Gig review: New Voices: Angus Lyon

New Voices concerts are often quite nervy affairs, as each year's commissioned musicians unveil the fruits of their labour, but while a keen sense of occasion permeated this performance, composed and led by accordionist Angus Lyon, it's hard to imagine a happier-looking bunch than the eight players sharing the stage.

Lyon called his triptych of linked compositions 3G, denoting three generations, a broadly-deployed theme prompted by the successively overlapping lives of his grandfather, his father and himself, all on the same family farm near Biggar, where Lyon now runs his recording studio.

The music had the audience wreathed in smiles, too, in between whooping and whistling their approval. A seamless and often sumptuous mesh of folk, jazz and classical elements, it elaborated on Lyon's intergenerational concept, ingeniously enacting the unpredictable processes by which influence is imparted and expressed, via beautifully-wrought recurrent but evolving motifs. Lyon featured as much on piano and keyboards as accordion, among a line-up also comprising electric and acoustic guitars, fiddle, soprano saxophone, whistle, vibraphone, banjo, bass and drums. When it came to the work's thrilling dynamic peaks, they frequently fulfilled the ensemble ideal of sounding like one big instrument, while some sublime soloing from saxophonist Fraser Fifield and fiddler Innes Watson, in particular, cast a contrasting but no less potent spell during quieter interludes.