Chatswood Concourse Concert Hall, February 25
8.5/10
Martin Hayes excels at enunciating the exquisite sadness of being. Like the trumpet playing of Miles Davis or the singing of Billy Holiday and Jose Carreras, it’s ever present in the great Irish violinist’s sound and phrasing. Beyond the airs and laments in which you expect it, he even imbues the jigs and reels – pieces conceived for dancing, after all – with an ineffable wistfulness. It’s as if, for Hayes, the human experience, for all its joy and certainly all its humour, is shrouded in grief and longing.
The previous times that Hayes has come here, he had the late US guitarist Dennis Cahill with him, firstly as a duo and then as two fifths of The Gloaming, who gave one of the finest concerts I’ve ever heard, to which their albums give ample testament.
Since then, Hayes formed another band that expands the perimeters of Irish traditional music, The Common Ground Ensemble, and he tours Australia this time with that band’s guitarist, Kyle Sanna.
Just as Miles endlessly sought to re-contextualise his trumpet, Hayes does his fiddle, so Sanna is by no means a like-for-like replacement for Cahill. No one could be. Where Cahill’s acoustic guitar drove the up-tempo pieces to the point of explosive excitement, Sanna used a broader palette of harmony and texture on a semi-acoustic guitar, always understanding just how little has to be done to frame Hayes’ mastery. Once he played the simplest ostinato, out of which the violin line gradually took shape as if appearing from a mist. Later, when they came back for two heartily demanded encores, Sanna added some pedal effects to create a liquid pool in which the fiddle’s notes rippled.
A wonder of this idiom is that it brushes away the centuries, making time evaporate as a linear phenomenon. The ancient tunes, as interpreted by Hayes and Sanna, can still scorch the souls of the living, while new ones by Peadar O’Riada (on whose Trathan An Taoide the notes fell like leaves slowly pirouetting in the air) ensure the tradition never stultifies.
Highlights abounded. O’Carolan’s Farewell to Music had Hayes at his most visceral, beginning over a drone effect from Sanna, with the violin building from its usual diaphanousness to a coarser, almost braying sound, and then gradually fading again, with Sanna just cross-hatching the shadows of Hayes’ notes.
On so many pieces, including The Road to Cashel and O’Rourke’s Reel, Hayes’ rhythmic sensibility was stunningly sophisticated, as he draped the tune against the time so it felt impossibly light, yet had myriad little syncopated stings in the phrasing. And always, as soon as a tune developed the slightest element of drive, his right leg rose and his right foot pumped quarter notes on the stage, earthing the beauty – and probably wearing out his right shoes rather faster than his left.