The Del McCoury Band 4/21/2001 reviewed by Kevin Duffy
The Del McCoury show was the best combination of musicianship, sound quality and just plain excellence that I've seen in many, many years of going to shows......and the band looked like they were enjoying it all as much as the audience. I was expecting a tightly scripted 60 minute performance and look what we got instead; 2 plus hours of world class, leave it all on the stage bluegrass. And then the entire band stays around after the show to chat and sign CD's. It doesn't get any better than that." -- Kevin Duffy
Whirligig 12/15/01 Reviewed by John McLaughlin
Last year, WNTI and Skylands Concerts had the superb young Irish band Lunasa in concert, as part of their US tour. This year's "Christmas Ceilidh," featuring Whirligig, a sextet of East Coast musicians (from Boston to Brooklyn to Baltimore), was an equally ringing success. Centenary College's Whitney Chapel is a century-old upstairs basilica with a horseshoe-shaped balcony and polished pews angled across its raked, carpeted floor, so the sightlines and acoustics are near-perfect for Whirligig's acoustic dance-music and a cappella singing, setting off Matt Darriau's barrage of flutes and whistles, Bulgarian smallpipes, soprano sax and clarinet and cradling Lisa Gutkin's swirling fiddling equally with Lisa Moscatiello's gorgeously decorated vocals.
The band opened with a set of polkas, and went on to Lisa M's sensuous "Fair Maid Walking," with its delicate guitar accompaniment by Paul Kovit, trading off on mandolin and bouzouki with Greg Anderson, who also sat down at the Kurzweil synthesizer tucked underneath the organ pipes to the rear of the stage. The band then slid into "The Abbey Reels" (also featured on their second, PRIME-CD, recording *Spin,*), featuring Matt Darriau on soprano sax and transverse flute swapping leads with Lisa Gutkin on one of her two fiddles, before returning to the beautiful "Down to the Sea in Ships" -- a farmer boy's dream-vision (performed by Shannon Anderson on their first, Quarktet, CD, *The Wheel*), here with Lisa M and Lisa G opening in a luscious a cappella duet. The crowd was all theirs by now, from the children perched on the stage steps to the older couples -- grandparents? -- at the rear of the balcony.
After a leaping set of jigs and reels, Noel Scott's accordion mixing with Lisa G's fiddle, Lisa M crept up on the central mike, and went straight into an a cappella version of "The Wexford Carol," and from there she and Lisa G went right on to another duet, this time on Susan McKeown's "Through the Bitter Frost and Snow," joined by Matt on low whistle and then Greg, leaning over his bouzouki to add a third vocal line to the second chorus. From there, Paul led the way with a syncopated guitar line into Matt's "Faux Reel" (on his "faux clarinet"), and the medley wound to a close with a tiny "ching!" on a small brass gong suspended from the front edge of the seat of Matt's low chair. Magic.
Paul Kovit took Whirligig into "Mood Vertigo," another jazz-tinged, Klezmer-influenced piece, to close the first set -- Matt Darriau's clarinet charging ahead -- and then the audience trooped downstairs for a fifteen-minute break, in the Victorian lounge with its fifteen=feet tall Christmas tree, to meet the band and, of course, check out their CD's for Christmas gifts. What was that somebody said about a Fairport Convention video somebody in the band had helped produce....?
The second half of the concert looped around in equally unpredictable patterns, Jesse Winchester's "Biloxi" (Lisa M on solo guitar) followed by what Lisa G introduced as "a Japanese rice-husking tune, on Bulgarian flute, to celebrate Christmas" (sure enough, Matt produced a perfect shakuhachi imitation), before Noel Scott, the newest member of the group -- he isn't on either of their CD's -- was turned loose to do a perfect John Whelan-style solo medley - winding up with "Rip the Calico"and "Finbar Dwyer's -- on his tiny box-accordion.
And then Matt Darriau got to his feet, and slowly began to assemble a goat onstage. Well, it had been a goat until fairly recently, he showed the crowd, and a Bulgarian one at that. No visible drones, just a chanter and a tartan-less bag..... and away we went, in a skirling wail that brought tears to the ears of every Scotsman in the place.... Lovely stuff, just lovely. An acquired taste, admittedly, but -- 7/8 rhythm? Just gorgeous music.
Lisa G got her turn next, with a trio of tunes for the family -- "Star of the Coral Keys," a slow air for a Mom knitting in Florida, followed by "Aunt Fanny's House," something close to a planxty, and then, for all those well-scrubbed children in their holiday best, still clinging open-mouthed to the steps of the stage, "Blue Mountain Kids," a reel on which the rest of the band joined in, on piccolo, mandolin, bouzouki, guitar, synth-- the little girl sitting next to me was clapping with both of her parents' hands at once.
Lisa M followed with a dramatic rendering of Ewan MacColl's "The Fisherman's Wife," Matt D's flute just wailing along by the second chorus, Paul Kovit producing something close to a Martin Carthy-style accompaniment on the guitar. Lisa Gutkin was grinning like a Cheshire cat by the time it was over.. and then the women went right into -- wait for it -- the B-52's "Revolution Earth" -- Yes! I swear, you cannot make up stuff like this! -- and the concert swept to a triumphant close with a medley of unannounced jigs and reels -- "The Yellow Wattle"? "Langstrom's Pony"? and the crowd was on its feet in a standing ovation.
What to add? For me, it was a great concert and a virtuoso demonstration of musicianship (the two don't always together). If you get the chance and they're anywhere near you, don't miss Whirligig. Thanks once again to the management of WNTI, 91.9 FM, Centenary College Radio in Hackettstown, NJ, and to Skylands Concerts. Next up (January 19, 2002): Shanachie recording artists, "Danu," "one of the best traditional Irish bands on the planet." They'll be hard-pressed to surpass this concert.
[Disclaimer: I have a volunteer fill-in slot, Weds., 1-3, on WNTI. But I've been doing this kind of thing long before I ever got to 'NTI, and anyway you don't have to trust me -- trust your own ears. Whirligig has two CD's, as noted, on the Quarktet and PRIME-CD labels, and Lisa Moscatiello's solo CD, on Happy Cactus Records (*Innocent When You Dream*) has this beautiful version of the old "muckle sang," "Bogie's Bonnie Belle") that somebody's just got to talk Whirligig into working into the concert repertoire....- John] -- John McLaughlin
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