman Alasdair White (fiddle and cittern) provided accompaniment and instrumental interludes.

MacMillan is a wonderful singer, almost luxuriating in the baritone register, and his remembrance of the Iolaire disaster, sung to White’s simple but very effective fiddle drones, and his depiction of a drought in Tobair Tobair Siolaidh, atmospherically enhanced by Fifield’s saxophone and electronic effects, were contrasting highlights.

Ó hEadhra’s nostalgic Taladh Na Beinne Guirme, written in a style not dissimilar to Macfarlane’s, was one of several anthemic songs that, alongside the inevitable Macfarlane classic Canan Nan Gaidheal, underlined the uplifting and indeed celebratory nature of a thoroughly enjoyable presentation.

Sponsored by Scottish Power.

© Rob Adams, 2009

Links

• Celtic Connections
• An Lanntair
• Hebridean Celtic Festival
  

Mairearad Green

PASSING PLACES, eh? A familiar feature on the single-track roads of the highlands, if there’s one thing Passing Places signs are unlikely to inspire, it’s music. Especially Achiltibuie-born Mairearad Green’s music. The talented accordionist has seen more than her fair share of these white, diamond-shaped signs on bicycle rides across the Coigach coast of Wester Ross; but it’s thanks to her favourite pastime that we were blessed with hearing this New Voices commission.

Playing to an almost full house – the Green and Macleod clan taking up a large chunk of the auditorium – the young folk prodigy began by declaring her amazement at fitting her entire family into one room, before steering headwind (literally, in the case of Green’s cousin, Ruaraidh Macleod – seen cycling through stiff Wester Ross winds courtesy of an inspired Magnus Graham-produced video projected onto a big screen) into the first passage, ‘Leaving Home’.
Creeping up on you like a crisp Highland morning, Green wasted little time flexing her folk muscles. The thematic piece segued into a fluffy jazz and seriously syncopated funk workout, before settling back down again to more familiar folksy climes. The video imagery gave you the feeling you were watching an episode of Weir’s Way set to an improved soundtrack. And as the moving images of Wester Ross fluttered by, so too, did feelings of homeland and belonging – a strong theme running throughout Green’s piece.

She was in good hands, too, of course. With an uncharacteristically neat and tidy Adam Sutherland sat alongside Green’s boyfriend, Newcastle’s Peter Tickell, on fiddles, and with Duncan Lyall on double-bass (surely the record holder for most amount of gigs played at Celtic Connections?), Green had open license to roam as she pleased, letting fly with a flurry of finger-stroking acrobatics on both accordion and pipes.

She is a talented piano player, too, and it was a shame she never chose to tickle the ivories, although it would have taken some inspired playing to upstage the steady and reliable Hamish Napier. Close friend and ally Anna Massie provided acoustic guitar accompaniment, while Donald Hay (drums) and Adam Bulley (mandolin/ banjo) were also on-hand to make up the rest of this eight-piece ensemble.

This was a conceptual piece, don’t forget, and the music continued to move as any push-bike would over the hills and one-track roads of the Highlands: smooth going downhill; bumpy, yet firmly in control even when crossing rougher ground. Smiling throughout, Green was clearly having a whale of a time. She could have chosen to sit centre stage while showing off all her chops, but instead, she selected to sit off to the side, content to let her fellow pros take a large chunk of the spotlight.

And that’s the measure of the woman. A rare talent, ever happy to support others rather than bump up herself. As her family’s heart swelled with pride, so, too, did the applause reverberating around the Strathclyde Suite. Her fifty minutes were up and it was time to go. No-one wanted to, but as is keeping with Green’s humility, she quietly and discreetly left the stage without milking the adulation or making too much of a fuss.

The best of this year’s Celtic Connections New Voices, then? By a country mile.

© Barry Gordon, 2009

Links

• Celtic Connections

Fiddlers' Bid with Catriona McKay (photo - Heidi Pearson)

THE TOTAL Celtic Connections experience should not only be about the big venues, with the well known names, showcasing the Young and Beautiful – or even the not so Young or Beautiful….. And so 24 hours in Glasgow for Celtic 2009 started with the last in the series of Songs of Scotland concerts at the Universal, tucked way off Sauchiehall Street.

