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Written in Folk Roots issue 96, 1991

MÍCHEÁL O SÚILLEABHÁIN
Casadh (Turning)
Virgin Venture CDVE 904

This new O Súilleabháin album blends seamlessly with his 1989 release Oileán, and in turn with 1987's The Dolphin's Way, both for Venture, but I find it holds the attention better. Again, traditional Irish airs and dance tunes, fluid piano, accompanied occasionally by bodhrán or bones, played by Mel Mercier, and a section involving musicians from the Irish Chamber Orchestra.
      What really gives this album its first extra kick is that development of the tunes into and out of jazz structures is particularly natural and joyful; its second comes from O Súilleabháin's return to the gutty and powerful use of the harpsichord, which comes smacking in on track 7, King of the Blind, a sequence which begins with Carolan's The Fairy Queen, together with Johnny McCarthy (flute), Thérèse Timoney (violin), John Kelly (viola), Adele O'Dwyer (cello), Andrew Baker (bass), and members of the ICO. Seán O'Riada, under whom O Súilleabháin studied at University College, Cork, showed how an approach to the harpsichord giving energy, rhythm and spirit precedence over baroque elegance and cut-glass accuracy could make for it a place at the heart of Irish traditional music; the very first track of his pupil's influential 1976 Gael-Linn album (the first of three for that label) showed how well that lesson had been learnt. (On that album he also used other keyboards - synth, piano, pedal organ and one which most seemed to open a channel to the music of the harpers whose tunes Bunting transcribed, the clavichord). CEF 046 included his earlier version of The Wexford Carol, which reappears here, again on piano, but given more ornamentation. Perhaps it's my loyalty to that first album, but I feel more moved by the earlier version; then he seemed to be exploring the tune itself, whereas now it seems to have become more of a vehicle for development, and the peculiar excitement produced by the tune's modal mobility between major and minor now seems more normal and less fresh.
      I quibble. It's a very satisfying album by a man whose work continues to be one of the dimensions without which any discussion of contemporary Irish music would be incomplete.

© 1991 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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