Celtic Colours has lots more in store
Plenty of music to look forward to before Saturday’s all-star grand finale concert at Centre 200
Two days wasn’t nearly enough time to get into the swing of things at Celtic Colours International Festival, which kicked off Friday night with the Fiddles on Fire opening show at the Port Hawkesbury Civic Centre.
The pace of the event, its talent-packed concerts and informative daytime sessions separated by breathtaking scenic drives in-between, really requires a few days to adjust to once you’ve made it over the Canso Causeway to Cape Breton.
Especially if you make the late-night Festival Club at the event’s hub of the Gaelic College in St. Anns part of your itinerary, and the lyrics to Buddy MacDonald’s party anthem “Getting Dark Again” take on the feel of a documentary.
Now at the halfway point, with Saturday’s all-star grand finale concert at Sydney’s Centre 200 four days away, there’s still plenty of music to look forward to, from around the world.
Still on the Celtic Colours roster are BBC Radio 2 folk award winners the Young ’Uns in Cow Bay today and Aspy Bay on Wednesday, a trio of performances by youthful Irish threesome Socks in the Frying Pan, Louisiana’s Savoy Family Cajun Band playing all over the island with four appearances on Tuesday and Wednesday, and the two concerts with Yorkshire folk treasure Kate Rusby and her band on Friday at the Membertou Trade and Convention Centre and at Saturday’s big blowout in Sydney with Phil Cunningham and Mary Jane Lamond & Wendy MacIsaac.
And like Lamond and MacIssac, traditional Cape Breton and Nova Scotia fiddlers, pianists, guitarists, pipers and dancers make the most of this annual opportunity to play for visitors from around the world, international folk festival talent bookers and friends and family, on stages from Dingwall to D’Escousse.
Starting with Fiddles on Fire on Friday, Celtic Colours hit the ground running with a show that celebrated preserving traditions and bold exploration. The latter was provided by festival artists in residence Paul MacDonald and Allan MacDonald, with a trans-Atlantic musical handshake of guitar and bagpipes, playing tunes in intimate quarters as if they were just sitting around the hearth and not an arena in Port Hawkesbury.
South Uist singers Rona Lightfoot and Mairi MacInnes brought the pure Gaelic vocal tradition from the Outer Hebrides, the home of much Cape Breton ancestry, in songs that ached with the toll of the sea and the Great War.
Returning to Celtic Colours after several years, Scotland’s Blazin’ Fiddles made good use of the harmonic possibilities of having four violins on stage, with a dash of rock and roll energy from festival favourite Anna Massie on guitar and keyboardist Angus Lyon.
Meanwhile, in her 10th appearance at the fest, Troy’s Natalie MacMaster acknowledged the past with a tribute to many of her piano accompanists over the years, who took to the stage in rapid succession, before progressing to the kind of hard-driving fiddle set she takes around the world with her touring band.
Given the hometown setting, and the fact it was her 16th wedding anniversary with husband and musician Donnell Leahy, the golden-haired island star couldn’t resist including a strong family element. MacMaster went all out, from playing a request for her mother Minnie to bringing daughters Claire and Julia on stage for an impressive set of tunes and stepdancing, complete with cartwheels.
There was no further cartwheeling at my remaining Celtic Colours shows, but that doesn’t mean they were lacking for fancy footwork.
After a sunlit drive around the Bras d’Or Lake, its shores speckled with autumn reds and golds just days away from their peak, Highway 4 led me to the Big Pond Gathering at the community hall in the hometown of island talents Rita MacNeil and Gordie Sampson. The place was packed to the gills as the pipes/fiddle/guitar trio of Miller | MacDonald | Cormier played a set of their Canadian Folk Music Award-nominated tunes, with Antigonish stepdancer Maureen Fraser displaying how their rhythm is as forceful as their harmonious playing is a multi-layered delight.
Finnish violin duo Teho made it to Big Pond from the Halifax airport just moments before their set — as Cyril MacPhee and Colin Grant were performing “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” oddly enough — and checked their jet lag at the door for an entertaining set of tunes full of penetrating Scandinavian melancholy as well as some witty experimentation. The playing of Tero Hyvaluoma and Esko Jarvela was full of sly gliding notes and surprising cuts in a style born in their home region of Kaustinen, “which is very much like Cape Breton, actually, so you see we had no choice but to play the violin,” joked Jarvela.
The dancing on Saturday night at Pjila’si: A Wagmatcook Welcome, just across Bras d’Or as the crow flies, wasn’t just an expression of joy or having a good time. Dressed in embroidered deerskin regalia, Eskasoni’s Mi’kmaw Singers & Dancers made it easy to follow singer Joel Denny’s suggestion that we cast our minds back three centuries, “to a time before TV, before roads ... and before McDonald’s.”
The group performed a courtship dance. Two men vied for the affections of a young woman, who initially rolled her eyes at their displays of machismo but eventually made her choice, which led to much rejoicing.
It started the evening on a celebratory note, welcoming guests like Manitoba Metis fiddler Alex Kusturok, who added a bit of western twang to his sets of tunes accompanied by Brenda Stubbert, who also played with his mother Patti years before.
“This is my first time at Celtic Colours, and it’s a little bit strange for me,” said the fiddler after performing his first set with gusto.
“For years I’ve been watching videos of these people on YouTube, and they’re like stars to me.
“So I’m a little starstruck up here tonight.”
With that in mind, the evening ended on an all-star note, with the four talents of Coig — Cape Breton fiddlers Rachel Davis and Chrissy Crowley, pianist Jason Roach and multi-string player Darren McMullen — showing their everexpanding range with a mix of traditional island tunes, vocal performances like Peter Gabriel’s “Solsbury Hill” and the Ashley Condon/David Francey song “Deep Down in the River,” and selections from their recording due in the new year.
Crowley introduced a new set of reels titled “Princess Flower Puppies,” titled by her niece Vega, with a high-energy bounce that suggested the whirlwind of a kid who’s had too much sugary breakfast cereal. It was the perfect piece for a group that will forever remain kids at heart whenever they play together.
For a full rundown of this week’s shows, and a chance to stream selected concerts, visit celtic-colours.com.