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By a strange coincidence, Scotland’s three leading massed fiddle groups – Fiddlers’ Bid, Session A9 and Blazin’ Fiddles – are now all operating with four-fiddle frontlines. The last named have just recently come into line but this uniformity of numbers doesn’t mean these groups all sound the same. Far from it; all three have their distinctive signatures.
The Blazers, as their fans know them, are the group closest to the bagpipe tradition, having two strong West Highland stylists in Allan Henderson and Iain MacFarlane, and that rugged connection remains strong in a sound that also blends in Bruce MacGregor’s steely eloquence and the sweet Shetland phrasing of recent arrival Jenna Reid to create a collective force that does indeed blaze but as was evident here, can also smoulder, glow and positively scorch.
A fair portion of the concert was given over to showcasing the fiddlers’ individual talents, with Reid easily rising above Henderson’s jocular attempts to put her under pressure as the first soloist with a typically winsome Speyside air and a Formula 1 class blaze through Scott Skinner’s chicane-laden The Hurricane.
These spots add not just to the stylistic variety and skill on display but also to a prodigious entertainment factor. The thin skinned needn’t apply for any future vacancies in Blazer personnel.
When the banter stops, though, the going gets serious, and there were terrific sets from MacFarlane and Anna Massie, temporarily swapping guitar for fiddle, and a five-fiddle strathspey and reel romp, with Andy Thorburn manning the rhythm department with admirable keyboard drive and shrewd chord placement, before the house lights going up doused the flame.
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