The latest CD release reviewed

LUKE DANIELS
Lost Music of the Gaels Wren Records ***

Familiarity breeds contentment in Lost Music of the Gaels, which, despite its execrable title, repays repeated listening by the spadeful. Bathed in erudite cross-currents of classical and traditional music (with the tiniest tincture of Miles Davis), it's both a celebration of the possible and a tribute to the compositional talents of past (Turlough O'Carolan) and present (Luke Daniels). At its best when arrangements are sparing, as they are on Eire, the core conglomerate of piper and singer Jarlath Henderson, fiddler Chris Stout and cellist Laura Moody explore that twilight zone where formal and informal traditions overlap. Daniels's opener, Tunes for Grace, is an over-zealous attempt to marry uilleann pipes and classical quintet. But he slowly yields to the graceful ease that each bestows on the other. A bold, bisecting collection. www.gael.org.uk  Siobhán Long