At the start, there’s just Julie Fowlis’s compelling unaccompanied voice singing Òran an Rain, a song of loss and longing and a track from her most recent album Alterum (2017), sung here as one of a pair of selkie songs, the other being Ròn poll an Dùdain, a song Julie tells us she got from Nan MacKinnon, a key traditional Gaelic singer from the island of Vatersay. Even when the band – Duncan Chisholm (fiddle), Éamon Doorley (bouzouki) and Innes White (guitar) – come in, the playing is restrained, a less is more approach which characterises the accompaniment throughout the concert, leaving plenty of room for Julie’s remarkable vocals.
Fear à Dùin Mhòir is a puirt a beul, a traditional Gaelic unaccompanied dance music song, which Julie excels at, making for joyful listening, and was followed by Would the minister not dance/Chloe’s passion/ The Oblique Jig, a set of Scottish and Irish tunes, with Julie on whistle and Duncan’s fiddle to the fore. Alice Allen on cello and Patsy Reid on fiddle joined the band for a lovely version of Lon-dubh – The Beatles Blackbird in Gaelic – and remained for the rest of the evening performance. A particularly gorgeous moment came with Camariñas (another track on Alterum), a Galician traditional song, perfect for the combination of fiddle, cello and Julie’s delightful vocal.
Many in the audience joined in with a stirring version of Runrig’s Hearts of Olden Glory and, after another great set of tunes – the last, Isaac’s Welcome to the World, written by Duncan Chisholm on the day his eldest son was born – they finished with Biodh an deoch seo ’n làimh mo ruin, another puirt‐à‐beul set that had a spirited audience, encouraged by Éamon, clapping along.
For the encores, Binneas, a Gaelic harmony collective of young singers who had opened the evening, returned to the stage. Together, they performed the beautiful, haunting A’ phiuthrag ’s a phiuthar (Alterum’s opening track), followed by a rousing version of another Runrig song, the anti-war Fuaim a’ bhlàir and then a couple more upbeat tunes to send the suitably enthusiastic audience out into a cold night looking very happy.