Bain, Möller and Molsky to play St George's Hall Liverpool

Saturday 9 November 2013 7:30 pm

St George's Hall Concert Room

Tickets £15

www.liverpoolphil.com

A melodically and rhythmically exciting collaboration by three of the world’s leading folk musicians. Sharing their Celtic, Nordic and Appalachian cultures are Aly Bain, Scotland’s supreme traditional style fiddler, Swedish multi-instrumentalist Ale Möller, and American old time fiddler, singer, guitarist and banjo player Bruce Molsky. The trio recorded their new album at Liverpool Philharmonic last year and the beautiful St George’s Hall Concert Room is the ideal setting to take in their unique and phenomenal sound.

THE TRIO

Aly Bain is Scotland’s supreme traditional style fiddler. His playing is unique – driving, impassioned and pure – with a vibrant, unmistakable tone that has earned him a following of ardent fans throughout the world.  His most recent collaboration with Swedish multi-instrumentalist Ale Möller, created the album Fully Rigged a celebration of shared Nordic heritage. Completing the line-up is Bruce Molsky who has also explored traditional music from an astonishingly broad range of cultures over the past two decades.

Aly Bain helped establish the Boys of the Lough and began a life of intensive playing, recording and travel that continues to this day. Although his musical base is firmly in Scotland, his extensive travels have led to an appreciation and mastery of many kinds of fiddle music. In November 1994 he was awarded an M.B.E. for services to folk music. A further honour came in the form of an honorary degree of Doctor of Music, conferred on Aly in July 1999 by the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.

Ale Möller found his roots in Swedish folk music by way of first falling in love with the sounds of Greece. En route he became a master of the bouzouki and a multi-instrumentalist with a lot of different flutes in his belt. He has toured with Mikis Theodorakis and been a front member of bands like Filarfolket, Enteli and Nordan to name but a few. While he still tours the world with the trio of Frifot, first and foremost he is just Ale, the multi-musician and performer who is a master at making people joining him in joyful musical experiments. Audiences crowd into concert venues where the Ale Möller Band are appearing to embrace the legacy of music taking shape before their very eyes, quite often in chaotic circumstances and divinely guided by inspiration and the moment shared.

Bruce Molsky is one of the most influential old-time fiddlers around. He is also a remarkable  guitarist, banjoist and singer. His high-spirited music melds the archaic mountain sounds of  Appalachia, the power of blues and the rhythmic intricacies of traditional African music. He holds a stage as few roots musicians can: with skill, a varied and deep repertoire, a reverence for the past, a healthy curiosity about music outside old-time, and a relaxed, conversational wit that draws listeners in as if they were sitting in his living room.

 

Liverpool Irish Festival 10- 20 Oct 2013

The U.K’s most successful Irish cultural festival, now in its 11th year, will run from Thursday 10 to Sunday 20 October 2013. The annual festival celebrates the links between Liverpool and Ireland. 

The cultural celebration brings together the colourful Irish heritage of Liverpool, with the best of contemporary and traditional Irish arts and culture. A rich mix of music, drama, comedy, film, talks, literature, lectures and walks will fill the concert halls, pubs, clubs, museums and gallery’s throughout the city for the ten day festival.

Highlights include a rare showing in the UK, of director Lenny Abramson’s (Garage, What Richard Did) first feature length film, Adam and Paul (2004), taking place on Thursday 17 October at FACT.  Followed by an after show discussion with the man himself, who is taking a break from finishing off his fourth feature, Frank, a comedy about a young wannabe musician donning a giant papier-mache head, loosely inspired by musician Chris Sievey’s Frank Sidebottom persona, starring Michael Fassbender and Domhnall Gleeson. 

A programme of classic and contemporary short films curated by Úna Feely of Indie Cork Film Festival takes place on Sunday 13 and Monday 14 October at the Picturehouse at FACT. Una Feely brings us some of the best and most interesting short films produced in Ireland this year, as well as some of the great shorts of the past. Once again the screenings will be introduced by some of Ireland’s finest young filmmakers.

Irish Comedy legend Pat Shortt’s new one man show comes to the Unity Theatre on Tuesday 15 October. It charts the life of Dixie Walsh (Jumbo Breakfast Roll, Where did my money go) a solo lounge musician. During the night Dixie reminisces about the path his career has taken and the struggles he has had to get to the top. This is not Pat Shortt’s first appearance at Liverpool Irish Festival, last year he starred as Josie in Garage which was shown in the Irish Film Season at FACT.

