Hands across the water

Published on Friday 19 January 2007 00:06

HANDS ACROSS THE WATER ****

GLASGOW ROYAL CONCERT HALL

CELTIC Connections's opener certainly connected on various levels, not least across the Atlantic, taking its title from an eponymous benefit album initiated by American fiddler and singer Andrea Zonn in response to the 2004 tsunami. This shaped the concert format, with Zonn as linchpin, and Garry West of Nashville's Compass Records, who produced it, as MC.

A fine flourish of fiddle and old-time gospel harmonies from Zonn, Jim Lauderdale and Maura O'Connell opened proceedings. A tight "house band" continuously fluctuated with guest singers and players, including the passionate-voiced Jon Randall and Beth Nielsen Chapman from the US, and from such Irish bands as Altan, Solas, Flook and Danu - and from Capercaillie, pianist and accordionist (and festival musical director) Donald Shaw and Karen Matheson.

The charity ethos didn't necessarily guarantee memorable songs, although Nielsen Chapman's plaintive hymn, Be Still My Soul was heartfelt, as was Matheson's Ae Fond Kiss. At times the country-Celtic backing fusion was perhaps too homogenous, but was leavened by cracking sets from the instrumentalists (Flook's Pressed for Time, or Altan's Sean O'Turuisk tearing a fiddle jig out of the air before Michael McGoldrick flicked the tempo up several notches).

Things worked up a satisfying head of steam for the finale, with O'Connell and the band giving gutsy swing to Summer Fly, Darrell Scott, alongside Danu's Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh, hollering some country ragtime, and the ensemble encoring with Nielsen Chapman's rip-roaring Heads Up for the Wrecking Ball.