These concerts have grown in popularity since their inception and are designed to profile the rich heritage and variety of the vocal tradition in Scotland -Scots and Gaelic. The series covers ten themes including those of ‘Bawdy Songs’, ‘Protest songs’ and tonight’s topic, ‘Glasgow Song Writers’.

The Universal is a venue which is well suited to this type of gig, where the audience are positively encouraged to participate, and the audience on this particular night managed to offer no small degree of involvement, creating just the right type of cèilidh-house atmosphere.

Hosted by House-of-Song Queen Bee, Doris Rougvie, the evening was an eclectic mix of weel kent Scots songs from veteran singer songwriters Iain Ingram and Ian Davidson and Gaelic classics from Gaelic Grande-dame (duilich a ‘Mhagaidh….) Maggie Macdonald, ex of Gaelic super-group Cliar. The ‘Glasgow Song writers’ theme was at times perhaps a little tenuous but no less entertaining, including the song by ‘Lachie na Mogain’ who owned a wool shop on Argyll St.

Maggie possesses a voice rarely encountered in any folk tradition, a voice of quality, tone and control but one which can also convey the passion and power of the writers pen. Her songs, including the seemingly cheerful ‘yet more behind the scenes’ ‘Illean Bithibh Sunndach’ (Boys Be Happy) and the Mairi Mhòr nan Oran classic ‘Soraidh leis An Ait’ (written by Mairi in her exile from Skye, in Glasgow, where she lived nearby to what is now Stowe College, painted pictures of pain and longing, joy and hope, in a world not so far distant from today.

Maggie’s ‘Eilean Sgiathanach nam Buadh’ even had one solitary, interested pigeon listening intently from an air conditioning unit just outside the window….

Apart from the Gaelic contributions, the audience enjoyed a programme of songs such as the lovely ‘Highland Mary’, ‘Slave to the Land’ and comic songs which had the whole audience joining in, perhaps in shared childhood memories. Ian Davidson was accompanied sympathetically on the keyboard by talented young singer and keyboard player Carissa Bovil, who also gave gentle, warm renditions of the lovely ‘Farewell to Lochaber’ and Ian Davidson’s own song ‘Wrap me in yer airms the night’.

It is gratifying that small venues such as the Universal can be sell-outs with a home-grown audience, local singers and most importantly, local material, just as much as the larger venues with the bigger names, extravagant light shows and more exotic set lists.

From the Universal, it was very quick cab dash down to the Old Fruitmarket to catch up on the Showcase Scotland sampler programme of very diverse and home grown talent, designed to illustrate to festival and gig organisers from all over the world, exactly what Scotland has to offer in the way of contemporary and traditional folk and roots music.

Dynamic young group Bodega had just left the stage before I arrived, but the audience certainly seemed to have enjoyed the sets. Corrina Hewat showcased stunning tracks from her innovative and virtuosic solo album, Harp I Do, accompanied brilliantly by Anna Massie.

Next to take to the stage was Glaswegian singer songwriter Brendan Campbell whose style is described as ‘Celtic lyricism with moody urban edge’. Any ‘Celtic’ element was on the whole under whelming in its subtlety, and the ‘moodiness’ made it extremely difficult to understand anything said or sung – perhaps the audience in front of the stage would have found it easier. Song titles and lyrics were missed and I’m sure, not only by myself, but by many potential ‘buyers’ in the room.

Seven-piece Shetland line-up Fiddlers Bid were next to take to the stage, and instantly transformed the atmosphere in the venue to that which I was truthfully expecting in such a high profile gig. Subtle waltzes interwoven with that instantly recognisable stamp of the bands’ personality, fiery reels and beautifully satin-smooth textured pieces are what we have come to expect of the sets, and the audience was not disappointed.

An interesting discussion the next day with a fellow audience member echoed my own thoughts that Fiddlers Bid were what they had expected of, and had waited for, a gig intended to showcase the brilliantly varied, inspirational and diverse face of Scottish music today.

No Festival Club for this writer that night as I had been offered the opportunity of helping out a music industry business at the Showcase Scotland ‘day’ in the Exhibition Hall. More than one business was heard to say that the number of stands had fallen, predictably, this year, but there were still plenty of visiting International Festival organisers, agents and other potential buyers in evidence.

