CD: Martin Hayes Quartet - The Blue Room

Irish tunes revel in new chamber music settings

Recorded at beautiful Bantry House in the far south-west of Ireland, The Blue Room is the debut of West Clare’s fiddle player extraordinaire Martin Hayes’ new quartet, comprising bass clarinettist Doug Wieseman, viola d’amore player Liz Knowles, and guitarist Dennis Cahill.

It opens in spectacularly tranquil fashion with "The Boy in the Gap", a tune as beautiful as anything Hayes has ever recorded – and given his record with Irish-American supergroup The Gloaming as well as his long association with guitarist Dennis Cahill, that is a high bar indeed, over which his music seems to flow effortlessly, harnessing the spirits of invention and inspiration to explore the very essence of a given composition.

"The Boy in the Gap" begins with a bass clarinet drawing down an air that feels eastern, preceding it the warm underlay of a viola d’amore with its sympathetic strings, before Hayes appears, a simple melody at first, unmistakably Irish, played feather-light on the fiddle, and accompanied by the fine gait of Cahill’s guitar. It sets the table for a feast of traditional Irish tunes recast by the lyrical, minimalist genius of Hayes and co. It’s no wonder he’s been compared to Miles Davis and Steve Reich for the way he extracts the unnecessary and focuses on the essence.

 “We had sketches but nothing was locked down,” he says of making the album. “It kept fluctuating and developing. There was a lot of feeling our way through. If one person shifts something, it can shift for everyone really fast. You end up in a place you didn’t expect.”

The Blue Room is full of such places and spaces. Akin to the The Gloaming’s radical, minimal and lyrical recasting of the Irish tradition, The Blue Room is absolutely essential listening when it comes to the very best of contemporary Irish music. Martin Hayes is at the Barbican with the Brooklyn Rider Quartet on 25 January 2018.

Overleaf: listen to "The Boy in the Gap" 

CD: The Corrs - Jupiter Calling

Twenty years on and the Irish family band still cut it

Fresh from their triumphant return to the Royal Albert Hall last month, the Corrs – one of Ireland’s great Nineties exports – are back with a new album, the second since their 2015 comeback, White Light, and the seventh since their 1995 debut, Forgiven, Not Forgotten, thought it was Talk on Corners (1997) which made them international superstars. 

Tunes of the Munster Pipers review - wondrous collection confounds expectations

A 19th century treasure trove is brought thrillingly to life

With their contrasting yet entirely complementary timbres and their ability to create textural palettes ranging from lonesome single notes to fulsome chords rich with harmonics, the combination of pipes and fiddle is surely one of the most potent in traditional Irish music.

That was certainly the case at this remarkable concert celebrating the work of the 19th century music collector, Canon James Goodman (1828-1896). A Protestant minister, Irish speaker and uilleann piper from Dingle, Co. Kerry, and later a Professor of Irish at Trinity College Dublin, Goodman’s passion for music saw him amass a vast collection of over 2,300 tunes and 90 songs, many hundreds transcribed from the playing of fellow piper Thomas Kennedy.

The music-making confounded your expectations with endless surprises

Bringing this wondrous collection from page to stage were two outstanding musicians, fiddle player Aoife Ní Bhriain and piper Caoimhín Ó Fearghail. Straddling the worlds of traditional and classical music, as much at home leading the Clare Memory Orchestra as she is performing with the Crash Ensemble, Ní Bhriain proved to be a stunning stylist, leaping around octaves and switching between tune playing and accompaniment in the blink of an eye.

From An Rinn in the west Waterford Gaeltacht and a recipient of the TG4 Young Musician of the Year Award in 2012, Ó Fearghail’s virtuosity and versatility – in addition to the uilleann pipes, he also sings and plays flute and guitar – has seen him in much demand by bands (Caladh Nua, Danú) and soloists alike.

Presented by Irish Heritage and the Irish Traditional Music Archive (ITMA) in association with the English Folk Dance and Song Society, and a year in the preparation, from the very opening bars of the march “Fáinne Geal an Lae”, a unique version of the well-known “Dawning of the Day”, the music-making confounded your expectations with endless surprises.

The slow air “Ceó Draoigheachta Sheól Oidhche Chum Fághain Mé” (“It was a magic mist that put me astray one night”) was a spine-tingling stand-out. Played first by Ní Bhriain, underpinned by Ó Fearghail’s single note drone on the root note of A, by the end of the final, unison, repetition the air had cast a powerful spell over the Cecil Sharp House audience.

As well as the more unusual, even unique, repertoire contained within the collection, such as the perky “Quadrille” (which irrevocably called to mind The Chieftains), it was fascinating to hear the duo play two of the best loved jigs in the tradition, “An Rógaire Dubh” and “Airgiod Caillighe” (a version of “The Hag with the Money”) and note the subtle differences in phrase endings when compared to the versions we know today.

The venerably ancient love song “Maidin Bhog Aoibhinn” and “Caitlín na Guaire”, the latter framed by the loveliest of instrumentals and grounded by a profound D drone in the pipes, hinted at what a treasure trove the collection is for any aspiring traditional singer.

