Belfast cellist Neil Martin headed into the home stretch with the third of three commissioned concerts for the Linenhall Library, in the good company of his compadres from the West Ocean String Quartet. The late cancellation of Brian Kennedy as guest vocalist seemed hardly to put a dint in their night's repertoire, though the prospect of hearing that Kennedy voice in the hallowed surrounds of Rosemary Street Presbyterian Church must surely have been one that spurred more than a handful of the audience to navigate a path to its front door.
The yin of WOSQ is fuelled by Sligo/Belfast duo Seamus McGuire and Niamh Crowley, while Martin and John Fitzpatrick bring the Belfast yang.
Titled "The Enchanted Way", Neil Martin seemed hell-bent on gathering the somnolent and the impish together, wise to their complementary nature, two jigsaw puzzle pieces primed for one another.
If the cross fertilisation of traditional and classical sounds is the modus vivendi of the WOSQ, then Saturday night's performance proved fruitful beyond most expectations. Drawing from Bach, Carolan, Carl Hession, Niall ╙ Callanβin, Donegal's late lamented fiddle master, John Doherty, as well as gathering a rake of their own set pieces together, Martin and company set sail on a course that re-rooted the traditional pieces in a reflective mood borrowed from the classical, and mischievously explored the classical, foiled by the free-spiritedness of the traditional. Cail∅n Na Gruaige Donna, borrowed from the singing of Seamus Begley, was transformed by McGuire's pensive fiddle; Neil Martin's own Droichead Na nDeor ached beneath the cello's magnificently funereal tones, and John Doherty's Paddy's Rambles Through The Park, was, like a prodigal son returned, intimately familiar and yet fundamentally transformed by its travels across the four bows of the quartet.
The WOSQ have little fear of the microscope, and it's Martin's raffish exuberance that fuel its essence, a voice that wouldn't know the meaning of "precious" if it was landed on its lap by a Bulgari prince. They may need a little more time to truly inhabit one another's space, but the West Ocean String Quartet are already fording rivers that don't even appear on most musician's maps.
