Sarah-Jane Summers & Juhani Silvola – The Smoky Smirr o Rain
Eighth Nerve Audio (8nerve008) – 21 May 2021
Scottish/Finnish duo Sarah-Jane Summers and Juhani Silvola dropped their self-titled debut album back in 2013, with follow up Widdershins coming in 2016 and now The Smoky Smirr o Rain completing a pretty faultless trio of albums. The pair come from colourful backgrounds, with Sarah-Jane beginning to play fiddle through the teaching of Donald Riddell, a violin builder and player of traditional Highland fiddle music, and moved on to complete a Masters degree in Norwegian traditional music and improvisation. Juhani has spent time playing in Norwegian traditional and indie music acts and is also a recognised music producer. The broadness of the two careers are distilled into beautiful and exciting music on their duo albums, with improvisation blending with traditional music and original writings. The Smoky Smirr o Rain was also recorded live, which gives it the wonderful immediacy and vitality often found in music brought to the ear with little fuss or enhancement.
Although Sarah-Jane and Juhani are known for their explorations of both Scottish and Scandinavian music, the first three tunes on the album are rooted in the former camp, harking back to the Patrick McDonald Collection of music, first published in 1784. McDonald came from a musical family considered unusually prestigious at the time and the music associated with him that is being played these days comes from all over Scotland and is considered an important part of eighteenth and nineteenth-century Gaelic music. Opener Dàn Fhraoich is an ‘ancient heroic ballad’ and begins with Juhani’s lovely slow high-played piano, before Sarah-Jane’s fiddle comes in around the minute mark, accompanied by lower piano notes. The fiddle melody here is beautiful and immediately brings to mind stellar Hardanger d’amore and piano duo Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh & Thomas Bartlett, particularly the spacious piano tune sitting behind the fiddle. Towards the end of the piece, both musicians let loose a touch and hint at their improvisational tendencies, before they rein things back again.
Number 81, the second McDonald tune, is far more forthright and upbeat, with strummed guitar introducing things briefly before a more euphoric fiddle line sweeps in. This feels like a far more structured piece and showcases the duo’s spot on timing and intuition. Mo Chruinneag Ghreannar & Loisg Lad Gual io-uo is calmer again, with a gorgeous and memorable fiddle refrain backed by gently picked acoustic guitar. Juhani is careful here to allow the fiddle centre stage and stays behind Sarah-Jane, adding crucial texture and the subtlest harmonics and staying solid while the violin notes again suggest a freer spirit towards the end. The final tune from McDonald’s collection is ‘S Cian ‘s Gur Fad Tha Mi m’ Thàmh, another gorgeous piece contrasting the upbeat joviality of pieces like Number 81. Here Juhani’s picking is playful but still subtle, with a constant stream of softly plucked strings and neat hammer ons ranging all over the fret board. Sarah-Jane’s fiddle enters with a silky high note stretching out alongside the guitar and continues to compliment it with lightly played drawn out notes that shimmer beside Juhani’s playing. This tune is subtlety itself and is happy to keep its shape and mood for three minutes, before shifting into a slightly more urgent phase in the final minute and then moving seamlessly into the title track, an original written by Sarah-Jane. This ones maintains Juhani’s steady picking, but Sarah-Jane’s fiddle is more substantial, with a sturdy jig that smoothly interchanges with a mirrored guitar part, before both instruments combine. It is wonderful music and demonstrates both the energy and restraint of the two players.
Three more of the eleven tracks here are originals, with Taivaankannen Halki being the lone piece written by Juhani. This one is another peach, with both guitar and violin working together beautifully on a complex and powerfully realised narrative drama of a song. Coming in after the enthusiastic medley of Pibroch & The Herring Reel, a Scottish jig and reel pair using repetition through upbeat bowing and strummed guitar to create cracking dance music, Taivaankannen Halki‘s more mysterious and layered nature shifts the mood skilfully. Frequent use of the guitar’s bass string and more mournful and questioning fiddle playing brings an adult feel to this one that is again turned on its head by following piece Borrowed Days, another Sarah-Jane original. Plenty of drama here again, but the urgent strumming of the guitar mixed with bowing that becomes quite frenetic in places give this one more direct and aggressive energy in its first half. In the second part, Sarah-Jane’s bowing reaches a super-high pitch, while Juhani softens his own playing, before some sharp and lively interplay from both, certainly bringing in their improvisational skills, concludes a mercurial, meditative and quite breathless composition.
Further on, Sarah-Jane’s final written piece is Kummitȁdin Valssi (Godmother’s Waltz), a charming song in that wonderful 3/4 time signature that gives the music a certain offbeat magic. For the first part of this one, Juhani’s guitar plays a lovely line alongside Sarah-Jane’s plucked fiddle strings, giving the music a sense of space and lightness. After a minute or so, the bowed notes gracefully enter and Juhani switches to gently strummed strings, filling the space but losing none of the balance and style of the music. To bookend the piece, the pair switch back to plucked and picked notes, as light as air, to complete a terrifically clever and finely nuanced piece of music that leads into the final song Tha m’ Aigne fo Ghruaim. Although this translates to ‘this depression on my soul’ and the mood is yearning in places, there is still undoubtedly a positive energy and optimism to much of this piece that finishes the album beautifully. Juhani’s playing avoids many low notes and his quick picking creates a vibrancy that Sarah-Jane’s slow bowing accentuates rather than contradicts. It is a fitting end to an album of music full of power, prowess and emotion.
It seems that this duo cannot put a foot wrong and The Smoky Smirr o Rain is a stunning addition to an already impressive catalogue of music. Beautiful examples of rich traditional material blended with strong and affecting original compositions, written and played with skill, flair and feeling, this album is vital and quite wonderful.
The Smoky Smirr o Rain is released on 21 may and can be pre-ordered now via Bandcamp: https://sarah-janesummers.bandcamp.com/album/the-smoky-smirr-o-rain
Website: https://www.sarahjanejuhani.com/
Photo Credit: Jonas Sjøvaag