Over its final weekend, Celtic Connections saw voices both familiar and brand new combine to great effect

Published on Sunday 1 February 2009 19:08

NEW VOICES: MAIREARAD GREEN STRATHCLYDE SUITE, GLASGOW ROYAL CONCERT HALL *****

THE third, final, and undoubtedly best of this year's New Voices series, Mairearad Green's 50-minute Passing Places commission – a musical and filmic journey through the spectacular scenery and cultural riches of the Wester Ross Coigach peninsula – just about had it all: memorable tunes and exquisite playing, capped off with a wonderfully executed visual backdrop synced perfectly to the music.

While Green's musical there-and-back-again journey may not have been the most challenging music ever heard at New Voices, it was certainly evoking and heart-warming.

Following almost an hour of frisky folk tunes, tinged with flecks of funk and a few globs of jazz for good measure, everyone rose to their feet to give her a (merited) standing ovation.

Indeed, when Green's small, poignant poem popped up on the big screen, you could almost hear a gulp in the throats of her proud family.

BARRY GORDON

THE TREACHEROUS ORCHESTRA / 6 DAY RIOT

ABC, GLASGOW

****

TAKE a baker's dozen of Scotland's most exciting young male instrumentalists, bring periodically to the boil at sundry mad island festivals for a few years, simmer around the Glasgow session scene, and you pretty much have the recipe behind The Treacherous Orchestra.

Their all-out, full-throttle sound was unsurprisingly awesome, fuelled by a positively savage rhythmic attack, but they showed they can do lush and majestically lyrical, too, with intricate and quickfire apportioning and layering of parts among the players.

In tunes mostly written by band members, the folk elements vied colourfully with everything from slinky lounge jazz to bare-knuckle heavy metal, and if some sets went on a little too long, or descended a little too far towards jazz-funk noodling, the many moments of triumph easily outweighed any slight longueurs.

London-based sextet 6 Day Riot stirred an interesting blend of instrumentation and influences – trumpet, fiddle, ukulele, xylophone; klezmer, country, carnival and punk – fronted by Tamara Schlesinger's powerful voice, although somewhat more effort at audience engagement wouldn't have gone amiss.

JERRY DOUGLAS BAND / CHERRYHOLMES

OLD FRUITMARKET, GLASGOW

****

A JERRY Douglas performance is a bit like watching a tennis exhibition match: fun, full of technical showmanship, but not to be taken too seriously. But it's to his credit that he saw off the high energy performance of banjo-strumming, left-handed fiddling, moonwalking, bearded, bluegrass playin' Cherryholmes as if swatting away a mildly irritating fly.

The syncopated snap of new Douglas ditty Bounce sounds just like it suggests and Weather Report ballad A Remark You Made show off the band's occasional penchant for fusion.

Normally, the atmosphere drops when the main man excuses the band to play solo, however, it was nice to concentrate on Douglas's genius without interruption. "I can't be bothered with all that going off, coming back, encore nonsense," he said after 80 minutes. "I'd rather play another tune. And besides it's dark back there."

It was the biggest applause he received all night.

GENTICORUM / LIADAN

ORAN MOR, GLASGOW

****

DESPITE protesting their fidelity to the traditional music of their Quebec homeland, Genticorum displayed a more elastic attitude in practice, adding electric bass, flute and some expressive Jew's harp to the usual blend of fiddles, foot-stomping and accordion to create a rich musical soup.

They also took mischievous delight in embroidering already outlandish yarns about avian nuptials (seen in Pinson et Cendrouille) with references to social networking website Facebook. The trio were warm company but never allowed these comic expositions to overshadow their natural musical integrity.

Irish all-girl sextet Liadan had already laid the groundwork for a good-natured evening during their support set. They had no difficulty getting the crowd to warm to them, demonstrating a contrasting mix of lively reels and pure a capella singing which complemented the range of the Quebecois tradition.

KARINE POLWART / RACHEL UNTHANK AND THE WINTERSET

CITY HALLS, GLASGOW

****

A SOULFUL set from Rachel Unthank, sister Becky and piano and fiddle accompaniment saw the Geordie songstresses presenting songs from their Mercury Prize-nominated album The Bairns, with the defiant Blue Bleezing Blind Drunk and the aching My Bonny Lad the standouts, even if the defining tone was lullaby.

