I think that anyone who is not enamored with Celtic music would run screaming already at the site of this album’s cover. The magnificent close-up of Uillean pipes, and the text “traditional music on Uillean pipes and piano”.
That would be a great shame and their loss, though, because Irish composer and pianist Ryan Molloy’s album Tempered, featuring five excellent Irish pipers, is a pretty amazing display of both musical prowess and the enduring force of Irish music.
The masterful playing of everybody involved is a joy in itself, but just as much of the album’s impact comes from the arrangements that breathe new and original life into the tunes. There’s something completely appealing and also playful about the way these musicians approach this material.
Ryan Malloy himself comes from the world of classical music where he is an established figure. In cases like this, there is always the risk that the classical musician takes something of a highbrow attitude towards the folk music material, but not in this case at all. Molliy’s enthusiasm for this music and these tunes is palpable and lights up the 67 minutes of playing time of the album.
But the real star of Tempered are the pipes themselves. The album is a perfect showcase for the instrument in all its versatility, and also the challenge it gives to its players. With musicians like these, the nuanced and complex arrangements and the possibilities of the pipes utilized to the max, the tunes reveal themselves to be closer to Western classical music than one would expect.
And therein lies my favorite moment on the album.
There’s a pipes and piano arrangement of Bach’s Bourrée – the same piece a Scotsman from Fife called Ian Anderson arranged for his band, Jethro Tull, in the early 1970s and casually took the writing credit for it – and it sounds just fine on the Uillean pipes. It’s a worthy rendition.
But a bit earlier we have a set of two tunes: Leslie’s March / Parnell’s March, featuring Jarlath Henderson on the pipes. Ironically, it’s this piece, intricate and demanding, that positively proves how Uillean pipes can indeed be used to play Baroque-style music absolutely fine.
It’s is a great demonstration of Henderson’s piping skills, but it’s also a reminder of the fact that traditional music did not develop and live in isolation from the music that was and, to some extent still is, considered somehow more worthy than “the people’s music”. Tempered shows in the most enjoyable way how forced distinctions like that eventually are.
Ryan Molloy – piano
The pipers:
Padraig McGovern
Tiarnán Ó Duichinn
Jarlath Henderson
Sheila Friel
Tara Howley
FolkNotes 