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.