Fiddle or violin? Recital or session? Traditional and classical music have long made for itchy bedfellows, unsure of their common ground, loath to yield what just might be a tad too much to the other side. But lately the two have coalesced in a decidedly unexpected milieu, cosseted and cajoled into being by the West Ocean String Quartet. This Belfast/Donegal amalgam is determined to prove that trad and classical can intersect at not one, but many cross-roads. Whether, like Robert Johnson's blues, they'll be forced to submit their soul to the devil in the process remains to be seen, but spiritual inventories so far have all returned with full stock-takes.
Seamus Maguire, violinist and long-time champion of both traditions, was a key player in the WOSQ's birthing process (a task not wholly unpalatable to this Letterkenny paediatrician).
Exploring "the territory in between" classical and traditional music can be a perilous activity, but it's a path he's been happily navigating, as his last solo album, 1995's The Wishing Tree, ably attested. Having gathered around the fire at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig in 1999, the WOSQ have been chomping at the bit to see just how far they can take their music and their musicianship.
The name was carefully chosen to reflect the quartet's modus vivendi. "The name came from a piece Mβire Breatneach wrote called 'The West Ocean Waltz'," SΘamus Maguire recalls, "and we felt that it suggested lack of boundaries and lack of confinement, open spaces, and that's how we like to think of the quartet. We're not rigidly bound by categories, either traditional or classical."
What Maguire describes as "a happy disregard for where the frontiers of traditional music might end and classical music begin" is the driving force behind WOSQ.
"I think a lot of it is in the ears of the beholder or the mind of the listener," he suggests. "I suppose it's a human feature that we like to categorise things and put them into tidy boxes, and a lot of people would feel that any tampering with traditional music is a bad thing, but the loss of barriers happens because some players are able to read music fluently and this can allow them to experiment in different ways. That said, playing by ear is certainly no less valid, but if a musician can sight-read music, and still retain a good traditional approach, then that opens up possibilities in terms of a new approach to making music."
Joined by Neil Martin on cello, the WOSQ's primary composer, along with John Fitzpatrick on viola and Niamh Crowley on violin, Seamus Maguire found a welcome locale to air his own composition, Glenveagh Castle (commissioned for the Ceol Reoite CD, a millennium project), as well as those composed by Martin.
"Already it's been a hugely rewarding experience," he acknowledges, anxious to credit his previous musical collaborations with his brother, Manus, Garry ╙ Briain and others while he was a member of Buttons and Bows, "and we're still exploring our potential, so it's a very exciting venture for us. It's different from anything we've done individually before, yet it feels like a very natural progression too. I still see myself largely as a Sligo fiddler and my childhood influences have endured throughout my musical career, so that traditional 'accent' is still very much there, albeit with more classical arrangements and within a more formal structure."
With Sligo violinist, Niamh Crowley, bringing a strong classical background and John Fitzpatrick melding jazz, new age and North American fiddle styles, this quartet is hardly lacking in colour for its palette.
Neil Martin's compositions provide the backbone to the WOSQ's repertoire. Already they've performed two commissions, almost before Martin's pen had dried: Droichead na nDeor and Ceol Mean O∅che Na Sean Bhliana. Martin's creative energy is a primal force for WOSQ. A veritable Renaissance man, he's been commissioned extensively to write for theatre, with Women On The Verge Of HRT one of his most commercial ventures to date.
Twenty years of writing for strings has equipped him well for the rarefied surrounds of the WOSQ. As producer, arranger, session musician and orchestral conductor, Martin has performed with everyone from the Dubliners to Maura O'Connell, Matt Molloy, Micheβl ╙ S·illeabhβin, Liam O'Flynn, Donal Lunny, Altan, DΘ Danann and Arty McGlynn. Then there are his theatrical collaborations with Field Day, Charabanc, Tinderbox, Lyric and Gaiety Theatres, and most notably his compositions for Stephen Rea's award-winning production of Northern Star (1998). Small wonder that the WOSQ is an environment he's more than happy to cosy up to these days.
"The absolute indulgence of the West Ocean is that you can write as your heart dictates. I have found that to be hugely rewarding. Very often when your life is composing, most of your work is commissioned. Often, the pictures, the mood and the narrative of a film or a play dictate how you write a piece. So in essence, you supply music for already created frameworks. It's completely the opposite in the Quartet because you write what you want. On the other hand, you're not being paid for it, as you would a commission, but the reward is huge - when it works. Because we know one another and have all worked with a wide variety of musicians, there's a considerable tolerance there among us too."
The trad/classical divide is one that Martin can hardly find time to contemplate, particularly since his earliest memories are of music, where labels were about as useful as a lighthouse in a bog: "My earliest memories are of Bach's D Minor Mass and the smell of a fry on Sunday morning. My parents had wonderfully catholic tastes so I remember records of Bach, Mozart,
His early experience as both a cellist and a piper saw him straddle the divide unknowingly: "I found myself trying to play sean-n≤s airs on the cello," he recalls, "because it suited it, and then I ended up working with Micheβl ╙ S·illeabhβin on a suite for pipes and chamber orchestra and what I found was that it absolutely extended the technique for piping. The notes didn't fall on to your fingers in the natural way that jigs, reels, hornpipes and so on, would. And now I find that 90 per cent of the music I play on the cello is Irish-oriented, so in some way the cross-fertilisation is quite far developed. Ultimately there comes a point where you don't think any more about how you write, you just do it."
The West Ocean String Quartet play the Errigal Arts Festival on July 18th at Tullyarvan Mill, Buncrana (8.30 p.m., £6/£4) and July 19th at the Arts Centre in Letterkenny (8 p.m., £6/£4). Bookings on tel: 074-20777
