Concert Review—

The Best Possible Opening For The Season Of St Patrick

By Andrew Carey

On the first Thursday in March, three weeks shy of two years since their last concert at Newtown Meeting House, Sliabh Notes, the beloved trio from southwestern Ireland’s Sliabh Luachra (Irish Gaelic for “Mountain of Rushes”), returned for a third delightful evening of tunes and songs.  As always, there was fiddling both swift and soulful from Matt Cranitch, the sweet sound of the button accordion as played by Dónal Murphy, and under it all the solid rhythm and subtle harmonic texture of Tommy O’Sullivan’s guitar.  There were slides and polkas, the distinctive dance tunes of the band’s home region, in addition to the jigs, reels, and hornpipes played throughout Ireland.  There were meditative slow airs and delightful songs.

But this time, the band had come to America with a larger goal than simply to play their music across the country.

“We’re on a big mission,” Mr Cranitch declared, “and the mission is to get Tommy married.” After leaving Newtown, Sliabh Notes were headed for Dallas, to play at the North Texas Irish Festival, and then to Houston, the hometown of Mr O’Sullivan’s fiancée, for a wedding at which Texas barbecue and bluegrass would feature alongside the music and traditions of Mr O’Sullivan’s native Dingle, County Kerry.

Fortunately for their many local fans, Sliabh Notes decided to stop in Connecticut for a concert before their journey southwest.  The Shamrock Traditional Music Society, knowing better than to mess with a winning formula, once again chose Newtown’s historic Meeting House as the perfect venue.

The evening began, as any proper Sliabh Luachra evening should, with a set of polkas.  The band dedicated “Many a Wild Night” to their hosts and longtime friends, Katie and Joe Gerhard of New Haven, and followed it with “Daly’s Mill” and a third nameless tune. 

Jigs were next in line, a set starting with the classic “Boys of Tandaragee,” continuing with a “póirt gan ainm” (“jig without a name”) and ending with “Anthony’s Frolics.” After the jigs came a rake of reels: “Paddy Taylor’s,” “The Laurel Tree” and “The Devils of Dublin.”

It was time for a break from the high-energy tunes, and Mr O’Sullivan had just the song, a lovely rendition of “The Galway Shawl.” Like many of its fellow Saint Patrick’s Day standards, “The Galway Shawl” has acquired a bad reputation among both Irish traditional musicians and dedicated fans as a hackneyed piece of sentimental fluff.  Mr O’Sullivan’s version was a revelation.  He cleared away the sediment of years and reminded everyone in the room that the song came to be so frequently performed because it is, at its core, an excellent piece of music. 

Along with polkas, Sliabh Luachra has another distinctive form of dance tune, the slide, a 12/8 variant on the usual 6/8 jig.  Dónal Murphy announced the night’s first set of slides, beginning with “John Walsh’s,” and dedicated them to Denis Dillon, a native of a town near Mr Murphy’s own home of Abbyfeale, County Kerry, who had made the drive to Newtown from his residence in New York state.

“Marbhna Luimnigh” (“Limerick’s Lamentation”), which commemorates the destruction of Limerick City by Cromwell’s men, is one of the classic slow airs of the Irish tradition. Generally, slow airs are played by a single musician without accompaniment, just as the oldest Irish songs are sung solo and a capella. Sliabh Notes’ arrangement, starting with Mr. Cranitch’s fiddle and just a hint of drone from Mr Murphy’s accordion, and gradually building to a full sound with gentle fingerpicked chords from Mr O’Sullivan’s guitar, is an ideal adaptation of a slow air to ensemble performance, adding the benefits of graceful harmony and countermelody while sacrificing nothing of the native rhythmic freedom and pure expressiveness.

The second half of the concert began with a set of polkas featured on Sliabh Notes’ 2002 CD Blackwaterside, “The Blackwater Polka” (written by Mr Cranitch), “Kathleen’s Polka” and “Michael’s Polka.” Next came a set of jigs, the curiously titled “Miller’s Maggot” and “Jenny’s Nettles.”

It was time for another song, and Mr O’Sullivan’s rendering of “She Moved Through the Fair” was a perfect choice. A set of reels — “The Donegal Reel,” “Tear the Calico” and “The Sailor’s Bonnet” — began with Mr Cranitch and Mr Murphy playing as a duo, with Mr O’Sullivan coming in precisely on the start of the second tune. “The Galway Hornpipe,” a familiar session favorite, was followed with another hornpipe known only as “the second tune.”

The band called their friend Joe Gerhard up out of the audience to sit in with them. Mr Gerhard, a fiddler well known in the Connecticut Irish music scene, made a perfect addition, having played with the members of Sliabh Notes many times at sessions in both America and Ireland. With two fiddles and the accordion adding their support to his voice and guitar, Mr O’Sullivan saluted his fiancée’s native state with “From the Heart,” written by the Texan songwriter Susanna Clark.

The official end of the concert was marked with the classic “Galtee Rangers Set,” three reels jocularly called “the Sliabh Luachra national anthem,” but Sliabh Notes’ fierce music brought the audience to their feet, and an encore of slides and polkas was in order. And so, with the memory of fierce sweet music from the Mountain of Rushes lingering in their heads, the audience left the meeting house knowing that they’d just experienced the best possible opening for the season of Saint Patrick.