Celtic Connections
Rachel Sermanni & Jarlath Henderson with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra
City Halls, Glasgow
Keith Bruce
four stars
THE SCOTTISH Chamber Orchestra currently advertises its season concerts in Glasgow under the generic banner “Friday Nights at the City Halls” and although this was not one of its own gigs, it happened to slot perfectly under the title. The music of both these performers was also well-suited to the addition of their skills, but in very different ways.
If Rachel Sermanni seemed a little over-whelmed at the start, she quickly acknowledged her suspicion that the event was a never-to-be-repeated treat. In fact it was her tunes, which often owe more to musical theatre and cabaret than traditional music, than seemed most bolstered by the arrangements of them by John Ashton Thomas and Este Visser. This was a large SCO, conducted by Paul Campbell, including a bass clarinet, contra-bassoon and tuba, and Ashton Thomas in particular made full use of the lower-register instruments, while it is also at the bottom of her range that Sermanni’s singing is most affecting.
Jarlath Henderson is still best known for his skill on small pipes and whistle, but the Northern Irishman’s voice is something special, and his regular – but not often enough convened – band with Hamish Napier, Innes Watson, Andrea Gobbi and Duncan Lyall give it the perfect context. So fully realised are the arrangements of the tunes from the Hearts Broken, Heads Turned album that the SCO was more the icing on the cake here. There was also a great deal more experience on stage, as Henderson has already road-tested the orchestral show in Ulster and at the BBC Proms. In a move towards the full David Byrne experience, one of his repertoire of murder ballads was also performed by seven dancers from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, choreographed by Scottish Ballet’s Jamiel Laurence.
It was, of course, Burns Night, and the evening was bracketed by acknowledgement of that, with Sermanni opening proceedings with a solo Flow Gently Sweet Afton, and the night ending with an encore duet of Ae Fond Kiss on which she and Henderson swapped lead and harmony lines with skill and sensitivity, and not a little daring.
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 here