. . .And One From Shetland

I'm fairly certain I've mentioned Jenna Reid's fiddling before, but her voice is every bit as warm and lovely as her skill with the bow. Thanks to Bandcamp, you can listen to "The Hams of Muckle Roe,*" and thanks to Walk Shetland, you can read about the Hams themselves.

*Really, I'm putting that kind of mildly. Jenna Reid has two entire solo CD's up on that site, both of them very much worth listening to: Laughing Girl and Morning Moon.

"When the Dandenong from Melbourne Sailed. . ."

Well, here it is, four days into the New Year. Don't you think it's time for a song, with words and that sort of thing? Here's Bruce Molsky and his fiddle with "Wreck of the Dandenong."


The very effective chorus is apparently a recent innovation. A more traditional setting of the song,  along with the lyrics, and even newspaper quotes about the wreck, can be found here at An Australian Folk Song A Day.

A Thing Very Worth Doing

G.K. Chesterton famously said that a thing worth doing was worth doing badly. Playing through the joyful intricacies of Bach's music is definitely high on my list of things worth that risk. Fortunately for us, though, Chris Thile is not obliged to do it badly.

Tried and True

Of the many tracks, artists and CD's I've scribbled down, meaning to write something about them here someday, I feel the most remiss about neglecting the two I mention today. I have most certainly not been at all remiss in listening to them over the past couple of years. 

The set "Donald & Gordon's" from Píob is Fidheall by Nova Scotians Kenneth and Angus MacKenzie wandered through my internet radio list and I thought it would be worth having the CD, if only for that tight, driven track. As it turned out, there isn't a remotely bad or unexciting track in the lot. Indeed, if I remember correctly, the only one I have ever skipped habitually was 4, "When Harry Met Shelly," and that only in the time my pipe band was learning a version of the first tune "Highlander's Farewell to Ireland" ("Highland Harry") for our MSR, leaving me quite in terror of getting the MacKenzie's very contagious setting stuck in my head where it might be confused with the setting I was supposed to be learning.

Despite the title (yes, that does mean "Pipes and Fiddle") the CD is far from minimalist as far as arrangements are concerned. Angus, the brother who is doing the piping in this case, also plays the whistle, and there are guest artists variously supplying guitar, percussion, banjo, bouzouki, and piano, insuring that the album never settles into a single, predictable sound. Better, if the musical presentation is quite impressively polished, it is truly polished to be its brightest, its most vivacious, not carefully reigned in by the studio setting.

But isn't much use just telling you about it, when you can listen to it here. There is also a bio of the MacKenzie brothers (taken from the CD jacket, in fact) on the website of the Celtic Music Interpretive Centre. 

One aspect of the musicianship on Píob is Fidheall that was a bit of a revelation to me was the use of the piano. I knew piano was fairly common in Cape Breton music, but it was, perhaps, hearing a CD's worth of it in conjunction with the pipes--and not merely as a rhythm instrument, even in that setting--that underlined its delightful versatility. The clincher: there is one track on the album that strays entirely from the pipes-and-fiddle theme, and that is a piano solo  ("Calum's Cille Combo") by a third MacKenzie brother, Calum. You just don't hear reels on the piano every day. Or at least I don't. . .

Or at least I didn't until I decided (and very quickly) that I must have More of That Sort of Thing. Quite fortunately, Mac Morin, who did the rest of the piano work on Píob is Fidheall, has a solo album (self-titled), and it's splendid. Again, it's an album of very Cape Breton music with a variety of accompanying musicians, so the soundscape changes a bit from track to track. I have no aesthetic reasons for choosing "Hughie's Old Place" as my favourite set: I just never manage to tire of hearing "Bog A' Lochan," as a piano tune. But it would be a bit more comprehensive to state that, as with the previous CD I mentioned, there isn't a track I don't admire. And, as with the previous CD, it seems to wear mighty well.

There are plenty of clips here.

Putting the Happy in Happy New Year

    May you all be on your way to having your best year yet. I did make a small blog-related resolution this year; I took a notion to post every day in January. The slight reasoning behind this is that I have amassed enough intentions for music-related posts to get me through a month, a sort of tune a day concept (with perhaps a review or two thrown in). There is really no theme to it other than that.
    Anyway, to kick things off in a lively fashion, here is the first tune, or rather, set, in this case, some reels from Session A9. It's a MySpace link, so hopefully you are not bombarded with ads--if you are though, it's worth weathering them, particularly, says I, for the last tune, "Road to Errogie."

You Don't See One of Those Every Day

Hello, hello. Here's a video of a piano-ish thing which has the distinction of being designed by Leonardo da Vinci*. All of the articles springing up in its wake seem inclined to refer to a "wacky piano," or a "crazy piano," whereas nobody seems to have thought of "the world's most ambitious hurdy-gurdy." But it sounds quite nice. If you don't have time to take in the whole thing, it's worth at least listening to the nifty string-quartet effect on Boccherini's "Celebrated Minuet" at 6:44.


*It is by no means an inconsiderable distinction either that it would appear that the fellow who is playing it built it.

Something for the Weekend

This is a fun game with a simple premise, if not necessarily a simple solution. The player listens to an audio clip and decides which language is being spoken. The list of possible languages lengthens as the game progresses. (I would write more, but according to my score in the first couple of tries, I really should be somewhere brushing up on my Hungarian. . .or Bangala. . .or Maltese.)