127 f STRING SISTERS
Between Wind And Water String Sisters SISTERS118
String Sisters is an international ‘super-group’ comprising six of the world’s top fiddlers plus a top-notch quartet of piano, guitar, bass and drums. They blend Scottish, Irish and Nordic traditions into a seamless repertoire. The band’s line-up is: Annbjørg Lien (hardanger fiddle, Norway), Catriona Macdonald (fiddle, Shetland), Emma Härdelin (fiddle and vocals, Sweden), Liz Carroll (fiddle, USA), Liz Knowles (fiddle, USA), Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh (fiddle & vocals, Ireland), plus Tore Bruvoll (guitar, Norway), Dave Milligan (piano, Scotland), Conrad Molleson (bass, Scotland), James Mackintosh (percussion, Scotland).
Their new album is a satisfyingly diverse mix of traditional and self-composed instru- mental folk music and songs rooted in differ- ent traditions. Open To The Elements is a surging set of Irish and Scottish reels. The Crow’s Visit is a Liz Carroll/ Annbjørg Lien tune-set with an easy Americana swing to it. The elegant, joyous Vinterfolk was composed by Tore Bruvoll for a winter folk-concert series in Oslo.
My favourite track is the ancient, anony- mously-composed Trotto. Liz Knowles found this darkly-exhilarating dance tune in a col- lection named Medieval Instrumental Dances. It is close to being a jig, it is intoxi- cating, and it takes me back to folk festivals in France and Spain.
Another standout is the fabulously Nordic-sounding Hjaltland set, comprising traditional Norwegian and Shetland tunes, and featuring some arrestingly creative jazz- piano and percussion from Dave Milligan and James Mackintosh. Also splendidly Scandina- vian-sounding is the Tiger In The Galley set, comprising the Swedish traditional Valsjö- Tigern’s Polska and the swaggering Jarl Squad, composed by Liz Carroll for the mod- ern Scottish Vikings she met at the Up Helly Aa festival in Shetland.
There are some fine songs here too. Det
Bor I Mina Tankar is a traditional Swedish song of unrequited love and betrayal, beauti- fully sung by Emma Härdelin with some evocative, atmospheric, spine-tingling accom- paniment on piano, bass and percussion. Mó Níon Ó was composed by Mairéad Ní Mhaon- aigh for her daughter Nia, of whom Mairéad says: “Having her has been the biggest gift with which I was ever bestowed.”
This is an album of life-affirming music that savours deeply the gifts that the universe bestows.
stringsisters.net Paul Matheson
DAGADANA Meridian 68 Karrot Kommando KK89
In the past it’s been difficult to fit Polish band DagaDana into the fRoots remit. Musically clever and innovative, with very creative art- work, pack design and promo, but despite strong personal connections with and inspira- tions from the Polish folk scene the music on their records has largely been more intelli- gent pop/rock/ jazz/ electronic than roots.
This one, though, is devoted to interpre- tations of traditional songs from Poland and Ukraine, influenced by their visits to China and collaboration with musicians there. Thus the CD title: the 68th meridian runs exactly midway between the places where the album was recorded: Czestochowa and Beijing.
The band is Daga Gregorowicz and Dana
Vynnytska on vocals, electronics and key- boards, Mikołaj Pospieszalski on bass, violin and vocals and drummer Bartosz Mikołaj
Nazaruk. They’re joined by substantial guests, among them three more of the Pospieszalski family including Szczepan on trumpet and Marcin on violin, and on six of the eleven tracks Chinese cellist Aiys Song and the morin khuur and throat-singing of Mongolian Hassibagen.
It’s a hard one to describe or sum up which, for me, is A Good Thing. By turns anthemic, liquid pianistic, violin-sweeping, soft-voiced, strident hard-voiced, rock – and that’s just the first track. Onward into scat- ting, heavenly choir, electronic swoops and warbles, systems patterns, chugging cello, jazz-rock, big brass shots, cheery whistling over growling khoomei, hefty rock, tense drone serenity, beaty poppiness, ending in a velvety melismatic a capella rendering of a wesnianka, a spring song. There’s never been a treatment of Polish traditional music like it.
It comes in a desirable hardback pack, too, using striking designs by Ukrainian icon artist Olya Kravchenko.
dagadana.pl Andrew Cronshaw
GÖRAN MÅNSSON & FRIENDS Ol’ Jansa Caprice CAP 21899
Olof Jönsson, known as Ol’ Jansa, played the breathy wooden whistle local to his province of Härjedal mostly in private, but his playing and tunes were found so interesting by oth- ers that he was recorded three times by Swedish Radio between 1935 and 1951, and others of his tunes were transcribed. The local whistles pretty much fell out of use, but as their playing has revived Ol’ Jansa’s tunes have become core repertoire.
Göran Månsson is Sweden’s leading play- er of these instruments, as well as their classically-evolved kin, the range of recorders (including the huge Paetzold sub-contrabass recorder he played as a member of the last great incarnation of the Finnish-Swedish band Gjallarhorn). His tones are always thick and rich, his playing fluid, with nothing of the feeble, thin, schooly tooty-tootle that the word ‘recorder’ evokes in many of us.
He was commissioned by Caprice and the
Svenskt Visarkiv (Centre for Swedish Folk Music and Jazz Research) to make new inter- pretations of Ol’ Jansa’s tunes. Playing Här- jedal, Månmarka and Offerdal whistles, and
Dagadana
flauto d’amore and bass recorder, he’s gath- ered a similarly versatile band of Emma Ek Åhlberg (fiddle, harmonium), Patrik Käll- ström (fiddle, harmonium, melodica), Martin von Schmalensee (double and electric bass, guitar, producer) and Japanese koto virtuoso Karin Nakagawa.
The basic tunes, strong in their own right, are clearly stated, losing none of their melodic spirit and appeal – indeed Ol’ Jansa, who died in 1953, himself makes a couple of cameo appearances – but the group, whose members are leaders in disparate but con- nected musical fields of classical, traditional and jazz, takes their essence further in ways that would astonish and I’m sure delight him, and for us make a broad, rich listen.
Examples: the opening Rallarmarsch
jogs, shuffles and builds, then Nagakawa’s 25-string koto, used like a harp during much of the album, opens a very Japanese window with Månsson’s whistle in a shakuhachi role before locking into a lovely spacious polska treatment. Elsewhere harmonium and dou- ble bass chug, underpinning joyful jazz- improvising whistles, fiddle and sometimes melodica squee, or elegant harmonies and counterpoint. Härjedalen is a wide, airy land- scape over a tense travelling rhythm, while in the dark, slow Andlig Visa the bass recorder booms the melody under and around koto droplets and serene fiddle.
www.capricerecords.se Andrew Cronshaw
ULAID & DUKE SPECIAL
A Note Let Go Ulaid & Duke Special UDS1CD
John McSherry and Donal O’Connor with gui- tarist Sean Og Graham form the traditional trio Ulaid whose debut album was a mightily impressive affair. For their latest effort they have joined forces with maverick singer-song- writer Duke Special (Peter Wilson) in a cele- bration of music and spoken word with a strong Belfast link.
Recorded live over two nights in Analog Catalogue Studios in the Mourne Mountains with the four collaborators working as a cre- ative unit, A Note Let Go lyrically focuses on the work of Francis J Bigger whose vast col- lection of poems, songs and documents are stored at Belfast’s Central Library. Drawing on separate yet equally expansive worlds, the fusion of traditional forms and contemporary
Photo: Dominika-Dyka Treti-Pivni
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