FolkWorld Live Review by Michael Moll
Edinburgh, as one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, is always
worth a journey, at any time of the year. Even in the dark autumn month of November
there is plenty to enjoy - from superb restaurants and free galleries and museums
via hillwalking to shopping. The annual Fiddle Festival comes as welcome bonus
for all folk music fans - even though it is worth the journey on its own, especially
of course for fiddle players...
The festival is now already in its nineth year, providing a successful combination of high profile evening concerts and a range of daytime workshops, masterclasses and fiddle recitals. For many years the festival has been held in the Assembly Rooms, an impressive, large building in Edinburgh's New Town comprising a range of rooms, offering a good setting for a vibrant festival. While the festival offered also impressive day time concert programme on Saturday and Sunday, with recitals of the likes of Troy MacGillivray, Simon Bradley & Luke Plum and others, I only managed to find time for the evening programmes.
The festival featured two evenings of music, Friday and Saturday. Apart from high profile concerts, the evenings also offered a ceilidh, sessions and an open stage, where both official festival musicians and others played.
The Friday evening concert is entitled "Heat the hoose", and this year the heat was very welcome indeed, as this November saw a short and sharp cold spell. The evening celebrated the "9", appropriately for a 9th festival, featuring the bands Cloud 9 and Session A9.
Saturday night offered more fiddle treats. The concert started off with what you can indeed call a wonder boy - Graham Mackenzie, only 12 years old, but being already now as fine a fiddle player as some professional musicians only dream of. His music sounds mature and is indeed breathtaking. His mum, who accompanied on piano, struggled a bit to keep up with that quality. No doubt we will hear more of this talented young man in the future!
Sarah Jane Fifield, a gifted fiddle player hailing from Inverness, was joined for her set by husband Fraser on percussion, flute and sax and top guitarist Malcolm Stitt. In a few tunes I found that Fraser's flute did not add a lot to the music, in others his saxophone playing gave the fiddle tunes a new dimension. I loved in particular the Scandinavian sets, with fiddle and saxophone beautifully interluding.
Chris Stout's set was a tour de force of impressive and varied music - Scottish music with a unique new twist. Definitely the band to book as a musical highlight for your concert hall in 2005!
After the concert I went down to the open stage to see what was happening there. Adam Sutherland was supposed to have a solo set, and when Adam asked whether he could bring some friends along on stage, the MC readily agreed. Not that he thought that Adam would bring along the full Session A9 line-up. After a long time of setting up, they started a never-ending tune, and after a while, I felt somehow that I have had over the last two days about as much fiddle music as I could take. As wonderful as it had been, you should always leave the party when it is at its best!
Festival or Venue Homepage: www.scotsfiddlefestival.com
CD reviews of festival artists: Session A9 - Chris Stout
Photo Credit: All photos by The Mollis - (1) Cloud 9, (2) Charlie Mackerron, (3) Session A9, (5) Graham Mackenzie, (6) Chris Stout and Catriona Mackay.
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