Reviews

Irish Times writers review the latest goings on at the Galway Arts Festival and David Kitt in concert.

Galway Arts Festival: Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment/Bury

Leisureland, Galway

Period-instrument orchestras, like the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, are premised on the advantages of historical instruments over their modern counterparts. But in the hot and very muggy environment that Leisureland provided for the Galway Arts Festival debut of the OAE, there were more than a couple of moments where the extra tuning stability of the modern string family would have been welcome.

That caveat aside, the concert was pretty much a pleasure from start to finish.

The lightness of the players' touch, the spring in their rhythm, always suggesting a felt connection with dance, and their feathery lyricism kept the sound clear and alive in a venue that has a cramped dry acoustic, and where larger symphonic forces regularly struggle.

The programme centred on three works by Vivaldi, concertos for two and four violins from his L'Estro Armonico, the soloists interweaving with balletic ease, and an unidentified cello concerto, with Sarah McMahon (member of both the Callino String Quartet and the Irish Baroque Orchestra) leading by example in nimbleness in the outer movements and by eloquence in the slow movement.

The effect in the cello concerto was like a fantastical strain of chamber music, rather than the more familiar scenario of soloist versus the rest.

The programme also included a programmatic concerto grosso by Locatelli, The Lament of Ariadne, with lots of opportunities for mood-painting by Alison Bury, who directed the concert from the violin.

The closing piece was Geminiani's re-working of Corelli's "Folia" Sonata as a concerto grosso.

This was delivered as a real tour-de-force and it seemed to leave the listeners wanting an encore that never came.

It's always best to leave an audience looking for more rather than feeling they've had too much.

As things stand, I suspect that the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment will be welcome back in Galway any time.

If the festival does have them back, let's hope someone gets around to providing adequate identification of the music played and the players playing it, and perhaps some programme notes, too.

Michael Dervan

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David Kitt

Spirit Store, Dundalk

The man they call Kittser has been quiet of late; over the past while; he has been having managerial "issues" (now solved, by all accounts), as well as whittling a number of new songs into shape.

A new album is forthcoming - Not Fade Away, which could be a pointed title considering that in the past few years David Kitt's lo-fi acoustic stylings have been overshadowed by the emergence of more lo-fi acts than we could ever want to cope with.

Undertaking a series of low-key gigs, therefore, is a good way by which to road-test new material, particularly when you have a couple of new band members.

This gig was sectioned into two (and one presumes all these low-key outings will be similarly structured): the first half was a run-through of the new album, the second segment consisted of crowd favourites and nominal hits.

As first impressions go, the new material sounds more robust than what we are used to from Kitt; any further comment would be unfair, as if there is one thing we have learned about Kitt's music over the past seven or so years is that it needs time to settle, to find its own level.

It's outwardly naive, occasionally awkward, very likeable, a tad dishevelled (a bit like Kitt himself, perhaps?), but repeated listening to his music highlights work that has a special talent for pulling melodies out of very thin air.

In the past, Kitt's aimlessness (more irritating than charming, to be honest) threatened to suck the life out of his material, and while there are still elements of such disregard for a clocking-in/clocking-out song structure, it bodes well for him that in this performance he seems to have struck a very serviceable balance.

Kitt encored with a pair of songs that saw him and the band enter the zone of Zen-like indifference to time and space (and the fact that people have to get up for work the following day).

The music is rugged and gorgeous - riff-laden, raga-driven, a total bullseye.

David Kitt plays Dolan's, Limerick (tomorrow); Spirit Store, Dundalk, Co Louth (Sun, July 30)

Tony Clayton-Lea