If this was another significant stride in the Queen's Hall's resuscitation as a venue - following its successful Celtic music programme during August, the Shetland series which this concert kicked off is step two in a range of self-promotions aimed at getting music on the stage and bodies through the door, it was a mighty statement of rude good health for Shetland fiddle music in general and Fiddlers' Bid in particular.
Not that the fiddle's status in these northern isles is in any doubt. Fiddlers seem to grow there like berries in the Carse of Gowrie. There were two in support group Milladen, outstanding prospects both, which when they joined in Fiddlers' Bid's rollicking, earned rather more than a routine encore, brought the complement to six.
The Bid's fiddlers four have been playing together since they were bairns, with the result that they now weave a sound that you could drive a car at and the car would come off worse. It's tough but it's also malleable, capable of great tenderness, such as the poignant Leaving Lerwick Harbour, and as mobile as a rocket.
The press hand-out for their new CD, a magnificent affair by the name of Da Farder Ben Da Welcomer, describes their live sound as exhilarating. It's not often such literature is guilty of understatement, but this is such an occasion. With guitar, bass, and the superbly springy keyboards of Catriona McKay, who also contributes plaintive harp, as their engine, they started off exhilarating and took the excite-o-meter readings through the roof, blending light and shade, tall tales and matey humour, and above all displaying an exuberant, heartfelt musicality.
Bid accepted, I'd say.
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