Bluegrass, jazz, baroque - here is music for every kind of folk

Published on Monday 22 January 2007 00:52

CLANNAD ***

GLASGOW ROYAL CONCERT HALL

TAKING the stage together for the first time in ten years on Friday night, Clannad sounded exactly like they always did, and the response from fans - some of whom came from Ireland and even the United States for the show - suggested they were perfectly satisfied.

The band, many of whom have been working on solo projects since their last album in 1998, seemed nervous about a big-stage comeback, and played it safe with a programme of greatest hits, chiefly Irish folk songs, softened and Clannad-ified, and a battery of film and television themes.

With the original five-strong line-up augmented by a further six musicians, there was no doubt of their mastery of their sound, especially in creating multi-layered vocal harmonies topped off by the magical flute-like voice of Maire Brennan. Apart from a couple of impressive a cappella numbers, they concentrated on recreating the songs exactly as they were on the recordings of 20 years ago. Perhaps the Clannad sound was never about live performance. The intricacies of their dreamy, ethereal brand of Celtic music is best left to the imagination. When you see it's just a clever combination of harps, synthesisers and voices, it's like watching a magician explain his tricks.

SUSAN MANSFIELD

SCOTLAND'S MUSIC LIVE ***

CITY HALLS, GLASGOW

THROW together classical and folk musicians and sometimes it clicks, but sometimes it doesn't. Saturday's cultural collision - numerous folk artists backed by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and composers from both camps - had its moments.

At best, the fusion was sensational. Edward McGuire's Calgacus - his credentials as a Whistlebinkie and "serious" composer are impeccable - proved the one truly inspired meeting of styles. Scored for symphony orchestra and solo piper, its emotions are deep-rooted in Scots tradition, reflected through a turbulent, rugged tonal world, and a metaphor of war tellingly captured by the central tussle between timpani and pipes. The BBC SSO, under Douglas Boyd, conjured up a vivid scene.

From the folk end, singer Karin Polwart and band hit it off perfectly with the SSO strings in imaginative, but essentially simple arrangements by violinist Greg Lawson of a well-gauged set signing off with the heart-warming I'm Gonna Do It All. The premiere of fiddler Chris Stout's Dynrst was less convincing, scored for his own quintet and the SSO. It opened promisingly, with pungent carillon-like outburst from the brass, but beyond that, it slumped into an uncomfortable marriage of rock-fuelled combo and anonymous orchestral wash.

Elsewhere, James Graham's Gaelic singing was alluringly pristine, folk group Dimh proved upbeat if formulaic, and Peter Maxwell Davies' well-worn Orkney Wedding with Sunrise ended disastrously with a critical memory loss by the piper. Mixed fortunes all round.

KENNETH WALTON

SESSION A9 & THE DUHKS ****

OLD FRUITMARKET, GLASGOW

CLEARLY relishing their first Celtic Connections visit, young Canadian firebrands the Duhks staked their claim to a return invitation with an opening set full of vigour, vivacity and technical flair. Out of Winnipeg via Nashville, the five-piece cooked up an effervescent melting-pop of Celtic, Appalachian, Latin, gospel, cajun and string-band sounds that's variously been dubbed "North American world music" and "progressive soulgrass".

Led by Capercaillie fiddler Charlie McKerron, Session A9 burst onto the scene in 2003 with their debut album What Road?, a happy marriage of seven gifted and seasoned musicians (on four fiddles, piano, button accordion and guitar/vocals), with terrific material and arrangements. Their strength-to-strength progress since then has included recruiting a drummer and they're shortly to release their eagerly- awaited follow-up. They duly rocked the Fruitmarket with characteristic authority and glee, the older material in the set refreshed by extra shimmering layers of orchestration and ever-more intricate instrumental interplay, the newer numbers ranging from a brilliantly impish blues-rock twist on a traditional strathspey, to a sublimely heart-rending version of Gordon Duncan's The Sleeping Tune.

SHOOGLENIFTY/SKOLVAN BIG BAND ****

OLD FRUITMARKET, GLASGOW

WITH its contemporary revival kick-started back in the 1970s by Alan Stivell, Brittany has long been a rich source of inspiration to forward-looking Scottish folk artists. The veteran instrumental five-piece Skolvan are another seminal presence on the Breton scene, not least for the invention - by founder member Youenn le Bihan - of a new instrument, the piston, a revamped baroque oboe.

Saturday's gig featured their occasional ten-strong line-up, with bombarde, piston, accordion, guitar and soprano sax supplemented by a superbly tight-knit brass section. The vibrant jazz dynamic within Brittany's revival coloured many of their elegant arrangements, including a deliciously insouciant version of My Favourite Things, mixed with a traditional dance tune.

Shooglenifty have been a comparably groundbreaking force for well over a decade, and show no signs of losing their edge. Certainly not if they keep having ideas like collaborating with the extraordinary Canadian Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq, their guest on this occasion (as on their new album Troots), whose unearthly vocal antics make Bjrk sound demure. To delighted appreciation from a sell-out crowd, her improvised array of growls, yelps, barks, grunts, screeches and ecstatic soaring cries brilliantly complemented the band's own far-out roots/rave firestorm of fiddle, mandolin, banjo, guitar, bass and drums.

SUE WILSON

SOLAS ****

GLASGOW ROYAL CONCERT HALL

CELTIC Connections has featured most of the big names in Celtic music, so it was surprise to realise that Irish-American band Solas had never played. They more than compensated with this sparkling show, combining the current band with three distinguished former members, Karan Casey, John Doyle and John Williams.

Casey and Deirdre Scanlan shared vocal duties. Both are excellent, expressive singers, and shone on both traditional ballads like The Newry Highwayman and Woody Guthrie's Pastures of Plenty, and the more contemporary On a Sea of Fleur de Lis.

The band's instrumental prowess was equally evident, led by Seamus Egan, one of the great flautists in Irish music, but also a fine guitarist, and the fiddling of the perpetually mobile Winifred Horan. Solas can come across as a little bland at times on recordings, but there was no suggestion of any such affliction here.

CELTIC CONNECTIONS YOUTH CONCERT ***

GLASGOW ROYAL CONCERT HALL

THE inaugural concert featuring the Celtic Connections Youth Orchestra proved to be a mixed affair. The large orchestra, made up of students, closed a lengthy afternoon show with performances of two orchestral works by Dick Gaughan and Martyn Bennett.

Bennett's MacKay's Memoirs revealed his greater understanding of how to use orchestral instruments, and employed a rhythmic underlay inspired by club culture. The growing intensity of the music was well realised by the orchestra under Mark Sheridan, with Finlay MacDonald as soloist on Highland pipes. Dick Gaughan's specially commissioned reflection on the Act of Union, Treaty 300, never really took off. Orchestral writing is not his forte. The music was a little weak structurally, and lacked the fire and passion he brings to his singing and song writing.

KENNY MATHIESON