Breabach & the SNJO, Celtic Connections, Glasgow review: 'surprisingly cohesive'

This unlikely folk-jazz fusion project turned out to be highly effective, writes Jim Gilchrist

Breabach with the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall ★★★★

The concept was an intriguing one: the high-powered Highland band Breabach, currently celebrating their 20th year, teaming up with the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, last heard giving mighty voice to classic Ellington. Would it prove a stroke of genius or a cultural car crash?

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In the event it was highly enjoyable and surprisingly cohesive, at least partly due to arrangements from the likes of Dave Milligan and Fergus McCreadie, both adepts at blending folk and jazz, while SNJO director Tommy Smith is no stranger to folk forays.

This re-imagining of Breabach’s repertoire opened with the Gaelic song Fàs, singer-fiddler Megan Henderson remaining lightsome over some punchy big band interjections, pipers Calum MacCrimmon and Conal McDonagh sticking initially to whistles, before Tommy Smith ripped a vigorous tenor sax break out of it.

Other notable moments included McCreadie's composition Gig Face, Highland pipes sounding as the big band worked up a groove. While vocals occasionally risked swamping, the SNJO sounded almost pastoral accompanying the plaintive Òran Bhràigh Rùsgaich, an exile’s song yearning for his Highland homeland.

Amid the higher-energy forays, a highlight was a stately setting of Edwin Muir’s poem Scotland’s Winter, sung by Henderson and guitarist Ewan Robertson, with a soprano sax interlude from Martin Kershaw and featuring an imperious piobaireachd salute from piper McDonagh. One couldn’t help feeling that some direct improvisational bagpipe-saxophone sparring might have capped things nicely.

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A sparkling opening set from Ontario’s Shane Cook and the Woodchippers saw Scottish music transmogrified not by jazz but by migration, infused potently with Canadian old-time, Cape Breton, bluegrass and much else. Within a quartet of multi-instrumentalists, singers and step dancers, Cook accompanied his fiddling with near-bionic foot percussion, and engaged with Emily Flack in a dazzlingly percussive stepdance duel.

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