Plenty of interest in all sectors of the Industry – from dance bands, to cèilidh bands, to solo Celtic and Gaelic artists and young singer songwriters. Encouraging. Often seen as not only a showcase of what is available, this day is also very important as a networking event and a chance to catch up with folk who are normally too busy to stand around and chat for twenty minutes.

Sharp clear up and get out at 2pm then an interview with Celtic Music Radio who do a fantastic job daily during the festival, broadcasting the latest news from the events, chats with artists and tracks from forthcoming gigs, large and small.

So a short 24 hours in Glasgow towards the end of Celtic Connections and venues certainly did not seem to be any quieter this year, despite economic constrictions. Few tickets were to be had for any venue. This can only be optimistic for the future of the Festival – perhaps folk need something to look forward to, something to detract from the depressing economic and weather climate. Lang may yer lum reek….

Fiona MacKenzie is the Mhàiri Mhòr Gaelic Song Fellow for Highland Council

© Fiona MacKenzie, 2009

Links

• Celtic Connections
• Fiona MacKenzie

Ruairidh Macmillan

FIDDLER Ruairidh Macmillan from Nairn became the BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year 2009 in a final that had a big Highlands and Islands and north of Scotland presence, and lived up to its reputation for being closely contested in a spirit of genuine camaraderie.

Chairman of the judges, Alasdair Campbell of the Tolbooth venue in Stirling, waved aside the notion that his panel had had a difficult decision to make, preferring the term “tricky” and praising all six musicians onstage for their amazing talent, skill and musicality and for providing a final that was, he said, great fun and a pleasure to listen to.

In the first all-male final since the competition began in 2001, the judges were looking for someone with an extra spark, and Macmillan, who recently graduated from the Scottish Music course at the Royal Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, emerged as a popular choice.

Macmillan impressed with his playing in the West Coast “pipey” style of his chief influence, Aonghas Grant, the left-handed fiddler from Lochaber, his warm, friendly presentation style and his close interaction with his accompanists, Tia Files (guitar) and Adam Brown (bodhran).

His solo rendition of ‘The Ulsterman’, which he learned from his grandmother’s singing, was especially strong, again showing piping influences, and his introduction of a typically beguiling new tune by Capercaillie fiddler Charlie McKerron in an excitingly arranged closing set also made a big impression.

Not for the first time, it was a night that was notable for the musicians’ variety of approaches and content as well as their quality. Fiddlers Jack Smedley and Daniel Thorpe – from Buckie and Inverurie respectively – both played with a strong north-east accent, Smedley opening the final with a set that honoured the purity of his native style with great poise and produced no little excitement with his reading of Scott Skinner’s aptly titled ‘The Hurricane’.

A player with a big sound and fluent attack, Thorpe favoured slightly more contemporary arrangements highlighted by a freewheeling final selection that found him working profitably as a unit with Mike Bryan (guitar) and James Lindsay (double bass).

Gaelic singer Kenneth Nicolson, from Lochs on the Isle of Lewis, sang both weighty songs and more light-hearted material with a wonderful tone and great self-possession. Piper Lorne MacDougall from Carradale emerged onstage playing a really confident, cleanly articulated march, strathspey and reel set and continued with witty introductions, a fine low whistle reading of ‘The Earl of Jura’, and managed to work all the piper’s skills, including pibroch (briefly), into his allocated span.

And if Edinburgh singer-songwriter Adam Holmes seemed a little overawed by the occasion, his dry wit and soft, clear singing still won favour with an audience that is traditionally rather partisan but always supportive.

As winner, Ruairidh Macmillan will go on to record a CD at Watercolour Studios in Ardgour and will perform at prestigious folk festivals internationally through the year, kicking off with an appearance The Blend festival in Stirling in March.

© Rob Adams, 2009

Links

• Celtic Connections
• BBC Scotland YTM Award

Box Club

THIS WAS an inspired piece of programming. Lewis-born Gaelic singer Catriona Watt (who recently won enthusiastic reviews for her first album, Cadal Cuain) opened the concert, with her all-Highland, all-girl band (piano, fiddle, whistles) and an alluring combination of songs, arrangements and original compositions. From waulking songs to mouth music, it provided a fine traditional springboard for the next act of the evening.

Millish (“sweet thing” or “awesome” in Irish Gaelic), flying in from Michigan for their Celtic Connections debut, will surely be invited back. This experienced foursome – fiddle, guitar, small pipes, whistles, double bass and drums – are formidably accomplished musicians who perform with breath-taking passion, skill and daring.

