Tradfest
Robyn Stapleton
Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh
Rob Adams
THREE STARS
The current time finds Robyn Stapleton heading out into the big wide world. The singer from Stranraer handed over the BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year baton to her successor in February and next month she releases her first album, Fickle Fortune, for which this was the official launch concert.
Having studied on the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland's Scottish music course and at the Irish World Academy in Limerick, she has taken elements of both the Scots and Irish traditions into her repertoire and style, citing impeccable sources in both cases. Among the former she acknowledged great singers of the past, including Jeannie Robertson and Jessie Murray, and for the latter she can boast first-hand tuition from a current pillar of the music, Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh of Danú and A Stór Mo ChroÃ
Stapleton has listened and learned well. She sings clearly and her unaccompanied rendition of MacCrimmon's Lament, one of Robertson's signature songs, was judged nicely for pace and emotional impact. She was generally well served elsewhere by her band, fiddler Kristen Harvey, guitarist and bouzouki player Aaron Jones, and Alistair Iain Paterson on keyboard and harmonium, and showed both attractive ornamentation of a melody and storytelling nous.
If Willie o' Winsbury, a rare tale of love going right in a folk ballad, seemed to come off the rails slightly in its tempo, her hit from her winning 'Young Trad' set, Jock Hawk's Adventures in Glasgow, underlined her ability to time a punchline as our fleeced hero reflects on the likelihood of leaving the big city in the same naked state as he arrived into the world.
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