“I DID not think I would be able, nor had I intended, to record again” flute player Catherine McEvoy says in the sleeve notes of her new album.
After a gap of 18 years since her last solo album, the excellent The Home Ruler, was released and 15 years after the lauded collaboration Comb Your Hair and Curl It, with Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh on fiddle and Mícheál Ó Raghallaigh on concertina, Catherine has, thankfully, got back in the studio. The resulting album is a triumphant delight.
Catherine McEvoy was raised in Birmingham - both her parents originating from Co. Roscommon – and learnt her music in that city’s longstanding traditional music scene, including as a member of the Birmingham Ceili Band.
She has lived almost all of her adult life in Ireland, enduringly in Co. Meath. Catherine was a member of the ground-breaking first female group Macalla, and recorded with piano player Felix Dolan, as well as a duet album with her brother, fiddle player John McEvoy.
The influence of preceding great flute players on Catherine is explicit on some of the better known tunes on the album, all played in her warm, poised, crystal clear style.
The jig Farewell to Gurteen was recorded, in a slightly different version, by the great Seamus Tansey. Josie McDermott was a significant influence, not least because he often visited Birmingham – signified in his composition Trip To Birmingham - and you can hear his energetic but steady style in Catherine’s playing. Here she plays McDermott’s composition Peggy McGrath's.
John McKenna, from Co. Leitrim, recorded in the United Sates in the 1920s and ‘30s and Catherine plays his popular hornpipe The Buck from the Mountain. Mulhaire's/McFadden's is a superb set of reels which Catherine describes as particularly enjoying listening to being played by the exceptional duo of flute player Peter Horan and fiddle player Fred Finn.
Molly St. George, composed in the later 17th/early 18th century by the Co. Sligo harpist Thomas Connellan is often played as a waltz and has been recorded by amongst others The Chieftains and Steve Cooney.
Catherine plays it as an air, and it is two and a half minutes of the most enchanting flute playing. A sprightly set of reels - The Flowing Bowl/Market Day - is a particular joy.
The Flowing Bowl has an exultant, rolling sound and the second tune was composed by the little recorded but prolific composer of tunes, fiddle player Ed Reavy – another musical emigre to the U.S in the early 20th century.
Down the Crushen Road is very much a family affair. Catherine refers to the support of family in having “finally decided to give it [recording again] a go”. Very able accompaniment is played by her nephew Paddy McEvoy on piano and her son Ruairí McGorman on bouzouki.
There are four of Catherine’s own compositions, which sit perfectly well alongside the rest of the tunes, each of which is written for one of her and husband Tom’s four grandchildren.
Her expressive, graceful playing and superlative choice of tunes makes this album a real treasure; her passion for the music is matched by her compassion for others with all proceeds being donated to aid for Gaza, she says.
Buy the album here.
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