Traditional Irish Music from London. Album with John Blake, Lamond Gillespie and Mick Leahy.

A wonderful new release featuring the talented John Blake, who is not only one of the best accompanists in Irish music today but also a skilled flute player, in duet with fiddle player Lamond Gillespie, with expert backing by Mick Leahy and Blake. The “godfather” himself, Brian Rooney, joins in on a couple of tracks, and so does box player Tommy Maree. Twelve tracks of this kind of music is just too little, I would have easily put up with twice as many. The music has a great swing, without being hurried or flashy. It demonstrates how good musicians such as these can show their individual talents and yet bring them all together to create an organic whole, a musical conversation where varied points of view are expressed freely but always reconciled.

 

This review was published in the Scotsman 5/12/2008

JOHN BLAKE, LAMOND GILLESPIE AND MICK LEAHY
Humours Of Highgate **** ARC 0002, £12.99

Recorded in Limerick and London, on fiddle, flute and piano, with occasional guest accordion, this is the Irish music that generations of exiles played in the pubs and dance halls off the Holloway Road and Kilburn in the Fifties and Sixties – before show business discovered ‘celtic’ music. Although these tracks were put down recently, they have the authenticity of feel, phrasing, pace, style and an understated dignity that is rare in the Pogues and Riverdance generation. It’s a pity there isn’t a slow air, though.

Download this: Up Sligo/Shoemaker’s Fancy

This review of the album was published in the Scotsman on the 12/2/2012.

Lamond Gillespie, Cormac Cannon and John Blake

The Trip To Carrick
LCB001, from.custysmusic.com
****

The Trip to Carrick, acclaimed traditional Irish folk music with with Lamond Gillespie, Cormac Cannon and John Blake

Hard to find, indeed rare of this quality, this is a modest yet powerful gem of instrumental prowess, uniting a fiddler, piper and piano player in their shared love of the “old style” of traditional Irish music-making. Taking their model from the early 20th-century recordings, the monumental solidity of the phrasing with the intricate, expressive interwoven decoration of rolls, cuts and crans is a huge delight over the 15 tracks, recorded “live” over three weekends in a Donegal cottage. Each set of reels, jigs, hornpipes, laments or waltzes is accompanied by well-informed notes.

On the sleeve notes, Irish fiddle legend Tommy Peoples has the final word: “Their music lives joyously in the honour and respect of a cherished and treasured heritage.”

Norman Chalmers