Danú/Eileen Ivers Beo at the Celtic Music Festival in the National Concert Hall in Dublin is reviewed by Siobhán Long; Hanafin, RTÉCO in the same venue is reviewed by Martin Adams and Four Solos in various locations in Temple Bar is reviewed by Michael Seaver
Danú/Eileen Ivers Beo Celtic Music Festival, NCH, Dublin
This year's Beo Celtic Music Festival is emerging as something of a rebel with a cause. Having played it safe in programming terms for a few years, they've taken unexpected risks this year, and the results are more than a little interesting.
Danú have been steadily building their audience over the past three or four years, and the road miles are showing - in the best possible sense. Far from the attention-deficit disordered outfit that could so easily have dominated (with henchman Donncha Gough steering their path on uilleann pipes and bodhrán), they've wisely welcomed Kerry flute and whistle player and singer, Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh into the fold. The balance Nic Amhlaoibh achieves, armed with one of the earthiest and most distinctive voices not just in traditional circles but anywhere, is considerable.
With a repertoire that spans Tommy Sands and Bruce Molsky, Nic Amhlaoibh is a singer whose palette is sufficiently eclectic to gather the best (and not just the purest notes) around her.
Tunes jostle animatedly alongside the unlikeliest of companions too.
King George IV Strathspey cruises alongside Charlie Lennon's The Road To Cashel, with a Danú original, Cafferky's Shine, rounding off the set.
Donal Clancy's guitar plays string games with Eamon Doorley's bouzouki, with Éamon's brother Tom's flute weaving an almightily complex pattern inbetween the cross stitches.
Special guest, John Sheehan of The Dubliners added a tincture of mature nonchalance to the night, sharing his own pieces, including The Impish Hornpipe, with the band's master fiddler Oisín MacAuley. A finely honed gathering whose only error has been to under-sell their wares on this side of the Atlantic - to date.
Eileen Ivers and her band, Emigrant Soul, brought more than a Bronx sensibility to the music. Countering Danú's performance with an undeniably bold, though never brash, collection of tunes and songs, her appetite for cross-fertilisation left some listeners' mouths agape and others' teeth clenched - most definitely a desirable reaction to any musician with a pulse worth taking.
Ivers' blend of the raw tradition with unlikely elements of soul, African and world music lost its way betimes, particularly in the feedback fury of the fiddle that kick-started her final set of reels, and in the hokey inclusion of a quartet of dancers from Dublin's O'Shea School of Dance (particularly after the double-jointed delights of La Bottine Souriante's dancer, Sandy Silva, on Beo's opening night). Singer Tom McDonnell's overwrought delivery of the maudlin Ron Kavana song, Reconciliation, jarred a little too. But still, Ivers' openness to alternative influences is revealing of a passionate insistence on bringing the music with her into the 21st century, instead of preserving it in aspic for future generations to marvel at, but not to inhale deep into their lungs. Siobhán Long
Hanafin, RTÉCO Field NCH, Dublin
Falla: Ritual Fire Dance; Ibert: Divertissement; Villa-Lobos: Fantasy for Soprano Saxophone and Orchestra; Weill: Threepenny Opera Suite (exc.); Matthew Hindson: RPM.
Kevin Field's concert with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra at the National Concert Hall, suggested a conductor who is passionately interested in communication. In a programme of accessible music from the 20th-century he was always in command - good at suggesting by hand and body-language what is just around the corner.
Falla's Ritual Fire Dance opened the concert and epitomised its best points and its limitations. One consistent strength was the precise definition of dynamics, including some deliciously quiet playing from strings in the Falla, and from wind during excerpts from Weill's Threepenny Opera Suite. Another strength was firm definition of character, and this produced plenty of contrast between the six movements of Ibert's satirical Divertissement.
The most telling limitation was rhythmic. In the Falla and even in the lyrical sections of the Ibert, energy tended to be local - bustle rather than forward motion. In combination with the precision of ensemble and characterisation, it produced an impression of playing more concerned with efficiency than with subtle feeling.
Subtlety was not in Matthew Hindson's mind in 1998, when he completed RPM. This Australian composer's musical image of fast driving features a characteristic fusion of materials from the worlds of rock and concert music.
It is all gesture and no process, with sequences of repeated rhythms and pitches working in a cut-and-paste, filmic way.
The most complete performance of the concert came from Kevin Hanafin. His solo playing in Villa-Lobos's Fantasy for Soprano Saxophone and Orchestra was beautifully sinuous, and deftly negotiated the expressive and stylistic complexities of this densely written music.Martin Adams
Four Solos Various locations in Temple Bar
Temple Bar's Dancing in the Streets programme presented solo performances over three days and, on Thursday night, all four works were performed together at various locations.
Curated by Irish company Rex Levitates, the dances tackled the demands of presenting a sole body in a space. Without another foil, the solo performer must set up a dialectic relationship to the performing space or within the one body. For the most part the choreographers set the body against a neutral palette and brought the focus firmly on the body.
Liz Roche's Gasp was presented as a work-in-progress during last year's International Dance Festival Ireland, when she worked with mentor Rosemary Butcher. Within the large hall in SS Michael & John's, she places the audience on four sides around a small white dance floor, and this proximity intensifies the audience's relationship to the performer.
Roche exploits this with direct interaction, touching or tracing with her hands the contours of audience members. The movement, repetitive and extreme, oozes inner struggle and even points of rest are unstable: she lies on the ground with her chest resting on the ground, but her legs are crossed and pelvis tilted away from the ground, ready to drag her up again and repeat her movements.
Neutral points of rest are also absent from Christine Gaigg's how to be tool, performed in the Space Upstairs in Project. Dancer Milli Bitterli's body is constantly jittering, limbs moving independently and driven by a constant pulse in the score that was amplified by the hammering of a hand-held stone. A brightly lit square floor bound her performance, unlike Jenny Roche in Jodi Melnick's Fish and Map, who constantly re-enters the Black Box space in SS Michael & Johns. With her clear focus, every entry is like a new paragraph in an evolving narrative within her clearly physically-defined boundaries. With a stone wall as backdrop, its edgy, yet elusive repeating phrases, haul the viewer into the performer's set of concerns.
Finally the audience walked to Meeting House Square and, with daylight fading, watched Nicole Peisl's soft movements struggle with tightly wrought limbs that stiffened and dissolved, tracked by the sound of electronic clicks and whooshes, in Michael Klien's Einem. . .twelve minutes of her mind. Michael Seaver
