Any great ones with some low whistle playing?
Any great ones that an accomplished player of both would appreciate.?
And please dont say try FAQ asI have.
Concertina Net has a section on CD’s with clips and reviews: http://www.concertina.net/
Follow the “music” link at the top of the page.
Teri
Steam, by John Williams, was recently reviewed (very favorably!) on the whistle board. Several good low whistle, whistle, and flute tracks as well.
http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?topic=7385&forum=1
John Williams’ first CD, called simply John Williams, is also outstanding.
Carol
I second Carol’s suggestion, as would just about anyone here who knows it. But John plays accordeon probably more than concertina and there isn’t much low whistle on it. (Every home should have a copy though, make no mistake.)
The best purely concertina record I know of is Niall Vallely’s ‘Beyond Words’ which is absolutely stunning. But I don’t think there’s any low whistle on that one. Not that that should put you off. Low whistle players are musicians and any musician will enjoy Niall’s playing I think (unless they are hard core, mouldy fygge, trad-geezer-only types.)
For a good CD of both, maybe Solas: you get John Williams on concertina and Seamus Egan on low whistle. I love all of their early CDs but can’t recommend any one in particular for your needs. The reason is that John was a bit underemployed in Solas—could and should have been featured more—and I simply can’t say off-hand which CD would be best for his concertina playing—even though I play anglo myself and have no trouble telling the difference. (He’s often a bit down in the mix in ensembles and again mixes accordeon with concertina.)
My solution: buy one of each.
Wombat
Appreciate reply and recommendation. I will buy it
http://www.compassrecords.com/ncvallely.htm
Niall Vallely’s new CD with his brother Cillian, who plays pipes and low whistles in Lunasa.
p.s. I’m a Man City fan, myself.
On 2002-11-20 00:17, Wombat wrote:
The best purely concertina record I know of is Niall Vallely’s ‘Beyond Words’ which is absolutely stunning. But I don’t think there’s any low whistle on that one. Not that that should put you off. Low whistle players are musicians and any musician will enjoy Niall’s playing I think (unless they are hard core, mouldy fygge, trad-geezer-only types.)
Tony McMahon addressing the 1996 Crossroads conference described Niall Vallely’s music :
‘there is a certain technical mastery of the concertina. But what are the messages, what secrets are in the music? Where as John Kelly would say, is the call of the Curlew on the mountain’
You may think about McMahon what you will [and most people do so with a vengeance] but he knows what is talking about. Do we dismiss him as a ‘hard core, mouldy fygge, trad-geezer-only type’ so?
It’s all a matter of taste ofcourse but I have seen your man on tv recently and I can’t say that encouraged me much to run out to the shop to get the CD. Maybe I just have a different approach to pipes/concertina duets.
My thinking is: If you are going to give someone a gift, give them something that they wouldn’t necessarily pick up themselves or that will broaden their minds. In that department particularly, I’d listen to Peter L’s advice. And I am thinking he’d recommend that you get Kitty Hayes’ CD.
Grey Larsen and Paddy League’s “The Green House” CD features Grey on concertina on several cuts. He’s smooooooooth. They have another CD to be released shortly.
I recently bought the Vallely brothers cd, Callan Bridge, which is a lot of duets with pipes and concertina, some pipe and some concertina solos. One or two low whistle tracks. Truly enjoyable listening.
Tony
Hi’I would also second the Kitty Hayes album.Other concertina albums that i have enjoyed include Elizabeth Crotty’s ’ concertina music from West Clare’(indispensible,i would have thought)and Noel Hill’s’The Irish concertina’-This one is a bit more modern in approach perhaps,but still firmly rooted in the Irish tradition.I have also mentioned ‘two gentlemen of Clare music’ in another current thread.Hope this helps.
Jaqueline McCarthy CDs are lovely
Wind among the reeds (concertina & pipes) is one of my favourites - no low whistles though.
On 2002-11-20 12:21, Peter Laban wrote:
On 2002-11-20 00:17, Wombat wrote:
The best purely concertina record I know of is Niall Vallely’s ‘Beyond Words’ which is absolutely stunning. But I don’t think there’s any low whistle on that one. Not that that should put you off. Low whistle players are musicians and any musician will enjoy Niall’s playing I think (unless they are hard core, mouldy fygge, trad-geezer-only types.)You may think about McMahon what you will [and most people do so with a vengeance] but he knows what is talking about. Do we dismiss him as a ‘hard core, mouldy fygge, trad-geezer-only type’ so?
