Cormac Begley
Vicar Street, Dublin
★★★★☆
West Kerry has yielded more than its share of fine musicians and influenced many others far beyond its bounds. Its riotous polkas and slides have so often been sent skywards by box players who spent their formative years propelling set dancers across dance floors from Ballyferriter to Ballydavid.
The concertina player Cormac Begley digs deep into the tradition, mining new depths and scaling innumerable heights along the way.
On Saturday night Lemoncello support with equal parts apprehension and delight. Laura Quirke, on lead guitar and vocals, brings an unhurried, quietly confident tone to their short set of original songs, with Claire Kinsella, on cello and vocals, adding judicious and spacious colours to Dopamine.
The song is a cool-headed, often ironic take on the social-media tsunami that defines these times, and a fine calling card for a duo who pepper each of their songs with insightful observations about life’s incidental moments.
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Begley performs against carefully chosen visuals, with the concertina itself the recurring image, amplifying the visual aesthetic of this diminutive instrument that in his hands transmogrifies into a gargantuan propulsive force.
He lets the concertina bellows breathe deep and free, the lungs offering not only their notes but also their breathy silence on O’Neill’s Cavalcade, referencing the Battle of Kinsale, in 1601. The concertina reaches deep into the heart of the tune, every turn amplified by Begley’s expressive shoulders moving in concert with the notes.
Begley threads his trademark wit through the performance. He revels in the rebelliousness of his ancestors and in his inheritance of the family gene. He seamlessly weaves the gifts of his bilingualism into the mix, with punning plays on his name, his lineage and his mischievousness.
Begley’s mastery of not only the treble and piccolo concertinas but also the robust bass and baritone instruments imbues his tune sets with a remarkable spectrum of colour, with left and right hands bringing a strapping percussive force to the mix. The addition of a foot-controlled harmonium is a smart addition of a simple drone, bringing further heft to his sound palette.
His special guest, the sean-nós dancer Stephanie Keane, matches Begley’s raw energy with her equally unfettered yet precision-engineered rhythms that find humour and grace within the notes.
Later, Begley’s father, Breanndán, joins him on accordion for a gorgeously delicate take on Beauty deas an Oileáin.
The fiddle player Liam O’Connor magnifies the boldness of the music even further with a set of tunes opened by Ryan’s Rant, a nod to the extraordinary late fiddle player Tommie Potts. It allows the audience a sneak preview of the pair’s forthcoming album, which promises more feral music that traces a clear thread back to its roots but with its sights firmly set on the future.
Begley’s musicianship is akin to Flann O’Brien’s policeman whose molecules have merged with his bicycle. At times it’s hard to make out the boundaries between musician and concertina, so fluid, freewheeling and unerring are the tunes.
This performance is another milestone on Begley’s musical journey, one filled with hairpin bends and delirious adventures.
