Hornpipe Magazine Irish Music Reviews Vol. 5

Volume 5, Issue 5

Irish dance music CD's
by Bill Bennett

Practice to different styles of music. Not only will that prevent your favorite music from getting stale, it will expose you to different instrumentation and musician styles. The more variety of music you practice to, with different instruments and different speeds, the better prepared you will be for competition. When you look for Irish music CDs, be sure to distinguish between those intended for entertainment and those intended for dancing.

Change Your Shoes
Gerry Conion & Seamus O'Sullivan

An old standby, this collection advertises that it includes "The Glasgow Reel". While that's an old favorite and a great tune, it's a mystery why it's featured - there aren't many hit singles in the world of Irish dancing! These very steady musicians - playing accordion and keyboard - are joined by a drummer on many of the tracks, which helps emphasize the rhythm. No set dances.

...

Feet of a Dancer
Tony McQuillan

One of the greats of the audio tape era remastered on a CD. Accordion & keyboard. Has all the solo dances except trad sets, although the treble jigs are only played at the slow speed. Also includes a really wonderful song (the title track) which should be inspiring to aspiring dancers. Difficult to find from US vendors but available from www.irishdance.com music.

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Volume 5, Issue 5

CD Reviews:

ONE MORE TIME

Kulkin School of Irish Dance

If you only own one Irish dance music CD, this is the one to own. Its virtue is that it offers all of the dances except traditional sets at a variety of speeds so you can use a slower speed to learn new steps, then use the official speeds to master them. Some newcomers to hardshoe dancing are confused because the (otherwise) helpfully arranged track list doesn't diferentiate between light jigs and double or treble figs. The speed determines whether the light-shoe or hardshoe dance is appropriate to that piece of music. This album also uses a variety of instrumentation.

100% PURE IRISH DANCE

Kevin Warren and Colm Keogh

A very popular collection and deservedly so. the music is steady but the style may seem dated compared to the more innovative new collections; some have compared it to a German "Oom PHA" band. It includes dance tunes at three different levels (beginner, intermediate and open) and the four "old" trad sets as well as two of the new ones, Three Sea Captains and King of the Fairies.

IT'S ABOUT TIME

Tony Nother

If you only own two Irish dance CD's, this should be the other one. Tony is a widely respected feis musician as well as one of the nicest guys on the face of the earth. There is a zest to his playing and arrangements which makes dancing to his accompaniment fun. It's About Time includes the four "old" traditional set dances. Accordion and keyboard.

THE BEST THAT I CAN BE

World Champion Dean Crouch

Advertised as "Inspirational tunes selected by Dean to encourage and lift you while you practice", this is a useful album of standard tunes played on the accordion with a one-note-at-a-time technique similar to Kevin Joyce's earlier CD's but with some interesting lead-ins and accompaniments. It includes the six solo dances (excluding trad sets.) The treble jigs and hornpipes are only played at slow speeds. There is an interesting seventh track called "Showcase", a medley of up-tempo reels and jigs which might make a good performance piece for multiple dancers.

THE BEGINNING

Laserlight Celtic
(Available from Tower Records)

This interesting and inexpensive collection of dance tunes is not only good for beginners but also for parents who want to learn the difference between on kind of dance tune and another. To help you out, a pedantic Irish voice announces each type of tune. Be warned: while the pedantic Irish voice is correct about each track, the track list on the back is not. You get a hint when you notice that one of the selections in the second Reel Medley is "Father Kelly's Jig". You know that either the Revrand Father or the copy writer was confused; it was the copy writer. The hornpipe is played only at traditional speed and there are no treble jigs. However, it includes three of the "old" set dances (St. Pat's, Blackbird and Garden) and one of the new ones, Jockey as well as two figure dances, Three Tunes and Trip to the Cottage.

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Volume 5, Issue 5

Irish Dance Music: Highly subjective reviews of Irish Dance Music CD's

By Bill Bennett

The more musical variety you practice to, the better. Not only will that prevent your favorite music from getting stale, it will keep your family members, or roommates, from going crazy! Pay particular attention to getting a variety of instrumentation. Most Irish dancing CDs feature piano accordion and keyboard accompaniment. Some Irish dancing families have been known to develop a phobia because of overexposure to accordion music. Variety will also help you prepare for shows and feiseanna, where it's quite likely that the music will be different from your favorite practice CD. Therefore mix up your practice music with different instruments and speeds and there will be little or no surprises at competitions. As with anything else in Irish dancing, Molly Bennett TCRG is my best source for advice. She was a world-class Irish musician (she and the band she played with at the time, St. James' Gate, won the All-Ireland Championship for Groupi Coel in 1986) as well as a widely experienced dancer and teacher of both music and dance.

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Volume 5, Issue 5

Captain Francis O'Neill — Champion of traditional music

Captain Francis O'Neill was the General Superintendent of Police in Chicago at the turn of the 20th century. He preferred the title Captain to Chief or Superintendent, which perhaps gives us some insight into the man. By any measure he led an exciting life. He was born in County Cork and there he learned to play the flute. At the age of sixteen, he was given a letter of introduction to the local bishop. His family sent him off to a life as a priest but he had a change of mind and ran away to sea.

