Reviewed today: Opera Theatre Company, Hal, and Eddi Reader
Opera Theatre Company
Slate Quarry Grotto, Valentia Island, Co Kerry
Pergolesi - Stabat Mater
What, you might well wonder, brought Opera Theatre Company to present Pergolesi's Stabat Mater in the rather unlikely setting of the Slate Quarry Grotto on Valentia Island? It was the singular vision of the artist Dorothy Cross, who saw the grotto while working on another project on the island, and was immediately sparked into bringing her vision of music in that space to fruition.
Cross has aptly described the hewn-out rock as a Wagnerian backdrop, and it certainly dwarfed the performers in the Pergolesi, a work of very special atmosphere which is reputed to have been the most frequently printed single work in the 18th century.
There's not really much in this particular 45 minutes of music that calls for operatic fleshing out. Cross and her musical director, Jonathan Peter Kenny (who also performed as counter tenor) opted to ease into the Pergolesi through some peripatetic trumpeting by Eamonn Nolan, clad in hard hat and work-gear like most of the rest of the performers.
The players of the Irish Baroque Orchestra, directed with narrow-range sombreness from the harpsichord by Mark Duley, were located at the back of the grotto. Although the sound that reached the front of the audience was small in size, it was remarkably unadulterated, achieving focus in its outlines without always yielding much in terms of internal clarity.
Kenny and his fellow soloist, soprano Lynda Lee, began and ended the work in close physical communion with the orchestra, with whom, at that distance, they blended and balanced with ease. When closer to the audience, which is where they did most of their singing, the voices stood out with greater clarity, but Kenny experienced sometimes severe problems of ensemble and intonation when well separated from the players.
Lee was on fine form, firm and sure in tone, and singing with that noble simplicity of manner which is one of her strongest assets. Kenny was less consistent in the quality of singing line he managed to find, and also more hackneyed in movement and gesture.
It was the setting, however, which stole the show. The gusting droplets of rain, caught in the white bright lights, seemed to swirl and intensify as if under the control of some whizz-kid special-effects man. And there was an aura of intangibility and fragility that attached itself to the experience of music in such strangely spectacular surroundings, induced perhaps by the contrasting scale of visual image and sound. The totality was both effective and unusually affecting. The post-performance video focusing on the industrial reality of the quarry seemed like an unnecessary jolt in the circumstances.
The final performance of the O.T.C. Stabat Mater is tonight at 9pm (01-679 4962).- Michael Dervan
Hal, Whelan's, Dublin
What exactly is Hal up to? The southside Dublin band have been around for more than year or so, have been tipped for the top (wherever that mythical entity is these days), signed to Rough Trade and played sporadically within the past 10 months - all without a sign of an album. One would have thought that they'd be eager to get out of the traps, all guns blazing, their sights set on being yet another Irish success story. The reality is far more prosaic, as anyone signed to a minor-major record label will tell you.
The truth is that a young band such as Hal should have had a record out months ago. The truth is that a young band like Hal should have enough songs under the belt to play for longer than a virtually insulting 35 minutes. They should by now have developed a reasonable stage presence. Another truth? So far the songs just aren't good enough.
Music-lovers with a certain amount of listening years behind them will recognise that Hal's music harks back to pre-punk US FM/sophisticated pub rock days. Bands that time (but not memory) forgot come flooding back when Hal play the likes of Fool By Your Side, Worry About The Wind, I Sat Down, Golden Rule and Satisfied. If you haven't heard remaindered early 1970s bands such as Racing Cars, Bandit, Roogalator, Alessi, Pilot and Kokomo then fear not for Hal will save you the time.
Occasionally, a hint of originality peeps through, but overall there's such a sense of having studied the licks rather than created them that the music comes across as somewhat of an academic exercise.
One hates to be overly cynical (yes, really), but there's something about Hal that smacks of directives being issued. They're a band that has yet to find their true voice.
Here's hoping they'll discover it before the next Irish big thing comes along and pulls the rug out from under them. - Tony Clayton-Lea
Eddi Reader
ESB Beo Celtic Music Festival, NCH, Dublin
Well here was a coming-of-age that few could have predicted. Five years on and the National Concert Hall's Beo Celtic Music Festival is finally getting under the skin of this elusive beast they've christened "Celtic music".
A thread ran effortlessly from the opening night's knees-up with Altan to Thursday night's come-all-ye with Eddi Reader, and promised to stretch seamlessly towards Maighread and Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill's lunch-time concert on Friday. Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh's reading of Green Grow The Rushes Oh was handed on, baton-like to Reader who lovingly mollycoddled it, and aired a supreme reading of Robbie Burns's sublime Ae Fond Kiss, a long-time stalwart of Maighread Ní Dhomhnaill's repertoire.
She caught us by surprise, loping onstage not only with her magnificent band, but with the Irish Film Orchestra in tow too. Few of us expected to be treated to such a full-bodied and visceral revival of her magnificent album, Eddi Reader Sings the Songs of Robbie Burns.
After a shaky start with a leaden Dolphins, the band took flight with the delightful Jamie Come Try Me, and after that, there was no stopping any of them. When a quintet consists of Scottish über-musician and producer, John McCusker on fiddle and low whistles, and Alan Kelly on piano accordion, not to mention the divine Boo Hewerdine and Ian Carr on guitars, and Andy Stewart on double bass, the bar is already set high. Add to that the orchestral backing, and conductor Kevin McCreagh, and Reader had a mighty wide palette from which to draw.
Initially there were difficulties with muddied sound, the Film Orchestra drowning beneath the more defined lines of Reader's band, but ultimately they negotiated a space where both could co-habit while breathing the same air. Reader's balletic Amazonian movements were an integral part of every song, her body just another instrument, along with her voice. Quirky introductions and cheeky asides (one of a particularly bold gynaecological nature) kept the audience firmly on side, but it was her freewheeling, careening vocals that defined the night.
From her plaintive take on My Love is Like a Red Red Rose (recapturing it from all the maudlin overkills it has endured in pub sessions and front rooms from Glasgow to Gorey) to Wild Mountainside, Charlie Douglas's magnificent love letter to Reader, and her many tributes to Hewerdine's songwriting, she let the songs roam unfettered. At times it seemed as if the structure of the orchestra would come undone, faced with Reader's bawdy, feral approach to the music. But opposites attract and their combined magnetic forces stretched into the upper reaches of the Concert Hall where few have dared to tread before. A glorious celebratory night of music, storytelling and lusty humour. - Siobhan Long
