“What did you think of the show?” I asked a couple of strangers in the bar afterwards (they weren’t strangers for long). Mouths opened but quite literally no words came out. Eventually one said: “Nobody, but nobody, gets three standing ovations in Scotland”. Well, Rhiannon Giddens did just that, for a one-off night playing with an orchestra created just for the occasion at Celtic Connections.
Proceedings began with just Rhiannon’s familiar banjo on Bob Dylan’s Spanish Mary (which she recorded as part of The New Basement Tapes project). The vocal arrangement is stirring and so provides an ideal vehicle for the orchestra, especially strings, to enhance the drama, without at all overpowering Rhiannon’s performance. Round About The Mountain (a Roland Hayes penned spiritual Rhiannon recorded on Tomorrow is My Turn) was similarly effective. The arrangement on both brought to mind the best of early 1970s Blaxploitation soundtracks.
Lullaby (recorded on Kronos Quartet’s Folk Songs reviewed here), a song Rhiannon explained she wrote about the experience of a slave woman looking after her oppressor’s baby, had a fitting Gershwin, Porgy and Bess-like arrangement. Perhaps the most moving moment, in what was frequently a moving evening, came with Rhiannon’s song At Purchaser’s Option (the opening track on her brilliant Freedom Highway album – reviewed here). The impact of the song was enhanced with plucked strings echoing the banjo melody and an impeccable, short and plaintive clarinet solo in the middle of the sorrowful song which is about a slave woman being sold at auction and the ‘purchaser’ having the ‘option’ as to whether the woman takes her baby with her or leaves it behind.
As the night went on it became clear how many of Rhiannon’s songs lent themselves to good orchestration. Odetta’s Waterboy was a good example with the kettle drum hugely amplifying the staccato chord played at after each line at the start and end of the song.
Emmigration is, of course, a theme of countless folk songs, few more poignant than Pretty Saro. Rhiannon introduced the song – a version by Appalachian singer Sheila Kay Adam – by talking about her own recent experience of being threatened with not being let back into Ireland, where her children live, and recognising that, whilst she had access to resources to resolve the issue, most people facing immigration barriers aren’t so fortunate. Another Appalachian song, Pretty Little Girl With The Blue Dress On (which Rhiannon recorded while still with the Caroline Chocolate Drops on The Chieftains Voice of Ages album), provides an opportunity for Rhiannon to exhibit her excellent, in this case particularly fast, fiddle playing.
The Factory Girl was arranged, not unlike the two Appalachian songs, with the orchestra sympathetically emulating a more straightforward traditional setting, such that wind instruments, notably flutes, and the addition of a bodhran player, gave the appropriate feel of a very large pub session. Rhiannon told us that she got the song from Irish singer Margaret Barry (it has been recorded by many people including Lady Maisery, Sinéad O’Connor with The Chieftains, and recently by Lisa O’Neill). Essentially to begin with a love song, Rhiannon added a verse about the factory collapsing, after hearing about the 2013 human-made disaster in Bangladesh that killed over 1,000 people working in five garment factories that made clothes for Western markets. As Rhiannon said: ‘that is the real price of cheap fashion’.
As if she didn’t have enough credentials already, Rhiannon told us that, many years ago, she won a Gaelic singing competition in Scotland County, North Carolina. This was the preamble to one of two complete breaks for the orchestra as, on this occasion, singing acapella, Rhiannon treated us to an awe-inspiring rendition of ‘S Iomadh Rud Tha Dhìth Orm/Ciamar a Nì Mi ‘N Dannsa Dìreach (which she recorded for Another Day, Another Time). Such incredible singing – it’s not just sung in Gaelic but is sung fast and with barely any room for breath from start to finish – simply begs the ‘how does she do that?’ question.
Rhiannon described the orchestral arrangements (by Gabe Witcher, fiddle player with The Punch Brothers) as “not strictly classical, not strictly folk and hard to get right”. Gabe did get it right. The arrangements avoided overwhelming the songs or the singer, so you could always hear Rhiannon’s vocal and banjo at the forefront of the performance. The orchestra was excellently conducted by Greg Lawson (who conducted the Grit Orchestra’s performances of Martyn Bennett’s work at previous Celtic Connections – reviewed here).
The first encore, after the first standing ovation, was a reprise of Pretty Little Girl With The Blue Dress On – ‘because we really haven’t rehearsed anything else’ – with a different fiddle tune thrown along the way. The second standing ovation brought Rhiannon back to the stage to play a superb solo version of Black Annie, which she got from the black old-time fiddler Joe Thompson who she said was the first musician who inspired her to play the music she plays. The third, was simply to show appreciation for an exceptional evening. Rhiannon said that Celtic Connections was one of her favourite festivals – the admiration is very evidently mutual.