June Tabor and Harriet Earis

Published on Thursday 31 January 2008 19:02

JUNE TABOR AND HARRIET EARIS ***

GLASGOW ROYAL CONCERT HALL

IN KEEPING with Celtic Connections' love of insightful double-bills, this show paired two artists – one a relative newcomer, the other something of a veteran – both hugely adept at proving the fluidity of folk's boundaries.

Welsh harpist Harriet Earis won a Danny Kyle Award on her last visit to the festival, and her funky, spirited playing remains infectious 12 months on. She is as comfortable turning her instrument to a Dave Brubeck jazz number as she is a pop standard (Norwegian Wood) or a chiming reel.

Throughout a 32-year recording career, June Tabor's voice has been her instrument. Rich and burnished at its lowest end, enchantingly mellifluous at its highest, it's a fine thing to hear, and her skill as an interpreter of songs from a diverse sweep of genres, eras and locations is wonderful to behold.

A lush medieval French ballad from Provence gave way to Southern American traditional I Love My Love, before a trio of songs about war brought added gravitas to proceedings, if perhaps an overly heavy dose of doom. Tabor lightened the mood at the climax, though, with a take on Robert Burns's Lady Lie Near Me, segued neatly into from the original English version, and a shuffling encore of American bluesman Doc Pomus's Save the Last Dance for Me.