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VARIOUS ARTISTS


Explorations: The Sound Of Nonesuch Records – Session Four Milton Court, London


Sean-nós (Irish Gaelic for ‘old style’) could be called Ireland’s traditional art music. Seán Ó Riada re-contextualised the form for another age and that’s what Donnacha Dennehy does in Grá Agus Bás (Love And Death). Performed by vocalist Iarla O’Lionáird and Dublin’s Crash Ensemble, it was the title track of Dennehy’s 2011 Nonesuch release, hence its inclusion in Nonesuch Records’ five 50th birthday bash ‘Sessions’ in London. The piece traverses the conundrum that is orchestrated sean-nós and, not knowing Grá Agus Bás, the album, this reviewer is going to need further chances to disentangle its vocal and instrumental lines. Clearly it is applied sean-nós for another, post-Ó Riada age. Excellent though it was, it is no evasion to say on first hearing it did not give up its secrets.


The Kronos Quartet not only helped cel- ebrate Nonesuch’s 50th anniversary, having released their label debut in 1986, but were only celebrating their own 40th anniversary. Their final appearance presented Folk Songs, a set of fourteen new collaborations with four Nonesuch associates. In order of initial appearances, they were Rhiannon Giddens, Olivia Chaney, Sam Amidon and Natalie Mer- chant. Setting the scene, Kronos opened alone with a setting of Last Kind Words, the Geeshie Wiley blues, with a whole lotta plucking going on. They had encored with it a few hundred metres away at the Barbican a few days earlier. There, in such close proximi- ty to the UK premiere of Ukrainian composer Mariana Sadovska’s devastatingly brilliant Chernobyl. The Harvest, it was overpowered.


Here it blossomed in the right situation. Banjo to string quartet, Giddens opened with Julie, a slave-era narrative that has also fig- ured in Carolina Chocolate Drops set lists. (A slave and her plantation mistress see the Union army approaching and an intense psy- chological drama unfolds.) On Chaney’s first piece, There’s Not A Swain – a setting of a John Fletcher lyric by Henry Purcell – she played guitar. Audacious and totally convinc- ing. Amidon, sticking close to the script, chose to sing as his second piece the shape- note hymn Weeping Mary, explaining in his introduction that his parents (Peter and Mary Alice Amidon) had sung it with the Word of Mouth Chorus on Nonesuch’s Rivers of Delight: American Folk Hymns From the Sacred Harp Tradition (1977). Double points for performance and relevance.


Natalie Merchant only sang two songs – the others had four apiece. She fluffed Butch- er’s Song, getting it right on take two, but her treatment of Johnny Has Gone For A Sol- dier was a highlight, especially with its arrangement integrating voice and string quartet so ably. In context, maybe fancifully, it had a Revolutionary War ambience. The pitfalls of concluding a concert of this nature without resorting to the ensemble finale default was neatly avoided. Giddens belted out a phenomenal puirt a beul or mouth music performance – North Carolina had a sizeable Scottish diaspora. With two more Merchant-class collaborations Nonesuch would have an album.


Ken Hunt


TRADFEST Various Venues, Edinburgh


Whether they opt for the Aye road or the No, in the build-up to September’s big vote Scots are becoming more aware than ever of their folk heritage. Edinburgh’s Tradfest, which ran from 29th April–11th May, was a finger on the national pulse with more than 80 events throughout town, beginning for me with genial Calum Lykam’s Whisky & Tales tour of music-making pubs, and the Crossing Points concert by Kathleen McInnes and Fiona Hunter that cleverly combined versions of the same songs in Gaelic and Scots.


The ghost of William McGonagall, poet and tragedian, entombed in nearby Greyfriars cemetery, lurked in the purple prose. The skir- ling of drone and chanter rang down the spi- ral stairs from the Debating Hall on the top floor of the castle-like Teviot Row House with the virtuosic solo performances by Roddie MacLeod and pibroch master Murray Hender- son on the Highland pipes, and Hamish Moore on the bellows-blown Lowland pipes. The evening ended with a set from young guns Ross Ainslie and Jarlath Henderson on the Lowland pipes and Irish pipes respective- ly, shifting effortlessly between unison and imaginative harmonies, with touches of syn- copation and hints of rock and roll on the hell-for-leather reels.


The hall was the venue for several events. Fresh from a tour of Australia, Brea - bach were in full cry, with tight play between pipers Calum MacCrimmon and James Dun- can Mackenzie on Scotland’s Winter, near the end of which fiddler Megan Henderson put down her instrument and danced, reminding the audience what the music was for. The fol- lowing evening’s Flowers Of Edinburgh gath- ering featured a clutch of the city’s finest folk artists, and closed with a set from host Simon


The Armagh Rhymers at Tradfest


Thoumire and his quartet Keep It Up and its tradish-’n’-all twist on Scottish music.


Harpist Rachel Newton, of the Shee and Emily Portman Trio, brought together music and storytelling in The Changeling, alternat- ing between her songs and airs and the story of a couple who enter the faeries’ world to recover their stolen child. Three Wee Crows combined music and theatre in a perfor- mance of eight pieces of folklore and history in the sporran-sized well garden behind the Scottish Storytelling Centre. With their close- ly choreographed movements and rapid-fire delivery of words and shared lines the women evoked the shape-shifting triple- goddess Bridget of their first tale, and main- tained her spirit.


The opinion of uber-dour Calvinist John Knox concerning such events, masterminded from the house on The Royal Mile in which he lived and which is now the SSC’s home can easily be guessed. The Armagh Rhymers’ mad blend of animal-masked mumming, music, and dance would have launched him on a three-day hellfire rant.


While Tradfest mainly focused on Scot- tish culture there was Mediterranean and Balkan music, and the exquisite twinned strings of Catrin Finch on Celtic harps and Seckou Keita on koras, one with a double- neck making the instrument look from the front like the head and horns of a giant ante- lope that leaped all over the boundaries in the closing concert – which will be remem- bered for a very long time.


The small size of most venues helped bring alive the songs, stories, and tunes. Vari- ety, as always, proved a strength. It’s a pity some of the houses were not more full of bodies for sound baffling. Tradfest is about the roots that break down divisions, no mat- ter what the politicians may contrive.


Tony Montague


Photo: Tony Montague


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