Calum MacCrimmon's Boraraig/Taylor & Leigh
Calum MacCrimmon's Boraraig/Taylor & Leigh
Mitchell Library, Glasgow
TWO quite different strains of music-making featured here, the one drawing largely on American vernacular music and the other celebrating legendary exponents of a Scottish tradition.
Heather Taylor and Alex Leigh recovered from an awkward start, when her well-pitched a cappella gospel intro was joined by his yet-to-be-plugged-in guitar, to deliver a confident set of blues and country-rooted pop with a slightly cabaret-ish presentational style. The quiet and slightly underdeveloped Different Kind of Lonesome proved a good showcase for Taylor's more sensitive side and the uptempo Gambling Man showed them working well as self-contained, rocking unit.
Calum MacCrimmon's familial legacy is a source of pride to the Monifieth-based Scottish-Canadian but it's also a weighty one that he approached with caution when paying musical tribute.
Commissioned for last year's Blas festival of Highland culture, his Boraraig does a fine job of highlighting the MacCrimmons' place in piping tradition (eight generations were hereditary pipers to the MacLeod clan chiefs at Dunvegan on Skye) in music and song.
Darren Maclean's beautifully weighted Gaelic hymn to their reputation provided a moving sequence in a suite that referenced more recent family members as well.
MacCrimmon's playing on pipes of a pibroch written by his father for his grandfather was another stirring moment and there was unscripted humour in Maclean's exuberant assessment of MacCrimmon's sister before actually singing her praises added to strong contributions on fiddle, jew's harp and especially Angus Nicolson's pipes and whistle from the seven-strong ensemble.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article