It’s all a matter of taste ofcourse but I have seen your man on tv recently and I can’t say that encouraged me much to run out to the shop to get the CD. Maybe I just have a different approach to pipes/concertina duets.
Peter, the Cd I recommended doesn’t have pipes; I think you’re referring to the other one with his brother which I haven’t heard. I suspect that what puts you off (but not me) would probably be present there as well.
My remark was meant to be a gentle dig, not a dismissive remark. (I hope you took it as such.) I included it only because I was well aware that it would not be to the taste of the ‘pure drop only’ crowd and thought that the reader needed to be warned. I love the pure drop myself, and have lots of often-played CDs to testify to it, but I do think that Niall Vallely is one of many rooted in the tradition, but extending it in ways I find much more than technically interesting. Now anybody who does that is going to turn off some purists but not necessarily others. I’m assuming we all agree that the tradition can be extended; otherwise there’d be nothing but harp music about. Once you accept the principle that things can, indeed must, evolve, it’s up for grabs which things can change without the result simply becoming another style of music.
Another pair of factors entered into my thinking. First, if a person is already very deeply rooted in the hard-core side of the tradition, they won’t make (or need to make) the kind of unspecific post that started this thread. Second, and this might be where we disagree, I think that those coming to the music fresh are best eased in via modern-sounding records that have the traditional values. Well there are two things you might disagree with there. First, you might dispute the idea that the starting point should be fairly recent. I know you do dispute the point that Niall Vallely’s music displays traditional values in good measure and that’s certainly one place where we disagree.
I know Wombat, I was a bit cranky last night and there is a mechanism on the Chiffboard that works like ‘if you don’t like this or if you say that you’re trad head and we don’t have to take you serious at all because we know better’ that crops up sometimes and I was more responding to that than to what you were actually saying. His music doesn’t speak to all musicians though and that doesn’t make us mouldy..
On a positive note, I like Jaqcui Mac’s Hidden Note, the Wind among the Reeds didn’t come out all that well compared to that one.
I like Mary MacNamara’s CDs too actually, allthough the second one less than the first. Unfortunately most of my favourite concertinaplayers go as yet mostly unrecorded: Yvonne Griffin, Brid Meaney and Dympna O Sullivan [allthough Dympna has some tracks on Kitty Hayes CD, some on Ceol na mBan and a bit on the Lisseycasey GAA fundraiser CD which has also some nice Gerald Haugh and other rarely heard local musicians, all of those can be had at Custy’s].
There’s a set of four tapes for set dancing that have Tommy McCarthy/Eamon MCGivney and Michael Tubridy playing straight beautiful music I like hose a lot and at €2.50 each a dead give away [if you can find them].
Bloomfield assumed I ‘d recommend Kitty Hayes’, I love Kitty and her music, let’s keep it at that.
The good woman herself is in hospital, I will go see her tomorrow, hopefully she’ll be fine again soon. There are yet some tunes we have to play for you all.
[ This Message was edited by: Peter Laban on 2002-11-21 06:37 ]
I met Brid Meaney this summer and was lucky enough to have a couple of lessons with her.Also attended a concert she did in Limerick - wow!! She is a terrific player and told me she is working on a CD - can’t wait. Heck of a nice person too.
On 2002-11-21 05:51, Peter Laban wrote:
I know Wombat, I was a bit cranky last night and there is a mechanism on the Chiffboard that works like ‘if you don’t like this or if you say that you’re trad head and we don’t have to take you serious at all because we know better’ that crops up sometimes and I was more responding to that than to what you were actually saying. His music doesn’t speak to all musicians though and that doesn’t make us mouldy..
[ This Message was edited by: Peter Laban on 2002-11-21 06:37 ]
Thanks Peter. If you remember my comments on speed, you’d know that I’m not a latest-is-best fiend. I didn’t want to hit raw nerves there but I do like to defend new developments that strike me as positive, without pretending that they detract from or make dated the old.
Actually I was trying to add a footnote to my earlier remarks last night when my connection dropped out. (Maybe some internet elf didn’t like what I was saying.) What I was saying was that I have the greatest respect for Tony and rate his first self-titled album amongst my absolute favourite box records.
Now, when I reflect on what I like about his playing, I think I can see the source of the difference of opinion here. He plays with a great deal of overt, sometimes searing passion. His playing of slow airs is, IMO, absolutely spellbinding. Now, Niall doesn’t play like that and, if that is what Tony wants, he’s not going to find it in Niall’s music. To me, and to others who admire him, Niall plays with a subtle, light, fleet-fingured expressiveness. I venture to say that Tony, in not finding what he values most, is perhaps missing this.
