Monday, May 11, 2009

The fiddle fair

What a fabulous weekend!

No-one witnessed an actual end to any particular session - the music may have changed venues and locations, styles and players, but it never stopped. Baltimore had a superb atmosphere, with sessions starting up all over the place, organically, as strangers sat down together around a table and brought out their instruments, a few words enough to figure out their areas of intersection.

I love the apparent effortlessness to these kinds of music, and also the care with which the musicians listen to each other, allowing space for a player to improvise away on the tune, before they give a nod and the others pick up their fiddles or squeeze-boxes or spoons, ready to be recalled in. I forgot my camera on both Friday and Saturday, but Sunday I was prepared. And boy oh boy, it was colourful!

Sunday highlights were Les Violons du Rigodon in the Glebe Gardens, which was music and theatre; in addition to regular violins, it also featured violins of the teeny-tiny variety, and also recycled instruments, made from oil cans, Werther's Original tins etc. Splendid, joyful, beautiful performance.



And walking back from the concert, the strains of a waltz still playing over in our ears, we turned into the sunshiney square, which was filled with music, and friends, and friends playing music.



*And* as if all that wasn't treaty enough, I got to catch up with family. Simply superb weekend.

2 comments:

TomRourke said...

Great pics Dr O'. I'd caught a glimpse of your quick "still life" set up on Satuday but didn't realise it came out so well. You'd never suspect the place was jammers at the time.

Orlaith said...

Yeah I love that one!

For those who may not have been squeezed into Bushe's that night: I had figured that it was a smidge intrusive to take photos of people you're sitting beside (even if they are playing music), and that a photo couldn't do justice to the atmosphere anyway. And so, during a pause between songs, I nabbed a quick shot of their table.

Which worked out just fine.