Rebecca Scout Nelson ~ fiddle; Spiff Wiegand ~ percussion; Paul Holmes Morton ~ guitar, theorbo, banjo & octave mandolin; Ben Matus ~ voice, pipes, musette, tenor whistle & dulcian; Fiona Gillespie ~ voice, Irish whistle & bodhran
This was another Gotham Early Music Scene concert. Eleven works were printed in the program, so you're not getting a full list of titles, especially since some were combinations of two works. There were traditional English works, trad. Bedfordshire (UK), trad. Celtic, trad. Irish ... I think you get the drift. All were loosely linked to the traditions of May Day. Along the way, we got one USA composition adapted from Sacred Harp Bremen (a shape-note tune), and two from The Dancing Master (1651), as well as one from Turlogh O'Carolan (1670–1738) titled—wait for it—Carolan's Cap.
Now that that's out of the way, I think the Crickets used boilerplate bios, since I never saw a theorbo, a banjo, a tenor whistle, nor an octave mandolin. I needed to look up dulcian and musette. Apparently, the percussionist played a musette (a type of accordion), as well as a second type of guitar—I guess they can be considered percussion? The dulcian is a type of large-ish, double-reed woodwind instrument (a precursor to the bassoon). Oh, and a bodhran is an Irish frame drum. Class dismissed.
On to the music, which was a combination of vocal works (solo and with everyone joining in singing every once in a while) and instrumental works. The tunes, especially the ones listed as traditional, were essentially folk tunes gussied up as concert pieces. Nice, but very similar—there's only so much gussying up you can do to folk tunes. Most were up tempo dance-style pieces with a few maudlin pieces added in for contrast.
Miss Gillespie did the bulk of the singing though, as I said, all five sang at one point or another. The pipes were used twice and were a cute mini-version of full-on skirl-o-the-pipes bagpipes. It was a fun and well-received concert.
Will I go again? Possibly not. There was a lot of sameness there.
ConcertMeister