Aly Bain & Phil Cunningham 19/3/12 & 4/4/12

The more I see Aly Bain the more impressed I am with his fiddle playing. It is both subtle and confident and it is a continual surprise that so little apparent effort translates into such a beautiful sound. Having caught him anchoring the Transatlantic Sessions band in a full Symphony Hall in February I was able to catch him plus his long-time musical partner, Phil Cunningham in the intimate Lichfield Guildhall in front of a couple of hundred people in March and then again at the Djanogly in Nottingham. Phil is also a master musician playing slow and melodic airs on the accordion like no-one else. He also shows off his dexterity and speed occasionally but is at his best with haunting Scottish tunes.

Most memorable for me were a couple of Swedish tunes from Ursa with a strange phrasing, a couple of Texan songs one of which included a herd of horses represented on fiddle, "Violet Queeen of Lerwick", "The Pearl" and really anytime they played a slow air. "By Dundas Loch" was a particularly fine example of a slow tune. The second gig also featured a lovely tune either called or about sitting in the stern of a boat on the way to Lewis.

As usual the bonhomie was in abundance as Phil told anecdotes and Aly chipped in with dry observations but essentially this is about the tunes and they are crafted and played with decades of confidence and finesse and bucketloads of skill.

Joan Baez 13/3/2012

Most singers the wrong side of 70, particularly if they were renowned for having a powerful and pure voice would surround themselves with backing vocalists and a big band to disguise the ageing of their vocal chords. Not Joan Baez; perhaps unsurpisingly given her dissident nature she takes an opposite course and the gig is all about her voice and the power and emotion it brings to songs about defiance and protest as well as to those about more personal subjects.
The band consists of Dirk Powell, multi-instrumentalist - it would be quicker to say what he doesn't play - and an understated percussionist who quiety accompanies some of the songs. A number of the songs are simply Joan however, mostly accompanying herself on guitar.
The choice of songs is impeccable but then she has more than 50 years of back catalogue to choose from. It is slightly invidious to pick out highlights from such a classy set but for me they included; "The Scarlet Tide" a masterpiece of a song from Elvis Costello which she delivers far better than him as she captures perfectly the pathos of the song, "You Might as Well try and catch the Wind", "The Ballad of Joe Hill" sung with defiance and feeling, "Suzanne" a beautiful version of the Leonard Cohen classic and the final two songs before the encore. These were a spanish song I had not heard before "Gracias a la Vida" and then an amazing version of "Diamonds and Rust".

I have seen Joan Baez a few times in the last decade and I was wondering how much longer she can hack it. Her voice may not be what it was ten years ago but she can hack it big style.