Kevin Courtney checked out JJ72 at the POD and while their angst-rock sound has found a welcome audience, others remain to be convinced. Siobhan Long was at the NCH for the ESB Beo Celtic Music Festival, while the Ulster Orchestra entertained Dermot Gault in Belfast.
Karan Casey, Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill, ESB Beo Celtic Music Festival, NCH
Earlsfort Terrace can be a straitjacket, a chastity belt or a welcoming hearth. Traditional music tiptoes around its environs like a dubious matador sidestepping a bull. Occasionally the music hits the bullseye, but only when the gods truly smile in its direction.
Karan Casey cut a lonesome figure on the cavernous stage of the NCH. Although ably supported by Niall Vallely on low whistle and concertina, and by Robbie Overson on guitar, she battled defiantly to avoid being swamped by her haughty surrounds. Her pristine voice is no less capable than it is in the cosiest of snugs or the feistiest of sessions, but her halting delivery occasionally tripped up her repertoire.
Drawing on a discriminating swathe of material ranging from the Frank Harte bequest, The King's Shilling to Louis De Paor's and John Spillane's Buile Mo Chroí - the latter complete with blues concertina no less - Casey ambled through her material with restraint, along with occasional glimpses of spontaneous combustion. Calling cards such as Who Put The Blood have evolved into higher forms of being in her hands, so there was plenty of evidence that Casey and Co are still stretching themselves and the music, but somehow they struggled to take full possession of this alien venue.
Peadar O'Loughlin and Maeve Donnelly held court in the John Field Room at the interval, but it was a schedule that barely allowed their music to breathe before being cast aside in the headlong rush back to the auditorium.
Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill inhabited every corner of the auditorium. Shuffling through a meandering set that included The Clare Reel, The Pigeon at the Gate and The Custom House, this pair of thoroughbreds underscored the purity of the musical line with a wry sense of humour and a nonchalance worthy of seasoned travellers.
Hayes still manages to startle with his virtuosity and his purity of tone. Borrowing the slow air Mo Mhuirnín Bán from the playing of Mary Bergin, and pairing it with The Galway Bay Hornpipe and The Coolea Jig, both he and Cahill turned the tunes inside out and offered us glimpses of the tunes' greatness that we'd hadn't seen before. Cahill's subdued playing was still a perfect hammock for Hayes's flights of fancy. Joined by Martin's sister and singer, Helen for Moorlough Mary, Cahill sidled up alongside it, coaxing and cosseting it into full flight. Hayes and Cahill might well be the progeny of an illicit coupling between Miles Davis and P. Joe Hayes, or Charlie Parker and Paddy Canny. So what if the rules of biology wouldn't allow it to happen? They've never been shackled by such terrestrial constraints in the past. - Siobhan Long
JJ72, POD
Dublin trio JJ72 have a lot going for them: they're young, noisy and talented, with a cocky, charismatic leader and a drop-dead gorgeous bass player. They also have a lot going against them, not least their sound, a squally, often-overwrought angst-rock, pitched somewhere between Placebo, Muse and a very pissed-off chipmunk. JJ72 have found a welcome audience among young rock fans, and they've already scored Top 20 hits, sellout gigs and a prestigious support slot with U2 at last year's Slane.
With a new album, I To Sky, due out next month, Mark Greaney, Hillary Woods and Feargal Matthews played a "secret" show at Dublin's POD last Friday, to an audience of competition winners and fans who were quick with the redial button. It was not the best time for the gig: singer Mark lost a close family member that same week, but still gave his best despite his bereavement. Under such circumstances, it would be unfair to pick holes in the band's performance, which was understandably more subdued than usual.
Suffice to say that we got a taster of the band's new material; it still won't convert the dadrockers, but at least they're maturing into a more rounded musical unit. The gig began with Mark alone on piano for Nameless, a lighters-aloft anthem in the making. The whole band joined in for City and Half Three, augmented by an additional guitarist. October Swimmer brought cheers of recognition, while Sepent Sky, 7th Wave and Always & Forever kept the momentum going. New single, Formulae, is a strong, self-assured tune, and led into the band's biggest hit to date, Oxygen. Closing track, Oiche Mhaith, was an optimistic end to what must have been one of Mark's hardest nights. - Kevin Courtney
Ulster Orchestra/Adrian Leaper. Ulster Hall, Belfast
Suite No 1 from The Three Cornered Hat ..............................Falla Impresión Nocturno .................................................................Gaos Fantasia para un gentilhombre ...........................................Rodrigo Canto a Sevilla .......................................................................Turina
BBC's free Summer Invitation Concerts have always featured out-of-the-way but (for the most part) rewarding repertoire. Each in the present series features a soprano soloist and a national flavour, in this case Spanish.
The main work here was Turina's Canto a Sevilla from 1926, a colourful but episodic work where vocal items alternate with purely orchestral movements in which the nationalist idiom of Falla is overlaid with the impressionist palate of Respighi. Seville's holy processions, festivities and nocturnal apparitions are evoked; the lively movements were played with flair, the quieter pieces with atmosphere. The main strength of this performance was, however, the beautiful, steady soprano of Ana Rodrigo.
Andrés Gaos may be a new name for most of us. His Impresión Nocturno, written in 1937, is compared with Rachmaninov in the programme notes, but its elegiac dignity had me thinking of Elgar. It was sensitively shaped by Adrian Leaper and sympathetically played by the Ulster Orchestra's string section.
As it happened, the most out-of-the-way pieces were on this occasion also the most rewarding.
Guitarist Eduardo Fernandez was too obviously amplified in the Rodrigo, so while one could admire the artist's dexterity one could not form a proper idea of his tone. The piece itself, a few moments of piquant orchestration notwithstanding, is bland.
The Falla suite is too bitty to stand on its own as a concert piece and here one felt that more flexibility of approach would have produced more Spanish atmosphere. - Dermot Gault
