Celtic Connections

New Voices: Hamish Napier

Strathclyde Suite, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall

Alan Morrison

Four stars

Hamish Napier is a busy man in January. He has at least nine dates in his diary for Celtic Connections appearances, ranging from shows with The Gathering Stream and trad big band Ceol Mor, to playing as part of his brother Findlay’s group The VIPs on the final Hazy Recollections bill. The spotlight was his own, however, for this New Voices premiere of his first solo album, The River, even though he had assembled a band featuring seven other top-class musicians.

The instrumental set-up for The River – a musical portrait of the natural and human life that has evolved in and around the Spey, a constant watery presence in Grantown-born Napier’s childhood – was quite unusual. Four whistles and flutes filled one side of the stage; two keyboard players, double bass and bodhran the other. Folk music dominated the 11-section composition but with David Milligan on piano, there were always going to be jazzy undercurrents to this particular piece.

Indeed, it was the variety of styles that gave The River its vitality. Floating, with Tom Gibbs on keys, had a full-on funky electro jazz feel which provided a complete contrast to, say, the lively jig within Spey Cast or the swarming wind instruments of The Mayfly.

Napier’s compositional approach wasn’t exactly impressionistic but he did rather cleverly use musical modes – a round, for example, for a section entitled The Whirlpool – to capture the emotions and atmospheres of his Speyside inspirations. Perhaps the most memorable pieces were the slower ones: the tender but dark melody for Lament For The Silver Brothers and the harmonium drone and Canntaireachd vocals of "warning Piobeareachd" The Pearlfishers both brought history, myth and mood into the present.