Benefit Concert
Item Posted: Wednesday 28th March , 2007
Benefit Concert of Traditional Music at Lochgoilhead January 2003
It isn’t often that people anywhere get the chance to hear traditional music played to the standard displayed in the Benefit Concert at Lochgoilhead last Friday. Galloway fiddler and composer, Amy Geddes, was accompanied at short notice by Sandy Wright on guitar, also collaborating on several sets with Gartocharn ‘s multi-skilled Graham Laurie on the small pipes. Alison McLeod of Inverness completed the lineup with demonstrations of Scottish stepdancing.
To those in the know, Amy Geddes has for long been a player to watch amongst young Scotish fiddlers. However, she has yet to settle into a more permanent collaboration with accompanyists who would complement her skills. On Friday she and Sandy Wright conducted a fiddle and guitar dialogue which at times achieved startling freshness and delicacy, bearing comparison with, for instance, the world-famous collaboration of Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill. This was all the more astonishing in that Sandy stepped in at a day’s notice when the programmed accompanist was poached at the last minute by the Celtic Connections festival. Sandy’s background has hitherto been in jazz, which perhaps explains the improvisatory responsiveness of his playing an unfamiliar repertoire. Let us hope that he and Amy do more together in the future. Amy feels that her playing has moved on to a higher plane recently. Certainly, warmed by an ecstatic audience response on Friday, she gave a warm and moving interpretation to a programme mixing traditional airs and sets with modern compositions, including some of her own. A member of the audience commented with justice that the last time he had heard playing of such a calibre was in Canada at a concert given by Cape Breton’s famous Natalie MacMaster.
Graham Laurie comes of a piping lineage. Still at university, he plays with passion arising from his Gaelic heritage. He played impressive solos on the great Highland pipes, and played the small pipes in rousing sets with Amy and Sandy.
Alison McLeod of The Scottish Stepdancing Company explained to the audience how this percussive style of dancing had all but died out in Scotland, following the ethnic cleansing of the Highland Clearances, but had been kept alive in Nova Scotia’s strong Gaelic community and reintroduced to Scotland fifteen or so years ago. The audience loved her demonstrations of stepdancing, and expressed the hope to the concert organisers that this too could be incorporated at some point into the programme of the new workshop, an intriguing idea.
The focal point of the evening was a collection of tunes composed by the late Henry Maughan, called the “Lochgoil Collection”. Introducing the tunes, his daughter, Jean Maughan, told us that, although born in Northumbria, it was said of Henry Maughan that “He didn’t have the Gaelic, but his fiddle spoke it for him”. This was the first public performance of tunes written largely in the 1950s,of particular interest because individual tunes are named after local characters, such as “Willie McNicol”, after the well-liked village bus driver of 31 years, “John Macpherson”-more commonly known today as “Junior” in Loch Goil, the “Barclay Polka” after the famous theologian whose family lived in the grounds of the present day Drimsynie Hotel. Amy Geddes has promised to teach the tunes now that they are part of her repertoire and they certainly deserve to become part of the local and national tradition.
Lastly it was a pleasure to hear Amy Geddes singing Burns’s “Aye Waukin Oh” and some Gaelic airs that this reviewer wouldn’t dare to write the names of. In the bar afterwards, Graham Laurie also demonstrated an extensive repertoire of Gaelic ballads, so perhaps it’s a pity we didn’t hear them at the concert!!
Derek Prescott, the MC, in thanking the performers, spoke for all of us when he said that he had not had such an inspirational evening in Lochgoilhead in thirty years. Long-term resident, Jimmy Paterson, also commented that the evening reminded him of the truly good old days in the village when the rafters rang. The strong turnout on a horrible night demonstrated the depth of community support for the vision of bringing Scottish traditional music right back to where it belongs. The children were there with their parents, and all responded passionately to a performance which will live in our memories for years to come.
The Lochgoilhead Fiddle Workshop would like to express its profound gratitude to the performers, who played for nothing because they support the vision of the new workshop and love the music (but if anyone else would like to experience what they do in the future, they’d rather have their normal fee!). Also the Workshop would like to thank everyone who came along for their support. The money raised at the concert means that the teaching programme is secure for the immediate future.
This preview had previously appeared in the papers:
Traditional Music Concert For Lochgoilhead on 17th January
When Miss Jean Maughan, ex Lecturer in Music at Jordanhill College of Education, heard about the new fiddle workshop at Lochgoilhead, she put pen to paper straight away, and offered the new workshop a set of tunes for fiddle and piano composed by her father, Henry, and called, “The Loch Goil Collection”. The tunes are about local people and beauty spots, and are a mix of slow airs, waltzes and marches. One waltz “John Macpherson” is named after Junior, a well-known character at Loch Goil, who has been invited by the Workshop to come and hear his tune played at their benefit concert on the 17th January. Miss Maughan has also been invited as a guest of honour, and to mark the continuation of her family’s long connection with Lochgoilhead and Carrick. She and her father spent many happy times at the family cottage, “Lochview “, renovated by her grandfather in 1926, and she has many friends in the village.
The Workshop is fortunate that a number of musicians have generously offered to play on Friday, 17th January, at Drimsynie House Hotel, starting at 730pm. The programme will feature the Loch Goil Collection, and will include fiddling, piping, stepdancing, singing, guitar and piano. Fans of fiddler, Amy Geddes, know they are in for a treat. Amy is a traditional fiddler par excellence, a player originally from the Borders, but now part of the coterie of fresh and original players on the Edinburgh scene. If you haven’t yet heard any of the younger Scottish traditional fiddlers, this is your chance. If you have, nothing will keep you away!
All proceeds from the concert will go towards the teaching programme of Lochgoilhead Fiddle Workshop, which opens its doors on Saturday, February 15th. The Workshop is to serve everyone in travelling distance who is free on a Saturday. Adults and children will be catered for, and no previous knowledge of music will be required; only the wish to have a go, and have some fun doing it! Meanwhile the workshop, like all new organisations, needs to raise cash to fund its teaching programme, and hopes the concert will introduce a lot of people to what the music is about, as well as raising money.