Sgoil Chiuil Na Ghailteachd And TYF concert on the Unicorn
A Review by Paul Campbell (writing with my TYF hat on rather than Fishermans oilskins on this occasion)
We (the Tayside Young Fiddlers) were asked by Sheena Wellington if we could support a concert by the National School of excellence in traditional music on their end of year tour a couple of months ago..
To put it mildly we were
all a little in awe of what to expect from the school. I have had one of
their albums on my mp3 player for sometime and have been more than impressed
by the quality of the music. There are many full time professional bands
that would do well to achieve this level of excellence in recording. At
the end of our debate we agreed it would be a fantastic concert from the
school and hopefully a great inspiration for the TYF.
After a little tooing and froing the venue selected for the gig was the Frigate the Unicorn. Dougie Pincock their director asked if we would do a warm up set. A concern for us was that the we were a little short of our senior members for this gig, (2 out of 8)... So the time was ripe for everybody to pull together and give of our best for 3 sets to warm up the crowd. Come the night of the concert we all trooped onto the Unicorn for a 7:30 start on thursday a little anxious at starting the concert for such a high profile set of you musicians. I was so proud of how well the group played..Many people approached me at the end to congratulate the TYF for a great performance. Well done everybody!!
And so over to the main part of the concert. The school spend much of the year preparing various groups of 4-5 musicias into bands for the tour. To start with however, the whole crew of 21 appeared on stage for the first number before dividing up into the various bands. It is impossible for me to name individuals or special highlights without showing unreasonable favouritism. It is fair to say they were all extremely gifted musicians playing at the top of their form. They played at various parts of the evening Bagpipes, flute, whistles (loads or them, a couple were purple!!) pianos, clarsachs, accordians and about 12 fiddles. Each and every one was great. However, and I have discussed this with many people at the concert and have gained some concensus here, What made the evening special, outstanding even, was the superb singing. Confident, sympathetic, performed with great feeling and wonderfully arranged. In English and in Gaelic we enjoyed about 12 songs throughout the evening, each one excellent. Sorry to be cheezy but 3/4 of the way through the evening we enjoyed the 6th years gioving their salutation song, "I'll sing while I'm here." Let me just say there were tears all around the hall. It was a moving moment In addition we all enjoyed a local player here as well with Coralea MacKay being one the 6th formers performing.
It is clear the students are taught stagecraft by people who know what they are at. Indeed they include such lumiaries as Jack Evans, Christine Kydd and Andy Thorburn, All the musicians were very articulate and comfortable on stage. Each of them moved around playing more than one instrument. As an aside, the bands themselves had names that obvously involved humour that came from the kids themselves. Dudechan, (traslated from Gaelic this would mean a group from the Clan Dude..... aye right) 5 ladies and Lu ( apparently this had gone through several other versions.....) etc etc This only added to sense of fun coming from the kids performing material they really wanted to put across with their own stamp on the music.
The material performed covered every corner of the tradition from ancient Pibroch to self penned tunes, from Burns songs to Gaelic puirt and contemporary. You cannot help but come away from a concert like this lifted. I could wax lyrical about just how good each of these bands were for hours. The majority of the material was taken from the last 2 recordings and also one they are plotting for next session. GO AND BUY THEM!! Their website is here
Dougie, if you are reading this...... please please come back next year.
Paul, thanks for the review and many thanks to Tayside Young Fiddlers for doing such a great job of opening the concert.
We're hoping to have the Plockton crowd back next year, maybe in March, the RSAMD Tour in June and, of course, we have the Young Trad Tour supporting the Red Hot Chili Pipers at the Caird Hall on Friday 28th September.
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