[caption id="attachment_70807" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill. "]
Two Saturdays ago I was out among more than a dozen other musicians from in and out of town to celebrate local trad maven Pat Gavin’s birthday. It was legendary craic, and around half two, flute player Brian Holleran and I found ourselves deeply engaged in conversation about the idea of the trad “show” and a solo gig Brendan Begley put on earlier this year in Cleveland.
Holleran told me that despite it being his first solo concert, Begley beguiled the audience with stories, jokes, poetry (yes, he read poetry) and conversation, and turned what might simply have been a couple of tunes in front of a few folks into an engrossing stream-of-consciousness musical experience that no one would soon forget. People came for the music, but they stayed for the Begley.
West Kerry’s Begley family is justifiably famous. It boasts an unfair share of musicians, and while there are similarities in the music each makes, the ways they engage listeners – live, and on record – are distinctively individual.
Take the fiddle-box CDs Brendan and his brother Seamus have each recorded. Both are excellent, must-have albums. Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh and Brendan’s “A Moment of Madness” (2010) has a wild bounce to it that lacks affectation and conveys a willful desire on each player’s part to actually get lost in the other’s playing. What they’ve captured is a “live” spirit that’s very hard to put on record, and they’ve done it brilliantly.
Oisin Mac Diarmada and Seamus’s album “Le Chéile” (2012) is outstanding for different reasons. Their tunes leap out with an electrifying command that seizes listeners from the beginning of the album to its end. Oisin’s lively swing and technical control (as heard, for example, in his work with Téada and the Innisfree Céilí Band) articulate perfectly with Seamus’s powerful, energetic playing. Seamus’s vocal tracks provide astonishing and beautiful contrast to the duo’s instrumental work and evoke a depth of music few possess. Indeed, despite being rooted in the same West Kerry terroir, the two Begley albums illustrate impressive stylistic diversity and nuance – it’s a shame they’re not over more often.
Of course, there’s nothing like experiencing great nuanced Irish music live, and this is what can be expected Friday, when New York City’s Irish Arts Center presents “Masters Of Tradition,” an exploration of old-fashioned style and raw musical virtuosity deftly curated by fiddle icon, and the show’s artistic director, Martin Hayes.
Borne out of an eponymous annual festival in Bantry, Co. Cork, Hayes’s goal was to bring a spectrum of Ireland’s “most authentic” traditional music to international audiences. To achieve this, he assembled an absolutely outstanding group of musicians, including Iarla Ó Lionáird (vocals), Dennis Cahill (guitar), Máirtín O’Connor (accordion), Cathal Hayden (fiddle), Seamie O’Dowd (guitar) and David Power (uilleann pipes). Each of these musicians is worth seeing individually, but having them together in one show is something very special, indeed. For the concert, Hayes has simply asked them to “be themselves” within a carefully planned framework that he feels best showcases the thoughtful introspection of rural idealism and the energetic extroversion of cosmopolitan adventure. Hayes has worked with all of these musicians before and has developed a feel for what their music is all about. It promises to be an excellent evening and one trad music lovers shouldn’t miss.