There is surely room in traditional music for both styles and the musical virtues they display. To say that Niall’s playing is expressively empty, if that is indeed Tony’s view, seems to me to be a bit like saying that Tony’s playing is overblown and melodramatic. I’d just about want to fight someone who said that, and I’m no pub fighter.
I think we can respect a musician without agreeing with the implications of everything they say. We’d better be able to. I actually think we can respect someone whilst having contempt for some of the things they say. I wonder what Tony would have made of Sean O Riada’s infamous remark about the accordeon. I have contempt for the remark but not for the man who made it—far from it.
I would think of Sean O Riada and his opinion on the accordeon in the context of time and place,ask yourself who his big contemporary accordeon players were or indeed the prevalent style.
I doubt is he expressed negative opinions about Joe Cooley’s music and there was an accordeon among the ranks of Ceoltoiri Chualainn. You could look similarly on his remarks about accompaniment and traditional music, having Patrick Kelly play Banish Misfortune solo and then stick a piano under it to illustrate the point. The way he stated it was definitely over the top, but wasn’t he right in many ways?
If you look at the recommended recordings here [and even in the thread asking for unaccompanied music], how many are really just concertina recordings, nearly all are packaged, even solo and duet players get their music tarted up with bouzoukis and the like, most recordings available are more group recordings than anything else.
There are such wonderful old [private] concertina recordings around, at the moment I listen a lot to the recordings of Mary Haren, Micho Doyle, Packie Russell, Solus Lillis, Paddy Murphy even Mary Ann Carolan and wonderful duets like Mrs Crotty and Patrick Kelly, Tommy McCarthy and Bobby Casey, Jacqueline and Tommy together, all of those and more and listening to them I hear powerful music, music that speaks right from the heart. I for one would like to see more of that type of material available. Players confident enough to sit down and do their stuff without backing.
Mary Macnamara’s first cd, definitely. Also Cathy Custy is good IMO. Noel Hill is very accomplished.
Jo.
On 2002-11-22 07:42, Peter Laban wrote:
There are such wonderful old [private] concertina recordings around, at the moment I listen a lot to the recordings of Mary Haren, Micho Doyle, Packie Russell, Solus Lillis, Paddy Murphy even Mary Ann Carolan and wonderful duets like Mrs Crotty and Patrick Kelly, Tommy McCarthy and Bobby Casey, Jacqueline and Tommy together, all of those and more and listening to them I hear powerful music, music that speaks right from the heart. I for one would like to see more of that type of material available. Players confident enough to sit down and do their stuff without backing.
Peter, how does one get hold of this stuff, living, as I do, on the other side of the world? I’ve had some success in getting old recordings but quite a few failures as well. For example, I’ve had no luck so far getting hold of CDs of the Doran brothers.
By the way, good point about taking Sean O Riada in context. The trouble with over the top remarks of course is that, sooner or later, they do loose their context. I wonder if he’d have been exposed to great accordeon playing in other styles—tango, cajun for example. Back then, probably not.
[ This Message was edited by: Wombat on 2002-11-24 21:43 ]
Well, at some point you will have to tap into the ‘samizdat’ of Irish music and get hold of some of the tapes that go around among the musicianers. I am sure there are people in Oz who have that sort of stuff.
The Dorans have no CDs, I don’t think ‘Last of the travelling pipers’ was re-issued by Topic but there is some material of Felix on ‘The Gentleman pipers’. The re-mastered Johnny Doran recordings will be available by the end of the year.
Sean O Riada was a well educated man with broad horizons, who knows what he heard during his lifetime, tango was certainly popular enough during his days but maybe the Astor Piazzollas and the like hadn’t come forward yet then. A quick listen to the Irish accordeon players available then, notably those on the Gael Linn 78 rpms will be enough to make anybody curse the instrument.
Not mentioned here was Michael O Raghallaigh’s The Nervous Man, which is very well done although maybe to my taste a bit OTT. It will work for a lot of people and there are very nice tunes on it.
Was playing last Saturdaynight with concertinaplayer Claire Keville, she’s nice too, she brought out the Bflat/F, myself and Mick O Brien playing the C pipes, Caiominh O Raghallaigh, Henry Benagh and Claire’s sister Breda playing fiddles. Sitting round a scorching fire only maybe a handful of people listening. Hmmm, nice.