Thriving in an intimate space

Over the past three years Hayes (fiddle) and Cahill (guitar) have taken their remarkable, breathtakingly subtle artistry to some sizeable venues. Indeed, next year the plan is to limit their activities, in Ireland at least, to full-scale concert halls. There can be little doubt now that they have the profile to do it but as Martin once put it himself `the muse has no interest in press cuttings'. Invariably, in my experience, what they do - a contemplative and spiritually charged take on traditional melodies - is enhanced by the intimacy of the space they fill. In the plush, woody ambience of this provincial Heritage Centre with a capacity of perhaps 150, that view was proven true once again.

It was thrilling to hear almost an album's worth of new material, and to hear the development particularly of Cahill's guitar technique. Influenced no doubt by a beautiful new instrument, he played even fewer notes than usual - typically accompanying the laments and slow jigs with intermittent cascades among diminished and unresolved chords, creating a shimmering, harp-like effect. A Blasket Islands air, associated with fairy lore, was the apogee of the duo's further developed experimentation with jazz voicings and deconstructed melody/harmony playing. Periodically wailing over the seas in mythic grief, pulling dissonances and chord drones from his fiddle against the tension of Cahill's filigrees, Hayes used the tune to launch an extraordinary, 30-minute medley climaxing in something akin to Vivaldi. A live album is promised; another album of the year can be safely predicted.