Banjo, accordion, bodhran and harp make for an odd ensemble, but that's what Music Network has put on the road in the capable hands of, respectively, Ceili House presenter, Kieran Hanrahan, Mary Staunton, Tommy Hayes, and schoolteacher Michael Rooney, fresh-faced Senior Examinor of the new trad exams pioneered by Comhaltas and the RIAM.
The tunes are standard session jigs, reels and hornpipes, with the odd song from Staunton and virtuouso declaration from Hayes, his edgy energy bouncing off his old Stockton's Wing comrade, Hanrahan.
Hanrahan nursed Hayes through a Jew's harp rendition of The Maid Behind the Bar, prefaced by a yarn about a long-ago Fleadh. For the sake of audibility on the Jew's harp, he sat across the table from the adjudicator, a woman in a white blouse. After blowing and sucking through a jig and a reel, he launched into a polka, and cut his lip. But he kept on going . . .
The combined session sound would be nothing stranger than you'd hear floating out of a Feakle pub in the high season. But on the solo outings, Staunton made some lovely finger-fluttering work of reels like The Mother and Child or a set by Liz Carroll, on the expressive reeds of a little Castagnari button-box.
Rooney's harp skills are extraordinary. You wished Hayes would tone down his bodhran when Rooney led off with Mulcahy's reel, or the sparkling innocence of Peadar O Riada's tune, Sport.
Hanrahan excelled himself with Tom Bhetty's Waltz, a tune whose insides he knows well, or The Cup of Tea reel with his little side-steps to the stab-notes, and that ould slamdunk of the bottom string.
Hayes made everyone's eyes water with a spoons solo, explaining how to use the fat on your legs to modulate the metallic rattle. Another four-minute jaw-dropping Cosy Powell bodhran solo put some fire in the belly of a set of reels.
Other than such showpieces, not the most incendiary gig I've ever seen, but a grand, good-humoured ould evening for all that.
This show tours tonight to Culturlann na Ceile, Ashbourne, then to the Mullingar Arts Centre (Saturday), the Alcock and Brown Hotel, Clifden (Monday), the Tullyarvin Mill, Buncrana (Tuesday) and the Linenhall, Castlebar (Wednesday).
