Celtic Connections, City Halls, Glasgow
January 26th, 2024
The city centre looked sparkling on my way to the City Halls for a Celtic connections gig by renowned Banjo player Alison Brown. Of course the main hall was as resplendent as ever coupling a great size with very classical decor and an audience buzzing with another night of greatly treating music. It was billed as having three performances by three groups who played the roof off.
It’s a place that combined great relaxation in the crowd with music that plays at least once a week, but truly comes alive in the Connections festival. Lucie Hendry’s Harp music is as boundary breaking as it comes, the guitar and drums had this evening come from a Danish influence of brilliant and highly expressive playing that her life’s journey has taken her to. The compositions were filled with a great transaction of Celtic jazz, mixing these with the highest sense of traditional and freshness, in an accompany that puts the festival at the height of anywhere in the world, music that made us stir and smile.
When Low Lily took to stage we were in a mood that far transcended talent alone. A group whose tunes and togetherness were so well cemented there was an air of otherworldliness about them. Also mixing mighty styles of musical genres into songs easy to take and exciting to be on board with. They are known to have a way with putting pop into the classically translucent Celtic sound and have a rhythm to beat into the live experience that they compound with the kind of lyrics that always have a way of kind of reaching down with the pains that come in traditional story telling.
The night was from the point of high success for every band who played, many albums, collaborations were spoken of and many awards have been won by these three groups of musicians whose music sets fire to all the senses and was delivered to the greatest extent and far beyond.
When the evening was ready for Alison Browns feverish banjo the previous hour and a half was burst into the band whose rivers of music streamed from a five piece act. Of course visually everything looks the way it does at the remarkable venue with the giant grand piano staking out the left of the stage, and their presence that reached right across to a magical flute that backed an unbelievable drum that coupled the sounds of base beating off banjo.
Jazz and blue grass music was in the presence throughout the night, in so many forms, but that old Celtic way of sound was delivered in it’s often heart breaking phenomena. But the music of Alison’s entourage was jovially celebratory especially of her focus on the banjo, an instrument capable of so many styles. The jazz just grew in its ever groovy presence, impressing itself from every instrument in compositions that must just look in a complication hard to decipher.
The sharing between artists, was accompanied with the sharing of wildly organised and venturing solo’s, we could almost visualise its story in a way of true joy, true magic and true human endearment through the music well home at the great and quite wonderful Celtic connection. Great smiles were on great faces, sincere turns took their glances and music was played to an incredible professionalism of the love of it so well expressed, very impressive and wonderfully laid out.
Daniel Donnelly
Mumble Music 