This was the abiding sentiment of Karine Polwart's performance, too. Swelling her band to a quintet and revisiting some of the seldom-aired numbers in her back catalogue, Polwart found an intimate, inclusive warmth from her audience, soliciting a moving sing-along with a pure, simplified version of the classic hymn Will Your Anchor Hold in the Storms of Life?

Despite its tale of sons lost at sea, The Wife of Usher's Well proved uplifting, as did the deceptively simple Roddy Woomble co-composition If I Could Name Any Name.

Polwart finally bowed to pressure to perform an established favourite at the encore with an unrestrained Follow the Heron.

FRIDAY

LE VENT DU NORD

ABC, GLASGOW

****

Le Vent du Nord ("The North Wind") are one of the hippest exponents of Quebecois music, a tradition inspired by Scots and Irish reels and embellished with acoustic guitars – plus piano and hurdy-gurdy in this case – and the all-important foot percussion, a distinctive hallmark of the sound. Fiddle player Olivier Demers was the man charged with tapping out the beat, and the amplified clatter of his shoes had enticed audience members up to dance by their second number.

The quartet coaxed the crowd on to their feet to accompany a four-part harmony a capella song about an old horse with the plod of their own hoofs.

Later, a lack of French vocabulary skills in the audience scuppered a call and response number, but not their appreciation of this vibrant confluence of Celtic and Gallic styles.

There was also vigorous home support from Ross Ainslie and Jarlath Henderson, two young pipers who attacked their instruments at points with the nosebleed intensity of duelling rock guitarists, but also made time for an unexpected singer/songwriter interlude crowned by Henderson's beautifully tender voice.

MILLISH/BOX CLUB/CATRIONA WATT BAND

STRATHCLYDE SUITE, GLASGOW ROYAL CONCERT HALL

***

WHILE much Americana has been whooping it up this Celtic Connections, Millish proved to be a Michigan-based quintet who, despite their Irish name, ranged boisterously through eastern European, Arabic and swing genres.

One might have regarded them as yet another bunch of eclectic rovers, but they proved slick players, particularly fiddler Brad Phillips and Tyler Duncan on whistles and uilleann pipes, backed by guitar, double bass and crisply deployed drums, fiddle and pipes sometimes flickering off each other.

However, the number which truly endeared them to the audience was – sad though it is, I know, dear reader – a condensed but surprisingly effective instrumental rendition of Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven, pipes taking the Jimmy Page guitar break with rakish panache.

Gaelic singer Catriona Watt and her band opened the evening on a more traditional and true-voiced note. It ended, though, with the piano accordion hit squad that is Box Club, who take no prisoners.

The four-accordion front line of Angus Lyon, John Somerville, Mairearad Green and Gary Innes, backed by double bass, energetically bopping guitarist and sometimes heavy-handed drums, produced a beefy sound, throwing tunes deftly to each other, engaging something alarmingly close to Saturday night squeezebox fever.

CHERRYHOLMES AND FIONA MACKENZIE

ST ANDREW'S IN THE SQUARE, GLASGOW

****

WITH her ethereal voice and distinctive, quirky arrangements, Fiona Mackenzie affords a plaintive drama to the sometimes insubstantial narratives of her songs, impressionistic tunes that brood on doomed relationships, though Everybody Knows and the impassioned Duisg Mo Chridhe are unqualifiedly beautiful.

Family ensemble Cherryholmes reinforced the glowing reputation they established at last year's Celtic Connections. With father Jere on upright bass and mum Sandy Lee on mandolin and guitar, their brood – BJ and Molly Kate on fiddle, Skip on guitar and Cia Leigh on banjo – switch leads and vocals through a variety of musical styles inflected with the bluegrass tradition.

BJ, whose fiddle propels the most foot-stomping numbers, and Cia Leigh especially are the stars.

She brings reservoirs of resentment beyond her tender years to I Can Only Love and you could hear the proverbial pin drop when she joined her mother for No-One to Sing For Me, precipitating a second encore and standing ovation.