hi all
went to Just for Gordon. Gordon Duncan memorial night Friday. Paddy Keenan headed the night, great music.
here’s a link to an other live broadcast with Ross Ainslie and Jarlath Henderson just slide the playbar to 1hr.37mins.
had a word with Paddy at the late night club, he had just flown back from West Africa - Mali -Timbuktu the night before and had been with a film crew so watch out for this in the future - he was lost for words about his experience though we discussed the legendary Ali Farka Toure who died last year but Paddy met/played with his son.
Sand everywhere even coming out of his pipes he said and scorpions on the walls, I got the impression he may have recurring dreams about that trip.
The link worked fine for me. Sounded FANTASTIC! The combination of Border pipes and uilleann pipes worked better than I expected–“Good Drying” on uilleann pipes…Wow.
I don’t care if Donald Shaw does wind up smearing his processed cheese keyboards all over their debut album*, I’m buyin’ it!!!
*Although he can be alright if he sticks to the piano. See the link in my recent thread in the ITM forum. Shaw backs Gaelic singer James Graham on piano and harmonium and it’s quite nice.
Yeah, I can understand why it wouldn’t be your (or many people’s) cup of tea. It’s fast, breezy, not particularly memorable tunes (with the exception of “Good Drying”, which I do think is pretty good as far as modern tunes go). What impressed me about it was the precedent that was being set–uilleann pipes and border pipes meeting on fairly even ground repertoire-wise. I’d heard bits of Fred Morrison playing with Paddy Keenan before, but as far as I recall, it was mostly Fred playing Irish tunes that fit (or mostly fit) on border pipes along with Paddy. Hearing uilleann pipers tackle tunes that were definitely not written with UPs in mind is always kind of interesting: stuff like how to deal with the large preponderance of low A/high A octave jumps, birls, and other weird bits of highland pipe ornamentation. Anyway, fair play to them for the idea; they’re both obviously very talented young musicians and I look forward to hearing more of them.
There’s SO MUCH good music being stuck up on the BBC Scotland site right now due to Celtic Connections. Last night, I got stuck listening to the “Young Scots Trad. Musician of the Year Award” for two whole hours. More great, great stuff. Calum Stewart played some cracking tunes on flute (lotsa stuff from the Simon Fraser collection); a Glasgow-Irish kid named Martin Hunter did some nice tunes on box (including a terrific version of a Kerry polka that I must learn); some brilliant Gaelic singing from Darren MacLean and Catriona Watt; piping from Calum MacCrimmon–he did well but it sounded like he was a bit nervous; I know I’m forgetting a few people. Brilliant, brilliant music. Catriona wound up winning, but I think I liked Darren’s choice of songs a bit better.
I hope the Gordon Duncan tribute concert gets posted at some point. Sounded like a terrific lineup of performers. Anybody know if Paddy and Jarlath played together at all?
I went to a Dougie Maclean concert this past week. Dougie was great, but I spent most of the time watching Ross Ainslie play his whistles and uilleann pipes. I’m now officially a fan. Although all the musicians were fabulous. I was just looking on the web for releases by Ross Ainslie. If I read this thread right he’s about to release something! I’m looking forward to it.