He circumnavigated the globe and was later shipwrecked in the Pacific. He was rescued and landed in San Francisco, then did some ranching in Montana, before going to Chicago by way of New Orleans and Missouri. In Missouri, he married a young lady, Anna Rogers, whom he had met when she was an outbound passenger on one of his voyages from Ireland.

He and his wife moved to Chicago in 1870, shortly before 1871's Great Chicago Fire. He came to Chicago to work as a sailor on the ore boats that cruised the Great Lakes. But fate intervened and the Captain ended up as a patrolman on the Chicago Police force. He was on the force less than a month, when he was shot by a burglar. He carried the bullet, lodged near his spine, until his death. Even though he was wounded in the shoot-out he still managed to arrest the felon and bring him into the station. Not a small feat when you consider that patrolmen in those days walked their beat.

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Volume 5, Issue 4

Gaelic Storm hits United States

Hornpipe caught up with the fast moving Gaelic Storm at the Sedalia Celtic Festival in Big Island, Virginia, located in the beautiful foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The festival, an annual event orchestrated by Karen Dempsey and company at the Sedalia Center, features everything Celtic: arts, crafts, and highland games. For the past few years, it has also featured a closing concert by Gaelic Storm. While band members Ryan Lacey and Tom Brown were busy with the crew setting up for the concert, and the fiddle player Bob Banerjee was off talking fiddles with someone, Hornpipe sat down with Steve Twigger of Coventry, UK, Patrick Murphy of Cork City, Ireland and Steve Wehmeyer of Olean, NY for an inside look at the band.

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Volume 5, Issue 3

CD Review:
Reviews by David Armstrong

Lake Effect

Liz Carroll (2002)
Green Linnet Records
www.greenlinnet.com

Important Disclosure Notice: I really do love Liz Carroll.

Back in the 1980's I was hosting my first public radio fund drive and not doing very well. Then I played a brand-new Liz Carroll album and offered it to the first person to call with a membership pledge. Talk about a change! Before the first cut was over, telephones were ringing off the hook and the album was long gone: promised to a young woman who has played violin in the Toronto Philharmonic and studied mathematics at the local university.

Jump ahead more than fifteen years (!) and Liz Carroll is now the Ruling Queen of traditional Celtic fiddling. She has won almost every important award in Celtic traditional music, including the All-Ireland fiddle championship and a National Heritage Award. More importantly, she has created and performed a body of music that has captivated audiences while winning critical acclaim in Europe and North America. These are all good reasons to love Liz Carroll. ...

Play

Great Big Sea (1997)
Warner Music Canada
www.greatbigsea.com

This album is a rare hem in every sense of the word. To start, it has never been released in the US, so it only tends to show up at festivals or in specialty shops and secondhand stores. These days, of course, it can be procured easily by anyone who is not afraid of internet shopping. More importantly, the music is a combination of acoustic and electric instruments, distinctive harmonies, fold lyrics and the unmistakable sounds of Newfoundland. This combination makes Great Big Sea the most characteristic sounding maritimer band since the Irish Descendants; version of Rollin' of the Sea became the theme song for the Island's Ministry of Tourism. But unlike their forebears, Great Big Sea has managed to get their sound off the Island; they have touted with Sinead O'Connor, Squeeze, and The Chieftains.

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Volume 5, Issue 2

Mozart makes you smarter!

Researchers at the University of California at Irvine discovered that people who listened to ten minutes of Mozart (Sonata in D Major for Two Pianos) before taking an intelligence test scored higher than people who listened to ten minutes of relaxation instructions or who for ten minutes, sat in silence.

Scientists speculate that some kinds of music stimulate neural pathways in the brain. For a period of up to fifteen minutes after listening, the group that heard Mozart improved significantly in abstract and spatial reasoning. The one downer — that improvement is temporary — may be because listening is a passive activity. No one knows if listening longer results in staying smarter longer.

...

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Volume 5, Issue 2

CD Review: Suas e!
by John Huddleston

Oran sniomh
Seinn o
Domhnall mac 'ic lain
E Horo
Hi ri him bo
Bog a'Lochain or Athole Cummers

Horo Mo Nighean Donn Bhoidheach
nan Gormshuil Meallach
Lu o ra hiu o
Horo Ghoid Thu Nigean
Tha Mo Run aira'Ghille
Oran do Ghille a Chaidh a Bhathadh

Let me start by saying that I do not speak Gaelic and this entire album is presented, without translation, in Gaelic. I have always looked to lyrics as a key part in any good song because it helps me grasp the emotion that inspired the music. However, when I listen to Beethoven's ninth symphony or Carmina Burana, both classical pieces, the meaning of the words become irrelevant because they so perfectly fit the instruments that to have them sung in English would destroy the integrity of the songs. I bet it would also throw off the meter.