Reviews
Artist:Abagail Washburn & The Sparrow Quartet
Venue:ABC
Town:Glasgow
Date:21/01/09
Now listen carefully, because you will hear more of The Sparrow Quartet. Take:
1) One waiflike frailing banjo picker from Illinois, front-woman of the all-girl old-timey blunderbuss Uncle Earl, fluent in Chinese and now studying there. Her name is Abigail Washburn.2) One finger picking banjo player. The best in the world, who lines up alongside the insuperable Wooten brothers or Chick Corea accordingly to his mood. His name is Bela Fleck.
3) One grammy nominated fiddle player. Just another bluegrass fiddle speed freak? No. Wrong. Like a bow in your eye. His name in Casey Dreissen.
4) One young, classically trained, almost unknown, fearless, ferociously innovative cellist. His name is Ben Sollee. :
Next, take one of the world's top festivals for roots and acoustic music: Celtic Connections (the connections are occasionally tenuous, but I doubt anyone is bothered) and fill the cavernous hall of Glasgow's ABC with a healthy proportion of Scotland's top traditional musicians taking time out. :
Then press PLAY. :
The band's repertoire consists of an almost impossible blend of material and influences that juxtapose Chinese folk songs ("The Sun has Come Out and We are so Happy", had a delicious irony on a cold January night in Glasgow) with old-timey songs like Nobody's Fault but Mine, from Abby's "Songs of a Travelling Daughter" album. :
With Abby's high, clear voice leading the charge on the vocals very ably in English and Chinese, it is the powerhouse of trio of Driessen, Fleck and Sollee that mark this band out as something very special indeed. Driessen, the groovemeister, used his trademark fiddle chop to superb effect, riding a rhythmic counterpoint with Abby's rolling clawhammer banjo. With his trademark red shoes and goatee beard, his solo performance from his soon-to-be-released album Oog was worth the ticket price alone. :
In his illustrious career Fleck has taken the banjo places it has never been before, and frankly few will ever be able to follow. This evening he had just flown in from another gig in another city: Obama's inauguration in Washington DC. He sat quietly slouched in a seat as he always does. He may have been jet-lagged, but it didn't show in his playing. Of course his customary solo spot featured plenty of crowd-pleasing lighting fast picking, but it was sensitive chord shifting and arpeggiated excursions up to the dusty end of the neck that showed this master at his best. :
One of the splendid pleasures in the world of traditional and rootsy music in recent years has been the rise of the cello, and the opportunity it has given classically trained players to cross between the two genres to the benefit of both. Sollee provides a perfect case in point, and his rendition of George Washington Phillips classic "What are they doing in Heaven today" was simply sublime. His new album Learning to Bend should be in everyone's collection. :
Such a spectrum of styles, sources and moods provided wonderfully broad scope for the quartet to work their magic, and magical it was. There are few line-ups who could meld nameless Kazakh melodies with Banjo Pickin' Girl, but these guys can. :
Sparrow Quartet? Yes. Sparrows? Certainly not. :
Martin Finnigan