Their astonishing display of virtuoso playing ranged from Celtic, through jazz, to the Middle East, the Balkans and flamenco – big sound, flying fingers, high-octane performance. By the interval, the fiddler’s bow had lost most of its strings and Millish had won several hundred new fans.

Box Club had a hard act to follow, but they made it look easy. This band – of four-accordians plus rhythm section of guitar, double bass and drums – are a seriously-talented and well-drilled group of young musicians with a relaxed manner. They are some of Scotland’s best home-grown talent and their appearance was greeted by a huge cheer. Their popularity is well deserved.

Firmly rooted in the Scottish tradition, Box Club have brought a fresh, dynamic approach to the repertoire and to their own original compositions. We heard many familiar favourites from their 2008 album, Box Club – others were new and equally exciting. With names like ‘Cold Chips’, ‘Stuck in Port Askaig’ and ‘Number 62′, the stories behind the tunes were worth telling, and worth hearing.

These musicians are clearly enjoying their music. They smile a lot, they interact with each other and with the audience. On Friday night they had people on their feet, dancing in front of the stage – apparently unprecedented for a Celtic Connections concert in this venue. That says it all, really. I wonder when the next album’s due?

© Terry Williams, 2009

Links

• Celtic Connections

Nanci Griffith

NOWADAYS extended over two swiftly sold-out nights, the Transatlantic Sessions concerts have been a mainstay of Celtic Connections’ programme since the festival’s earliest years, borrowing their name and concept from the BBC Scotland TV series, first broadcast in 1994. The ongoing vogue for all things Americana, in the wake of O Brother Where Art Thou?, makes those beginnings look very prescient now, while further boosting the shows’ success and kudos.

Once again it was an evening to bask in, as up to 16 Scottish, Irish and US musicians, all ranked among the finest in their field, settled down to share a big bunch of tunes and songs from either side of the Pond, at once drawing on and reinvigorating the cousinship between their traditions.

Topping this year’s bill were Nashville heavy-hitters Nanci Griffith and Kathy Mattea, both settling delightedly into the occasion’s laid-back spirit and both in sterling voice, with Mattea dedicating a fondly elegiac rendition of ‘May You Never’ to its recently-departed author, John Martyn, with whom she featured in that very first Transatlantic Sessions series 15 years ago.

Other songs from Stateside visitors ranged from dobro king Jerry Douglas and recent Grammy-winner Tim O’Brien’s splendidly gung-ho arrangement of Hendrix’s ‘Hey Joe’, to the stark, sinewy lament ‘Peg and Awl’, dating from America’s industrial revolution, and hauntingly delivered by old-timey one-man-band Bruce Molsky. Our own Julie Fowlis and Eddi Reader returned the favour, respectively with a beautifully forlorn Gaelic love-song and a sumptuous version of Willie Nelson’s ‘I Guess My Heart Just Settled Back to Earth’.

A good many of those named above, of course, are renowned as both singers and multi-instrumentalists, another such being Cajun/Appalachian star Dirk Powell, who contributed a softly heartfelt self-penned ballad about his grandfather in addition to his accordion and banjo skills.

The ranks of world-class pickers were further swelled by guitarists Russ Barenberg and John Doyle, while with Aly Bain and John McCusker also in the frame, the line-up featured as many as four fiddles, along with Phil Cunningham and festival director Donald Shaw on piano and accordion, Todd Parks on bass and James Mackintosh on percussion.

Many of the tune medleys were every bit as lush and lavish as you’d expect from such an assembly, but as with the songs there were plenty of quieter, sparser interludes between the big full-ensemble arrangements, one such highlight being Barenberg’s exquisite articulation of his own composition ‘For J.L.’, written on the occasion of John Lennon’s death, but offered here as another tribute to John Martyn.

© Sue Wilson, 2009

Links

• Celtic Connections

Treacherous Orchestra

IT SHOULDN’T WORK. Thirteen 20-something musicians, all male, all with multiple other commitments and no overall director sounds like a blueprint for chaos, dissension and dissipation. And yet it does work – and it works magnificently….

