Irish Session at Lillie's in NYC

Exactly a week ago now, I was in New York City.  After lunch at a Cuban restaurant, we headed across the street to Lillie's, an Irish-Victorian bar and recommended for its Saturday afternoon Irish seisiún.  The bar itself is impressive - the detailing, the decorations, the sheer size of the insides, which you wouldn't guess from looking at the outsides from across the street.  The seisiún was equally good.  Initially there was a harp, maybe a fiddle or two, and a small accordion.  It began small although still larger than some of the gatherings that I've happened to see here in Louisville or even Buffalo, NY.  I know I've become a little weary of checking out a new session since so many have been disappointing in size or the atmosphere of the bar.  Luckily, we weren't the only ones there specifically to scope out the vent.  The number of instrumentalists nearly tripled in size by the time it was 4pm "Irish time" (closer to 5 or 5:30) and now included banjos, multiple flutes, and a bodhrán.  A good variety of tunes, but maybe a little lacking in harmony or counter-melodies, or perhaps the acoustics aren't quite good enough to really hear what the flutes were doing.  A definite must to visit if this sort of music interests you and you happen to be in the area. 

Check out these pictures as more musicians showed up and a video for a little aural taste.

  

 

Heartbeat (Kodo 25th Anniversary) - Kodo

I always thought of Africa when I thought of drumming.  This included products of the African diaspora like Brazil (Olodum), Cuban rhythms, etc.  This is a stereotype most people hold I would guess.  I was watching OvationTV, a station I only recently discovered and they had a special on Kodo.  This album is kind of a best of and contains many of the pieces performed by Kodo in that particular show.  I would say this group is much more of an act to see live.  There is a very important visual aspect to it including the movements and positions of the drummers, the size of the drums and how they are attacked, and additional dancers.  Some of that is lost in an audio recording, but the rhythms and melodies (played on on the fue and shamisen) are enough.

Kodo is a taiko drumming troupe.  Members begin as apprentices living within the Kodo village community until they are full time members.  This makes Kodo a very large, very tight knit, and very serious group.  They play traditional Japanese rhythms and melodies combined with compositions by contemporary composers and their own members.

Dual - Éamonn Doorley, Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh, Julie Fowlis, and Ross Martin

This album is in the vein of my recent (and not so recent) love of Celtic music, specifically from Ireland.  It is unique in that is contains a mix of both Irish and Scottish musicians and traditions, highlighting the differences and similarities between them.  These four musicians (Éamonn Doorley, Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh, Julie Fowlis, and Ross Martin) have been playing together since 2003, two of them from Danú, another traditional Irish band I really like.  Amhlaoibh grew up on the smallest of the Aran Island, where Irish is the first language (a Gaeltacht), and Fowlis grew up in the Outer Hebrides in Scotland, where Scottish Gaelic is the main language.  Both are primarily singers and as a result, the album is comprised of twelve songs, all with vocals sung in one of their native languages.

The album plays on many common threads the two cultures share, entwining characteristics from both traditions within many of the songs.  Track 6 and the beginning of track 7, are based on traditional tunes surrounding the life of a Scottish Irish soldier, centered in the middle of the album, perhaps to symbolize the meeting or overlap of the two cultures.  These traditional tunes, and many other on the album have been recorded by numerous Scottish and Irish groups alike.

As expected, this album features a traditional instrumental lineup - small pipes, flute, tin whistle, fiddle, guitar, bodhrán, keys.  All four musicians are skilled and very proficient on one, and most often multiple instruments. The instrumentals do not simply accompany the vocalists, and in fact both vocalists play instruments in addition to singing, but they are of equal importance and often mirror the vocal melody, follow it exactly, or one of the two and then continue the vocal idea in many only instrumental sections.  The voice is used as an instrument in the purest sense in these traditions. 

This is a video of the four performing the fourth track: