Concert Review—

Chulrua Offered An Enjoyable Mid-Week

Concert Of Traditional Irish Music

By Andrew Carey

Chulrua (pronounced “khool rooa” and meaning “Red Back”) is named for the courageous hound which, legend tells us, belonged to the ancient Irish hero Finn MacCool. The group was the latest brought to Newtown Meeting House by The Shamrock Traditional Irish Music Society, where they performed a concert on May 6.

Led by County Offaly-born Paddy O’Brien, a button accordionist well known for his stock of unusual tunes garnered from reclusive old musicians in the most isolated parts of Ireland, Chulrua also features Pat Egan, a native of County Tipperary now residing in Baltimore, Md., on guitar and vocals, and Patrick Ourceau on fiddle.

(It was a welcome return to Newtown for Mr Ourceau, who was featured in a February 2001 concert with the concertina player Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin. That evening was the first concert in town sponsored by the Shamrock group.)

Founded in 1995, Chulrua was previously composed of Mr O’Brien, Mr Egan, and uillean piper Tim Britton; Mr Ourceau replaced Mr Britton less than a year ago. Despite this recent change in lineup and the quite substantial differences in tone color and melodic inclination between the fiddle and the uillean pipes, the current ensemble is, if anything, tighter than the previous.

Wednesday evening’s concert began with a set of 12/8 Kerry slides taught to Mr O’Brien by the fiddler Tom Billy Murphy, two of them nameless and the third called “The Scent of the Rose.”

Unusually, this last tune is an adaptation of a jig of the same name from the English tradition. Dance tunes of non-Irish origin are more common in the north of the country than in Kerry, are more typically reels than jigs or slides, and are more often from Scotland than from England.

Next came a hop jig named “The Rocky Road to Dublin,” learned from the legendary piper Séamus Ennis and probably made by him from the air of the popular song by the same name, played as a set with a pair of reels from the western part of County Clare.  Although most players wouldn’t dare to join the 9/8 hop jig to the 4/4 reel, Chulrua negotiated the tricky rhythmic transition without difficulty.

“The Drover,” a song recorded by the old lineup on the most recent Chulrua album, was quite as effective with Mr Ourceau’s fiddle replacing Mr Britton’s pipes. One of the tests of a new player in an established band is his ability to engage with the standing repertory, and Mr Ourceau has passed this test with a perfect score.

Not to be confused with the Australian stockman’s lament “Diamantina Drover” which Mr Egan recorded on his solo album Songs for the Candle, “The Drover” is a setting of an old poem comparing the freedom of herding cattle from farm to market to the confinement experienced by a farmer, a tradesman, or a soldier.

A set of hornpipes, Mr O’Brien said, they had “never played in front of people before.”  “O’Moran’s Return” and its two nameless companions went as smoothly as the concert-tested sets.

The evening ended appropriately, with both a song and a set of tunes. “Ashfields and Rye” from the Scots songwriter Archie Fisher, one of Mr Egan’s favourite sources, was followed with a set of compositions by the East Galway legend Tommy Coen, including his standout “Christmas Eve.”