Illustrating how the collection represents a living, breathing entity, rather than a museum piece frozen in time, the duo took poetic licence with a couple of hornpipes which they appended to the march “An Fhinne-Bhean Mhodhamhuil” (“The Gracious Fair Lady”), transforming the first into a captivating strathspey, complete with some bracing double-stopping from Ní Bhriain, and the second into a driving polka. Matching each other note for note, you couldn’t blow smoke between the players.

The evening began with a scene-setting introduction from the Director of ITMA, Grace Toland, and an instructive film by artist Michael Fortune which provided useful background on the collection.

Long thought lost, Toland revealed that the book of song lyrics Goodman transcribed was finally reunited with the rest of the collection in Trinity College in 2008 (having been discovered in an attic in England). Well over 150 years since his initial, painstaking transcriptions, the Goodman collection represents a priceless snapshot of tunes and songs as they were played and sung at the time in west Kerry.

@MrPeterQuinn

Overleaf: watch Mick O'Brien, Emer Mayock and Aoife Ní Bhriain perform “Ceó Draoigheachta Sheól Oidhche Chum Fághain Mé”

Reissue CDs Weekly: The Radiators From Space

40th-anniversary edition of the Republic of Ireland’s punk pioneers’ debut album is a blast

TV Tube Heart, the debut album from The Radiators From Space, was issued on 21 October 1977, a week before the Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bollocks. Each was a punk rock album and one, inevitably, has been subjected to greater historical analysis and many more reissues than the other. Of course, Johnny Rotten and co’s first and only long-player was significant but the other band’s album was important too.

National Gallery of Ireland review - bigger and better

NATIONAL GALLERY OF IRELAND REFURBISHED Dublin celebrates reopening with Vermeer

Dublin celebrates the reopening of its refurbished art gallery with Vermeer

The marvellous National Gallery of Ireland, founded in the 1860s, has opened its doors to its brilliantly revamped, updated and expanded galleries. As a spectacular bonus in its opening summer, Vermeer and Masters of Genre Painting reposes in the enfilade of the newly re-done permanent galleries for temporary exhibitions.

Kat and Alfie: Redwater, BBC One review – 'EastEnders' spinoff suffers from no fixed identity

Can the 'EastEnders' couple survive without the Albert Square life support system?

EastEnders habituees will be familiar with the colourful past of Alfie and (especially) Kat Moon, who have both been AWOL from the mothership since early last year. But they’ve used the time wisely, preparing busily for this new spin-off drama in which they’ve shipped out to the seaside village of Redwater, County Waterford, to track down Kat’s long-lost son.

The Secret Scripture review - Jim Sheridan's turgid homecoming

★ THE SECRET SCRIPTURE Rooney Mara and Vanessa Redgrave can't rescue a stillborn adaptation of Sebastian Barry's novel

Rooney Mara and Vanessa Redgrave can't rescue a stillborn adaptation of Sebastian Barry's novel

It's the church wot done it! That's the unexceptional takeaway proffered by Jim Sheridan's first Irish film in 20 years, which is to say ever since the director of My Left Foot and The Boxer hit the big time. But despite a starry and often glamorous cast featuring Vanessa Redgrave (in prime form), Rooney Mara, Theo James, and Poldark's Aidan Turner, Sheridan's adaptation of Sebastian Barry's Man Booker-shortlisted novel begins portentously and spirals downwards from there. 

There's limited fun to be had from watching Mara and Redgrave play two generations of the same unfortunate woman, Rose, who has been sequestered away in an asylum for more than a half-century. But Sheridan's script, co-written with Johnny Ferguson, and the thudding overinsistence of the direction soon make a spectator feel scarcely less incarcerated. If you've seen the Judi Dench vehicle Philomena or Peter Mullan's wonderful The Magdalene Sisters, you've been round this block before, and without lines like, "I can't imagine what it would be like to be locked up for 50 years".  Wanna bet?  Vaness Redgrave in `The Secret Scripture' The central question is whether or not young Rose killed her newborn child with a rock, an act of infanticide which Mara denies early on as piano chords come crashing down around her. Her ageing, shining-eyed self hoves into view in the form of a gravely arresting Redgrave (pictured above) who, it turns out, herself plays a mean piano. Alas, it seems that Rose will soon have to find fresh musical environs given that the mental health hospital to which she has been confined is being turned into a spa hotel. (Frankly, I would just ask to stay on.) At which point, cue a strapping psychologist (Eric Bana) on hand to reassess Rose and to peruse the diaries that allow for the parallel structure that ensues. Guess what: he likes Beethoven, too. 

Teho James and Jack Reynor in 'The Secret Scripture'Rose's youth, it seems, consisted of parrying or at least juggling the advances of a motley crew of suitors, played by an array of modern-day celluloid "it boys", among them Theo James and a largely sidelined Aidan Turner. While an implacable Mara suggests a waitress wanting merely to get on with her business, these men have other ideas, though quite how James (pictured right with Jack Reynor) references being "a priest who wants to be a man" while keeping a straight face is an achievement worth pondering. In any case, gossipy, small-town village life bodes ill for the romance that develops between Rose and an RAF pilot, Michael (Reynor), whose arrival sets the cat among the politically riven pigeons. Small wonder that the Book of Job gets an onscreen workout, the so-called "secret scripture" of the title.  