Rehearsals for this gig began way back in November, have been regular and mandatory since, and by golly, it shows in the end result, which is as tightly disciplined as any military pipe band and yet retains the irreverent verve and panache of punk. Decisions at every level are taken collectively and if there is dispute it is put to the vote in an exemplary display of musical communism.

The ABC is packed out as the band arrive on stage, barely perceptible in the dim murkiness. The lights stay down as the music starts, pounding crescendo chords with more than a nod to Zeppelin’s ‘Kashmir’. Plain white spotlights gradually brighten, picking out each musician and gradually revealing them in all their sharply-dressed glory.

Yes, at long last, the words ‘dress code’ have been spoken in the trad world. Suits, ties and oh my goodness, Innes Watson and Adam Sutherland are wearing Rude Boy pork pie hats, while pipers Ross Ainslie and Ali Hutton are wearing military piping jackets. Not a charity shop hand-me-down, slept-in-the-past-two-nights crumpled rumple to be seen, a visual confirmation of the seriousness with which these young men have been taking this mission.

But it’s the music that really says it all. Relentless thumping rock rhythms or reggae beats, jazz inflections, wailing pipes and whirling Eastern scales and modes, it’s all here in the mix. They’ve listened to everything – Zeppelin, The Clash, Frank Zappa, Clifton Chenier, Daft Punk, the Riverdance soundtrack, The Specials, Abba, Faithless, the Velvet Underground, David Bowie and David Byrne – the list must be endless, and they’ve watched pioneers Blazin’ Fiddles, Shooglenifty, Peatbog Faeries and the towering genius that was Martyn Bennett into the bargain.

Now they’ve mashed those disparate elements up and taken it to the next level. This is the music of young people who’ve come through the Feis movement, who love playing tunes from the Celtic past with reverence and affection, but are equally partial to a weekend of raving at Knockengorroch or Rock Ness. It’s not a cynical, commercially inspired attempt to crossover to the mainstream, it’s their music and it’s coming up from the heart. You may not get it, but if you do, you’ll love it.

The proof of the pudding is in the playing. The day after the ABC gig, they’re at the Fruitmarket for the Sunday Herald’s 10th birthday party, then finish up what is probably the last ever Festival Club closing night at the Quality Hotel. Three demanding gigs in just over 24 hours, but the tightness and polish is still there, in spades.

Can that be Peter Tickell and Mairearad Green crowdsurfing? The Mairearad Green whose lovely purely traditional New Voices commission had entranced us all earlier in the day? Indeed it can. The Club has transmogrified into an ecstatic festival moshpit, Eddi Reader is watching from the wings with an expression that in this light looks slightly rueful, because this weekend, the baton has been passed on – I’ve seen the future, and it’s Treacherous.

© Jennie Macfie, 2009

Links

• Celtic Connections
• Treacherous Orchestra MySpace Page

Branford Marsalis

CAN THIS really be the same room that only a few hours ago housed the Festival Club, scene of extreme international musical conviviality? Yes, the decaying grandeur of the Quality Hotel is unmistakable; chandeliers sandblasted with dust, the carpet with a stickily adhesive quality.

But it’s a fine way to start Burns Night, listening to some of the finest pipers that Scotland, Ireland and Brittany can produce competing for the trophy which commemorates one of the most original Scottish musical talents of the last few decades. I’m here to see if anyone can outgun the formidable talents of Sylvain Hamon, winner of the first ever competition three years ago.

For fairness, each competitor plays a Breton dance suite followed by a March, Strathspey and Reel in the first half, and an Irish set in the second. Though some of the Scottish and Irish contestants have trouble making sense of the Breton pulses, it becomes apparent that the Bretons who effortlessly convey the enticingly danceability of their native tunes have some difficulty keeping to the strict tempi demanded by their selections from this side of the Channel.

Gordon MacReady, silver medallist at the Northern Meeting in 2006, takes his Breton suite at a spanking pace with tight, enviably crisp fingering, and Northern Ireland’s Ashley McMichael also impresses with his handling of the pulses, while his compatriot Jonathan Greenlees interprets their complexities superbly, following up with a springy March and a very sprightly reel. Chris Armstrong, Northern Meeting gold medallist returned to the competitive fold after a few years in the self-expression wilderness, delivers a massively impressive set in winning style.

