KAREN TWEED


Essentially Invisible To The Eye MayMonday Adventures MMA6327002


A mad mix of accordion styles: Latin, Musette, Irish, English, Scandinavian and modern jazz - and that’s just the first track on this long overdue solo album from Gloucester’s answer to Phil Cunningham. In fairness, there are only five tracks on the disc, averaging eight minutes each, so there’s room to pack a few different ideas into each one. According to the notes, Karen has selected musical memories and is melding them into something like an autobiography here. “Each melody was chosen with specific people, places, happenings and memories in my mind”, she says, which partly explains why each track carries a person’s name. It may also account for some surprise inclusions - in particular Edelweiss and Que Sera Sera - as we have all lived through the influences of Julie Andrews and terrible pop songs.


Karen Tweed’s experience of accordion music stretches wider than most. From the Irish tradition where she made a name for herself, to the English and Scandinavian sounds of The Kathryn Tickell Band, Swåp, and more recent collaborations with Finnish maestro Timo Alakotila, Karen has garnered music throughout northern Europe. Her interest in Latin accordion - Piazzola tangos and the like - has grown over the years, and she also gleefully ignores boundaries and taboos, leading to a mix of styles in her current Number 1 Ladies’ Accordion Orchestra which is beyond categories. About the only thing missing from this solo recording is Cajun music - so watch this space!


Robins by Jon Swayne, a virtuosic little waltz, sits alongside French and Spanish street music. Gráda’s slip jig The Striking Clock, followed by a couple of great traditional jigs, flows perfectly into two Tweed originals. Raudimic by French hurdy-gurdy genius Gilles Chabernat follows a traditional Irish polka and precedes the modern Scottish accordion challenge Washington Square Park. There’s more, from people and places unfamiliar to me, but it all fits beautifully around and through Karen’s own music. I can’t resist highlighting Pamela Rose Grant, a stupendous slow strathspey by Alasdair Fraser, which Karen plays superbly.


Tweed compositions account for about a third The Living Tradition - Page 48


of Essentially. They range from the sweet and lyrical Ffion’s Waltz to the gutsy Miles Bourrée. Her music is descriptive, engaging, not as wild or as jarring as some, but still with a range of tones which can express all the emotion of a full and varied life. No Better Friends and Our Peter mark Karen’s tendency to write cracking tunes for her nearest and dearest. Mattie And Karine’s is another one to be proud of. The entire album, start to finish, is on unassisted solo piano accordion, a 72-bass Pigini: those who have seen Ms Tweed live, manicured and behatted as is fitting for a lady of her stature, will appreciate what a wall of sound, and at times what a joyous unholy racket, can come from this particular solo piano accordion. There are no excesses here, nothing to frighten the horses, but there is a great deal of warmth and feeling, and a musical life shared for a brief period. You can sample this exceptional recording at www.karentweed.com, but for the full effect you really need the whole CD, box and all.


Alex Monaghan GILLEBRÍDE MACMILLAN


Air Fòrladh Dealas Ltd DEALAS01CD


compromising his ideals in any measure. Here we encounter examples of puirt a beul (one’s set to a pair of old pipe tunes) alongside a powerful song of the clearances (An Teid Thu Leam A Ribhinn Lurach), an acerbic Jacobite song (Tearlach Mac Sheumais), and an infectious travelling-song from the pen of Donald MacIntyre (The Paisley Bard), while a delicious little ditty sung for the Uist dance The First Of August (An Tàillear Mòr) craftily complements a satirical swipe at a bad dancer (Iain Mac ’ic Fhionghainn); there’s also a song described as a sea shanty, whose gentle lilt seems worlds away from that harsh discipline.


Whatever he sings though, Gillebrìde’s technique is both formidable and wholly natural, his diction is exemplary in its clarity, and the rounded, warm and rich timbre of his voice is both distinctive and welcoming. He’s further blessed, with sympathetic production by Deirdre Morrison, who has provided light- toned and sensitive accompaniments utilising in various combinations her own fiddle, guitar (Ewan MacPherson), bouzouki (Steve Byrne), piano (Mhàiri Hall), clarsach (Rachel Hair), pipes or whistle (Fred Morrison) or bodhrán (Martin O’Neill) – all familiar and highly respected names on the Scottish traditional music circuit. There’s also just one short track (Mo Nighean Donn ’s Toil Leam Thu) on which Gillebrìde sings unaccompanied. This disc furnishes further proof that songs sung in Gaelic need not be considered inaccessible (as singers like Julie Fowlis and Joy Dunlop have already shown us). And it comes with full texts and translations and explanatory notes.


David Kidman


BILL SMITH A Country Life: Songs and Stories


of a Shropshire Man Musical Traditions MTCD351


Gillebrìde MacMillan, from South Uist (the Milton), comes from a family with a strong Gaelic background, and has always heartily espoused Gaelic traditions; now working in the Celtic and Gaelic Department at Glasgow University, he also sings (stunningly well, as you will hear), and has won both the prestigious Royal National Mòd Gold and Traditional medals.


Air Fòrladh is the followup to Gillebrìde’s earlier CD, Thogainn Ort Fonn!, which came out in 2005, and it presents a highly persuasive, and excellently sung, collection of Gaelic songs with which he has a personal connection of some kind. This may be a song’s authorship (many were written by bards from his native Uist or nearby Benbecula), or the singer from whom it was learnt (again with origins in Uist or Benbecula); one song, the jaunty Fòrladh Alasdair Bhàin, even fulfils both criteria, having been learnt from the singing of Gillebrìde’s grandfather and composed by two men who had served in the First World War with him. On this new disc, Gillebrìde intelligently intersperses different types of song to provide maximum contrast and listenability, yet without


Bill is probably a name unfamiliar to most readers of this magazine - or of most other magazines. Not surprising really as he gave up singing most of his repertoire many years before these recordings were made at the start of the 1980’s. When they were made by his son, Bill was in his early 70’s and in deteriorating health, unfortunately passing away in 1987. Despite his age there is a strength in the delivery of the songs. An agricultural worker whose forebears were prolific singers, Bill followed in their footsteps. He enjoyed learning songs at school but was reluctant to perform. Eventually his main stage was in the pubs in the local area in the company of other singers.


Whilst Bill might not be a familiar name, some of his songs will be...The Outlandish Knight, Henry My Son, The Cuckoo, Down The Road, All Jolly Good Fellows, McCaffery, to mention a few. But many are just fragments as that was all he could remember - the majority being less than a minute long.


Because he was increasingly reluctant to be recorded, the quality of the recordings is not the highest. Everyday sounds creep in: the fire cracking, cutlery being laid on the table, what sounds like a clock chiming! What comes


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