Aidan Connolly – The Portland Bow
Raelach Records – Out Now
The latest release from the exemplary Raelach Records is Dublin fiddler Aidan Connolly’s second solo album, The Portland Bow. If you are looking for bright, stirring, exceptional fiddle playing with an abundance of varied tunes, Aidan’s album will make your day.
The ideas for the album were developed by Aidan during lockdown, making the best use of having such an unprecedented amount of time to explore new repertoires and fiddle techniques and to reach out to musical friends in Ireland and abroad through online video calls. The album was recorded live in a single day at Raelach Studios in Lissycasey, County Clare, with Ruairí McGorman on Greek bouzouki and Jack Talty on piano.
One of the things I love about albums like this is how the tune selection brings to your attention artists and styles that you may not have listened to for a while and shines a light on lesser-known composers, players, and tunes. The first set of tunes opens with Whigs of Fyfe, a reel which Aidan learned from the playing of the great, late Cape Breton fiddler Jerry Holland (there are also two of Jerry Holland’s tunes on the album, and a couple from other Cape Breton fiddlers). Straight away, there is a vibrancy and lift in Aidan’s playing that both reflects the source style of the tune and his personal expressive approach, audibly built on close listening to some of the great Irish fiddle players. Things proceed with a Scottish and then an Irish reel, the wonderful The Trip To Durrow, which will be familiar to many and is a perfect fit to round off the set.
A longstanding source of inspiration, and probably the most obvious influence on Aidan’s fiddle playing, is music from the rich Sliabh Luachra tradition on the Cork/Kerry border, which, in and amongst the album’s variety, remains a prominent focus throughout. There are tunes that were played or composed by well-known Sliabh Luachra fiddlers Paddy Cronin, Paddy Jones, Julia Clifford and Dennis Murphy. Whilst they include polkas and slides that are most often associated with the Sliabh Luachra style, there is a rousing Paddy Cronin reel and an almost eerie Paddy Jones air, Leila, for Paddy Jones where Aidan achieves precisely the effect he ascribes to Paddy Jones in the sleevenotes: ‘his air playing, in particular, would make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up’.
Aidan relocated to Valencia in 2018, and the inclusion of several tunes he learned while living in Spain adds to the eclectic tone of the album. The first is El Guijar, a jota, a musical form and dance known across Spain. Aidan learned the tune from José Climent, a co-founder and former member of La Musgaña, who has a keen interest in Irish music. Aidan’s does an amazing job of emulating on fiddle the kind of much bigger sound you might expect to hear in a Spanish version with some combination of flute, bagpipes, hurdy-gurdy, clarinet and fiddle. A lovely set of mazurkas also learned in Spain further adds to the mix of styles.
The very last tune on the album is a lively barndance, Ansty’s, composed by the Dublin flute player Paul McGrattan, and comes from the outstanding 2000 album Beginish (with Paul, Brendan Begley, Paul O’Shaughnessy and Noel O’Grady), which is one, together with Paul’s solo album’s, that more than bears returning to again and again.
You can tell that the tunes on The Portland Bow have been assembled with great care, so it comes as no surprise to learn that Aidan is a respected authority on Irish traditional instrumental music from the 1920s onwards and has a vast repertoire of tunes of traditional and more contemporary origin, as well as from other folk music genres. Such an assortment, of course, runs the risk of being too disparate and lacking coherence, but the opposite is the case here. Aidan’s warm, melodic playing carries the collection, adding just enough ornamentation to put his personal stamp on a great set of tunes.
The album’s title refers to a fiddle bow generously gifted to Aidan by fiddle player and repairer Kevin McElroy from Portland, Maine; in the sleeve notes, Aidan says the new bow “has made all the difference”. I don’t know what his playing would sound like without the Portland bow, but the playing on this album deserves wide attention and plaudits.
Website: https://aidanconnollymusic.com/
Album Design by Maurice Gunning