Tripswitch
Irish music is moving and incredibly complex dance music. The brilliant North Ireland-bornuileannpipe virtuoso John McSherry and fiddler/keyboardist Donal O'Connor showcase that music's dancing complexity and its openness to other musical forms. These long-time friends and bandmates in McSherry's At First Light ensemble front a combo that features an international array of instruments including guitar, the lute-like Greek/Turkishbouzouki, whistles, tambourines, and localbodhrandrums. Those instrumental ingredients cook up a zesty, musical Mulligan stew of multi-tempo reels, jigs, and airs, stirred by McSherry's jazzy saxophonistic pipe playing and O'Connor's plectral prowess. Selections like the spontaneously composed title track and the martial, midtempo "Rose in the Gap," are ingenious updates on traditional sounds, but the bouncy, Castilian 5/8 cadences on "Spanish 5's" also  reveal how compatible the Celtic tones are with Iberian rhythmic motifs. McSherry and O'Connor prove that, musically speaking, everybody's Irish. --Eugene Holley, Jr.