Kevin Burke, born in London of Sligo parents, now resident in Portland, Ore., is one of the greatest living Irish traditional fiddlers. On Saturday, November 19, The Shamrock Traditional Irish Music Society brought him to Newtown Meeting House in the company of veteran rock guitarist John Brennan for the world premiere of their new CD, The Pound Ridge Sessions.

The first half of the concert was a solo performance by Mr Burke, a musical tour of the west coast of Ireland, the part of the country where, as he explained, the native traditions - not only music but dance and the Irish Gaelic language - are strongest. He began in the southwest, with a set of slides from "Sliabh Luachra," he shared, "which means the Mountain of Rushes. It's a hard place to get to, and once you get there, it's easy to hide. So, and I'm sure you'll find it hard to believe, a lot of the people who went there running from the law were musicians.

"When you're heading north from Sliabh Luachra," Mr Burke said as he introduced the next set, "once you cross the Shannon River, you're into a place called County Clare... When I was growing up in London, I was lucky enough to be able to listen to and play with one of the great Clare fiddlers, a fellow called Bobby Casey."

In honor of Mr Casey, he played three reels from the Clare repertory: "Tuttle's Reel," "The Bunch of Green Rushes," and "The Maids of Mitchelstown."

"If you move further north, you'll come to Galway... My first experience of Galway music, when I was growing up in London, came from a woman named Lucy Farr," the musician later said.

Mr Burke followed "Lucy's Fling" with "S'iomadh Rud a Chunnaic Mi" - a Hebridean tune learned from the late singer and guitarist Mícheél Ó Domhnaill - and "Some Say the Devil is Dead." This set, with Mr Ó Domhnaill singing the middle tune as "mouth music" with Scots Gaelic nonsense words ("Many a thing I saw, many a thing I did") had been featured on his and Mr Burke's classic duet album Portland (1982).

After stops in Roscommon, for "Seanamhac Tube Station" by Mr Burke's old friend John Carty, who himself has played in the meeting house, and in Leitrim to honor the great 18th Century harper Turlough O'Carolan, Mr Burke turned to Portland, his home of the past 35 years, with a French-style musette waltz written by Cal Scott.

He finished off the half with a set from "my spiritual and cultural home," he said, "where my parents are from, County Sligo."

"Bonnie Kate" and "Jenny's Chickens" were recorded by the legendary Michael Coleman in the 1920s, and nearly everyone in Irish music plays them, but there is always something new in even the most commonplace tunes when played by a master of Kevin Burke's caliber.

In the second half, Mr Burke, then joined by Mr Brennan on acoustic guitar, sang "London Town," which he himself wrote "with the help of my friend Cal Scott." Mr Burke isn't well known as either a singer or a songwriter, but his tribute to his parents' generation, the "people from all over Ireland, rebuilding London Town" after the Second World War, was both infectious and moving.

Afterward, Mr Brennan switched to electric guitar and the co-creators of The Pound Ridge Sessions were joined by a full band consisting of Mark Egan on bass, Lou Bellofatto on keyboards, Danny McDermott on drum kit, and Mark Demchak on tambourine and bodhrén, the Irish frame drum. With the whole ensemble, they presented selections from the new CD.

They might not have been the standard fare for a Kevin Burke concert, but the eclectic selections worked. They began with "Blue Room Blues," originally recorded by Lonnie Johnson and Eddie Lang in 1929.

The fiddle and guitar played off each other with much the same supple bluesy flow as the two guitars of the original version. While honoring its history and heritage, Mr Burke and Mr Brennan put their own strong stamp on the composition.

The next set consisted of a pair of jigs, Mr Burke's own "Split Rock," named for a rock formation near his father's birthplace of West Dromore, and the classic session tune "The Pipe on the Hob." The impeccably Irish tunes seemed very natural in their unexpected setting.

"Evening Prayer Blues," by Bill Monroe, the father of Bluegrass, was equally effective, as was the blues rock-inflected final number, an instrumental take on the spiritual "Wade in the Water."