CONCERT REVIEW
Irish band Solas transcends folk roots
by Seth Rogovoy(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., March 9, 1997) -- The Irish-American quintet Solas brought its highly stylized repertoire of Celtic folk melodies to the Clark Art Institute on Friday night, in the second standing-room-only concert of the museum's "Four Fridays of Folk" series.
There was nothing "folkie" about the music Solas played at the Clark. Combining virtuosity and elan, the musicians took the raw material of traditional folk songs and dances and transformed them into art pieces that were jazzy and sophisticated while ultimately retaining the accessibility inherent in their origins.
The musicians -- all apparently 20-somethings who in their dress (flannel and Dr. Martens boots) and shoegazing manner resembled a collegiate-rock band -- are all well-established stars in their field as solo performers or as members of such groundbreaking groups as Chanting House, Cherish the Ladies, the Sharon Shannon Band and Green Fields of America. Together, they seem to have found their kindred spirits, both in their reverence for the traditional sources of their material and in the exuberance they bring to it. Their performance revealed as much about the influence of traditional Celtic music on contemporary pop as it did about the players bringing a rock or jazz sensibility to their performance.
In the course of two sets, the group alternated instrumental numbers -- reels, jigs and airs -- with songs featuring vocalist Karan Casey, who sang both in Gaelic and English. "Nil Na La" introduced her sparkling soprano, which glistened in the upper registers and grew warm and vibrant down below. "The Boatman" was a plaintive ballad on which Casey was delicate and airy, while "The Fair-Haired Boy," a "revolutionary rebel song" she sang unaccompanied, was appropriately rousing and rebellious.
The group's instrumental tunes were equally as evocative. One described as a "barn dance" began with John Williams on concertina -- a tiny button accordion with an enormous sound -- playing a figure that could have been the herald of the dawn or the summons to the dance. In either case, it prefigured what was to come. Seamus Egan, the band's nominal leader and multi-instrumentalist who stuck mostly to flutes and tin whistles during the evening, joined Williams, and his flute danced around the concertina figure with a lively melody as well as occasional syncopated fills. By the time fiddler Winifred Horan and guitarist John Doyle joined in, the piece had been transformed into a rollicking bit of trad-Irish funk.
With each player a virtuoso in his own right, there was no real standout among them. Guitarist Doyle was probably the group's secret weapon, so subtle yet essential was the rhythmic and textural foundation he laid down with his playing, which in addition to chords featured booming bass lines worthy of an entirely separate musician. So too did Egan at times seemingly double himself on flute, playing melody lines while inserting accents and trills above and below the melody, as if James Galway was hiding behind him and duetting with him.
In the second half of the show, the spotlight focused more on fiddler Winifred Horan, who was equally at ease with athletic sawing as she was with delicate melody lines. Vocalist Casey may well have been the crowd's favorite, not only on the merit of her strikingly gorgeous vocals but perhaps also due to the convincing display of vulnerability contained both in her songs and her stage presence.
But more than any individual showcasing -- and if this was Seamus Egan's band, you couldn't tell -- Solas was most effective as an artful ensemble, with players weaving in and out of each other, trading licks and solos much like a jazz group, building dynamics like a rock band, and combining melodic and textural forces like a chamber group to create a symphonic effect that bespoke the organic quality of the instrumentation.
While the players, particularly Casey, did offer an occasional wry comment or note of introduction to a tune, the musicians did not go to great lengths to establish a personal rapport with the audience. They let their music speak for them. And judging from the crowd's overwhelming reception, they succeeded.
[This review originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on March 11, 1997. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1997. All rights reserved.]
Seth Rogovoy
rogovoy@berkshire.net
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