Edinburgh International Festival review: Aidan O’Rourke & Friends
My Light Shines On: Aidan O’Rourke & Friends ****
Aidan O’Rourke, the eclectically-minded fiddle-player renowned through his playing and composing with the folk "power trio” Lau and much else, gathered a bunch of musicians who unhurriedly but potently generated a musical radiance to transcend the “ghost light” of a darkened Leith Theatre.
Part of Edinburgh International Festival’s My Light Shines On online season, determinedly wresting performance from the shadow of Covid, the seamless, 20-minute stream of music opened with the hauntingly melancholy voice of the Middle-Eastern ney flute, played by Bashir Saade, gradually joined by the reedier strains of Brìghde Chaimbeul’s smallpipes, which steered things from Middle Eastern to Highland mode at a precise, steady tempo.
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Hide AdO’Rourke’s linking fiddle deliberations ushered in guitarist Graeme Stephen’s electro-acoustic chimes which enjoyed an easy melodic interplay with the fiddle, strumming and looping guitar going on to introduce a restrained but imploring blues prayer for a damaged world from singer-mandolinist Rachel Sermanni. Her quiet urgency was further exhorted by bluegrassy fiddle harmonies and the rest of the ensemble coalescing until it all faded back to that all-too-human-sounding keening of the ney – a lament, perhaps, for fractured times, but not without a glow of hope.
Available at www.eif.co.uk/whats-on/2020/my-light-shines-on-aidan-orourke until 28 August.
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