Some musicians amble along, learning a tune here, a song there, gently honing and shaping their playing as they garner experience through sessions, border crossings and air spaces. Others catapult themselves into the stratosphere with every passing year. On Wednesday night, Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill made praiseach of evolutionary theory, having leapfrogged their way past the musical equivalent of aeons in the past five years alone.
Starting out as players with considerable talent, they've now metamorphosed into musicians of unconscionable virtuosity, leaving their audience gasping at the end of virtually every set.
Set? Hayes and Cahill don't buy into the traditional notion of three or four tune sets. No Sir. Theirs are full-bodied suites, concoctions of up to seven tunes, one segueing into the other with a seamless precision.
From the first suite of reels, encompassing The Walls Of Liscarroll, Castle Kelly Reel, The Clare Reel and The Pigeon At The Gate (and that's only the half of it), Hayes built from a stark naked opening (Cahill's guitar merely plucking a fleet-footed path between the fiddle) to a roof-raising, bow-bursting finale on The New Custom House. The duo's playing has evolved now to a point where they not only read one another's nuances (as they scuttle down all manner of unlikely pathways in search of a suitable accompanying tune), but they seem to share a mental space normally reserved for twin siblings. Theirs is a concord and an affinity that most musicians lust after, but few ever acquire.
Dennis Cahill's style of playing has undergone a serious makeover, despite the fact that his accompaniments have never been anything less than inspiringly cerebral. These days he chooses the space between the notes as his playground, pirouetting with the agility of a Nureyev, with guitar and gorgeous mandolin as his only safety net.
As Martin Hayes so accurately explained, he and Dennis Cahill choose to "deconstruct, distill and eliminate" as they re-invent old tunes, occasionally marrying them to the subtlest of jazz guitar accompaniments.
It was a night that would surely have pleased Martin's father, P. Joe Hayes, who recently passed away.
But it would equally have tickled the sensibilities of Django Reinhart. Sublime music. Remarkable musicians. A night fit for gods and groupies alike.