As always, it is music that takes centre stage with over 100 musicians from Ireland and Liverpool’s own vibrant Irish music scene - the festival is shaping up to be the country’s premier celebration of Ireland's glorious music.

Irish music legend Christy Moore is at Liverpool Philharmonic on Saturday 12 October and the opening night’s concert at the Epstein features Celtic superstars Pádraig Rynne, Donal Lunny and Sylvain Barou on Thursday 10 October.  Lumiere have grown from strength to strength, bringing their distinct sound from the cosy pub snugs of their native Kerry to international concert halls around the world and now to Liverpool’s Sefton Park Palm House on Sunday 13 October.

The groundbreaking, part super-group, part sessions, project The Irish Sea Sessions returns on Friday 18 October at Liverpool Philharmonic Hall with a radically new and exciting line up of the most talented musicians in their field. Now in its fourth year, 13 hand-picked multi-instrumentalists and singers from traditional and contemporary music backgrounds, and from both sides of the Irish Sea, come together with the audience for another night of impassioned exposition of the shared music and the special bond between Liverpool and Ireland.

This year’s new-look new line-up includes: Declan O'Rourke, Robert Vincent, Pauline Scanlon, Alan Burke, Bernard O'Neill, Gino Lupari, Dave Munnelly, Neil Campbell, Terry Clarke-Coyne, Eamon Coyne, Mick Coyne, Sean Regan and Emily Portman.

Performances by Damien Dempsey have become one of the cornerstones of Liverpool Irish Festival, he plays The Kazimier on 16 October. 

This year will also see the launch of The Festival Club which will run on the Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights during the festival at The Zanzibar Club on Seel Street. It will be hosted by local musicians Alan O’Hare and Ian Prowse and will feature performances from popular local musicians and those performing at the festival.

More information on the Festival can be found at www.liverpoolirishfestival.com

Twitter: @LivIrishFest

Facebook: LivIrishFest

Spooky Men’s Chorale Liverpool Philharmonic 31 July

Spooky Men’s Chorale
Wednesday 31 July 2013 7:30 pm
Liverpool Philharmonic
Tickets £16.50, £23.50
www.liverpoolphil.com

The Sydney based a cappella Spooky Men’s Chorale are an ensemble that sounds as sacred as a high church choir one minute and wickedly off the wall the next, with an eccentrically wide repertoire, ranging from ABBA to Georgian folk songs to Czech composer Leos Janáček, with original compositions and eloquent arrangements thrown into the mix.

The self confessed men in black with no table manners will be singing their hearts out and in their own words, beseeching the Liverpool audience to unbutton their affections ahead of their  Philharmonic date on Wednesday 31 July 2013.

The group of about two-dozen singers is vocally disciplined, with a big warm sound and terrific blend. Director, or Spookmeister named Stephen Taberner leads them with a sure sense of timing, and he's able to elicit a variety of choral colours based on the type of music they're singing.

“My favourite memory of Liverpool was on our last visit, Roger McGough was having a meal in a Greek restaurant and being asked by a local gangster to sign a napkin, which he promptly mislaid. The gangster’s past caught up with him two weeks later. McGough wrote a poem about it” says fellow spooky man Adrian Mealing.

Their repertoire ranges from Georgian style chants to a Capella ballads, spiky political jabs, Cole Porter’s Every Time We Say Goodbye, hilarious spoofs of Queen’s Flash and Earth, Wind and Fire’s Boogie Wonderland and the funniest version of ABBA’s Dancing Queen your ears are likely to hear.

“There are so many influences, from the barrel-chested singing men of Georgia, the grooves of Prince, the endeavours of Men everywhere to get it right occasionally and the mowing of lawns. There is a set list but it changes onstage like the shifting moods of English weather. It’d be odd if we didn't sing Tool, a hymn to the innate construction and repairing skills of every man on the planet” he explains.

The Spookies seek to commentate on the absurdity and grandeur of the modern male armed only with their voices, a sly collection of hats, their facial hair, and a twinkle in the eye. For their 5th UK tour, these Aussie larrikins arrive with their new album, The Spooky Man In History, which calmly, amusingly and cavernously redefines the very genre they invented themselves.

“There are eleven new songs on this tour. They’ll sound like a piece of cake by the time they get to The Phil. But nothing in life is easy. As I write this, Spooks all over the continent are torturing their pianos, interrogating mp3s and smiling when it sounds just so.”

Are you looking forward to being back in the city? “I’m looking forward to heading back to the Albert Dock, the smell of the past, the cargoes, the surf all the way to Sydney.”

http://www.spookymen.com/