"My memories, my memories, they took my memories," bleats the senior Rose, who drifts in and out of lucidity and sedation and whom Redgrave invests with the singular intensity that has long been her signature. This ageless actress (who turned 80 in January) has for some while been scooping up films like Atonement and Foxcatcher and running with them. Sheridan grants her far more screen time than those two did, but it's a lost cause. As Bana's shrink presses Redgrave's furtive, fretful Rose for details about a life glimpsed in increasingly lurid fragments, you're tempted to wish all involved had abandoned the script and allowed a venerated performer to reflect on the many and happier acting opportunities that surely constitute her memories, and ours.

 Overleaf: watch the trailer for The Secret Scripture 

CD: Imelda May - Life. Love. Flesh. Blood

 

A rich mix, synthesising Imelda May's multifarious influences

As Imelda May releases her fifth CD, it can’t but help that Bob Dylan has come out as a fan – it was, she wrote, "like being kissed by Apollo himself". No doubt his buddy T Bone Burnett passed him a copy of the album, for he produced it in Los Angeles, where it was recorded over seven days, with guest appearances from guitarist Jeff Beck and pianist and band leader Jools Holland, on whose TV shows May has guested several times.

Crash and Burn

CRASH AND BURN The riotous tale of Tommy Byrne, motorsport's nearly man

The chaotic tale of Tommy Byrne, motorsport's nearly man

Not all racing drivers are created equal. New world champion Nico Rosberg is the son of a former F1 champion, grew up in Monaco, speaks five languages and turned down an offer to study aeronautical engineering at Imperial College, London.

On the other hand, 1980s racer Tommy Byrne was a working-class chancer from Dundalk who was permanently skint and got nicked for stealing. Yet the evidence suggests he was one of the fastest natural drivers who ever sat in a racing car, and who even gave Ayrton Senna a run for his money when both of them drove for the Van Diemen team at the start of the Eighties. But despite his gifts, he never quite attained the highest echelon of motorsport.

Byrne's reputation as a star-crossed genius who wasted his extravagant natural talent through his reckless dalliances with drugs, booze and women was enshrined in legend in his book Crashed and Byrned: The Greatest Racing Driver You Never Saw (2008, pictured right). Now here's Seán Ó Cualáin's documentary, which puts vivid flesh on the story's bones with a plentiful stash of archive footage, a colourful bunch of talking heads, and plenty of opinionated input from Byrne himself, who's now 58, lives in Florida, and in the racing season teaches advanced driving courses at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course.

In fact you might say it didn't turn out too badly for Byrne, who evidently enjoys a comfortable lifestyle in the States and has managed to leave his debauched excesses behind him (as fellow Irishman and F1 veteran John Watson puts it, "If there was a gold medal for shagging, he'd have won it time and time again"). He hit rock bottom when he ended up driving for some sort of gangster in Mexico, who lived a Scarface-style life of drugs and hookers, and gave Byrne an electrifying wake-up call by firing a pistol at him. He was found drowned in his swimming pool not long afterwards.

What has made Byrne's story so tantalising, apart from his garish exploits and refreshing tactlessness, is the way he hurtled meteorically from quaint local banger races in Ireland to the fringes of F1, but couldn't quite clinch the deal. In 1982, having sensationally blitzed his way to winning the Formula 3 championship (after only getting the drive because the temperamental Senna had taken a sabbatical), he drove in a couple of Grands Prix for the obscure F1 team, Theodore Racing.

More significant was his test session with McLaren at Silverstone in October '82 (pictured above), in which Byrne set faster lap times than John Watson or Niki Lauda in a Formula One car he'd never driven before, yet bewilderingly was never offered a drive with the team. Evidently team boss Ron Dennis had taken against Byrne's ducking, diving cockiness, and several interviewees here stress that in the exclusive, corporate and intensely political world of F1, a loose cannon like Byrne was always going to struggle to fit in. As team owner turned pundit Eddie Jordan puts it, "you didn't get stability with Tommy Byrne. You got chaos."

Byrne himself launches tirades against the pretensions and snobbishness of F1, with a bit of class warfare for good measure: "People treat you different when you're broke than when you're rich... they can smell it." It's hard to tell how serious he's being when he says "it hasn't been a terrible life. I just lost out on $100m, that's all." Perhaps he might console himself with the thought that while his rival Ayrton Senna went all the way to the top, it's only Byrne who's still here to talk about it. 

Ireland with Ardal O'Hanlon, More4

IRELAND WITH ARDAL O'HANLON, MORE4 Comic's travelogue keeps it light

Comic's travelogue keeps it light

There has been an abundance of celebrity travelogues of late and with each one comes a new USP. Speaking just of Ireland, train enthusiast Michael Portillo nabbed the Victorian Bradshaw's rail guides, while the adventurous Christine Bleakley explored its wild side; and now Ardal O'Hanlon uses another set of Victorian guidebooks to take us on a three-part journey through his homeland.

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