Alexis Meunier, however, who has been competing over here for a decade, finishes tuning his drones with an entirely French smoothing of the hair and launches into some beautifully sharp chanter work on his native tunes which shows how it’s done, augmented by foot percussion which underlines the fact that these, like the Strathspey and Reel, began life as tunes to dance to. The melodies flow, smooth and liquid, and he deftly nails the March, Strathspey and Reel. He is followed by Hamon, whose pipes (by competition sponsors MacCallum) seem to have a sharper, more colourful sound than any other. His playing simply dazzles from the first note of his tuning runs, but he has trouble keeping to the strict tempos of the Scottish tunes. After the Irish section and a short deliberation by the judges, Alexis Meunier wins all three sections and the 2009 Trophy, while Willie McCallum is second and Hamon is third. With competitors like these, the future of piping in all three countries seems safe for now.

Walking past George Square that evening it would take a heart of stone not to be moved by the sound of choirs singing ‘Ca’ the Yowes’ and ‘A Man’s a Man For A’ That’, a street party to celebrate the Bard’s birthday. At the Concert Hall it’s a very different affair; the Homecoming Scotland Suite with the RSNO and a host of guests from the traditional and contemporary music scenes.

Seven sections, each with a different composer, demonstrate just how difficult it is to write for a full orchestra. Sally Beamish does this all the time, and demonstrates her mastery by crafting a filigree sound setting mainly using the string section to set off the pure jewel-like tones of Branford Marsalis’ alto saxophone.

Greg Lawson, first violinist in the SSO amongst other things, has worked long and hard to orchestrate Martyn Bennett’s ‘Liberation’, but even the presence of David Hayman as narrator, aided by James Mackintosh on percussion does not quite lift this to the ecstatic heights of the original. Or maybe that’s just the auditorium PA again…

Steve Forman, mild mannered bodhranist of the Ben Nevis sessions, revealed his superhero alterego of film score composer in the opening piece, which though truncated due to lack of rehearsal time, also successfully integrates orchestra and guests. With an occasional nod to Copland (Aaron, not Stewart) and John Williams, the dissonance of a pipe phrase is echoed in the brass, and the harmonies of the uillean pipes are continued seamlessly by the strings. That’s the way to do it!

Jazz maestro Tommy Smith has composed an ode to his native Edinburgh, which has some very sweet sax playing and even sweeter strings, a recurrent leitmotif of twelve sharp notes like the chimes of midnight and some emphatic tympanic crescendi. If you like this sort of thing, it’s evidently very good indeed but not entirely crowd-pleasing, unlike Chris Stout’s ‘Drive!’, where the Fair Isle fiddler appears very comfortable in front of a full orchestra, demonstrating the benefits of the classical course at the RSAMD. His guests include the delectable Catriona McKay on clarsach and the adorable David Milligan on piano, and the audience laps it up.

Aidan O’Rourke’s piece, Coriolis, provides a connoisseur’s dream as he and Chris Stout trade fiddle phrases. Using his trademark irregular time signatures and intense, driving use of repetition, the end result recalling the thundering minimalism of Philip Glass in his Akhnaten days. Not entirely comfortable, but very impressive.

The evening ends with Patsy Reid reprising one of the pieces from her ‘New Voices’ commission from last year’s Celtic Connections, Bridging The Gap, which explored all the different modalities of music. Elegant in glittering plum bugle beads, she plays the beautifully smooth, lyrical fiddle which has helped to bring Breabach to the fore, and all the evening’s guests return to the stage for the splendid finale.

It is better to reach for the stars and fail than to settle for the safely achievable; although not entirely successful by the strict standards of the classical music world it is a brave and worthwhile attempt, and deserves applause.

© Jennie Macfie, 2009

Links

• Celtic Connections

Laura MacDonald (photo - Jim Pollock)

THE FIRST time I heard Martyn Bennett’s Grit, some five years or so ago, it was the music I had been waiting for all my life. At once inspiringly danceable and deeply felt, full of musical vitamins, minerals and fibre, it was and still is a satisfying meal for the ears and the soul.

Very few albums since have come close. After his tragically early death, his friends formed the Martyn Bennett Trust to celebrate what he left them, and to encourage the making of music that continued the richness of his legacy, whether in Uist or Bolivia, Argentina or Edinburgh. The Trust commissions pieces from across all musical genres, and this celebration contained a jewelled handful of them.

The opening work was by the Princess of Kidsamonium, that very fine jazz saxophonist Laura Macdonald, who had composed a beautiful work featuring Fraser Fifield on uillean pipes, Phil Bancroft’s smooth creamy sax playing, Greg Lawson playing at times almost beyond the range of human hearing, so far up the neck of the fiddle was he (“Greg doesn’t have a dusty end to his fingerboard”, said Adam Sutherland in the interval), some superbly lyrical piano from David Milligan, and the composer herself playing elegaically over the drums, piano, and strings of Mr McFall’s Chamber, augmented by some friends, including fiddler Anna-Wendy Stevenson.

The second piece was even lovelier, starting with an arrangement of ‘Peewits’, composed by Bennett for a stage production of Kidnapped. This was lump in the throat music that broke the heart with its poignant beauty, a delicate Scots riposte to Vaughan Williams ‘The Lark Ascending’. It led into two Fifield compositions, ‘Kilchourn Ferry’and a piece for Highland pipes which, as yet untitled, is becoming known as ‘The Beast’, rich string layers cushioning the pipes’ wail.

After a brief interval kilted DJ Dolphin Boy came on with a box of wires to add his synthesised sequences to a piece which he had made with Phil Bancroft, reflecting the Bothy Culture era when Bennett’s fusion of electronic dance music and traditional instruments took Scotland’s music scene by storm.

Next we were treated to a Bill Wells composition called ‘The Howl’, which opened with recorder balanced achingly against Kevin Mackenzie’s pure and simple guitarwork. If that restless sprite had lived long enough to age as his friends have, his music might now be sounding like this, which is a large part of the Trust’s aims, to keep that flame alive.

And then it was the final thrust, as compere and percussionist Tom Bancroft opened with extracts from interviews with Martyn Bennett shortly before his death. Tears were surreptitiously wiped from many a cheek. Another DJ Dolphin/Phil Bancroft work being aired for the first time, it insinuated itself deep into the groove for total, surroundsound danceability.

This show, like A Highland Fiddler, was a shining example of what music can be when it is played from the uttermost depths of the heart with total commitment and passion; this is a much rarer phenomenon than you might think; it should not be confused with technique or professionalism, and is always, always worth seeking out.

© Jennie Macfie, 2009

Links

• Celtic Connections
• Martyn Bennett Trust

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

Links

• Celtic Connections

Karine Polwart (Photo - David Angel)

BILLED AS “the ultimate singers’ gathering”, this was Celtic Connections’ unforgettable contribution to a worldwide weekend of festivities marking 250 years since the birth of Robert Burns. Rarely can so many of Scotland’s top performers have come together on one stage. What a treat. It wasn’t all song, it wasn’t all Burns, and there was plenty innovation along the way. The audience was in party mood, from the packed gallery seats down to the standing-room-only in the arena, ready to join in at every opportunity.

Phil Cunningham and Michael McGoldrick kicked off with a set of tunes that lit the flame and the evening blazed from that point. From Karen Matheson to Emily Smith, Dougie MacLean and Eddi Reader, every singer had a personal favourite, some weel-kent, others not so familiar.

The old friends were there: Ae Fond Kiss; Green Grow the Rashes O; The Banks and Braes of Bonnie Doune… James Grant gave us rock and roll – in the spirit of Burns, “the rock star of his day” – and it went down a storm. Brendan Powers and his harmonica came all the way from New Zealand and gave a stunning performance with the house band.

Karine Polwart, Michael Marra, Mairi Campbell with David Francis – the singers and the songs just kept coming. And the music kept flowing, from the fiddles and bodhrans and guitars of the likes of John McCusker, Martin O’Neill and Anna Massey. It was hard to keep up with all the big names, but their combined energy was infectious. Everyone clapped and foot-tapped and sang along. There was even an outburst of dancing at one point.

One face – eagerly anticipated – was missing. Odetta, after having to cancel her 2007 appearance at Celtic Connections, had been looking forward to joining the Burns celebrations this year, but sadly she died shortly before Christmas. Karine Polwart led singers and audience in a fine, gospel-style tribute. As Eddi Reader said: “God rest her soul, she’s here with us.” It was a moving moment. But even that sadness couldn’t douse the fire of this marvellous once-in-a-lifetime occasion. Rabbie would have loved it.

© Terry Williams, 2009

Links

• Celtic Connections