Fiddler trumps that other inauguration

Rayna Gellert Trio, Whitstable Sessions Music Club

Friday was a pretty big day. First there was the small matter of the 45th President of the United States. Then there was the visit of the Rayna Gellert Trio to Whitstable Sessions .

“Tonight we inaugurate the new album and our tour…and that’s the only inauguration I want to talk about!” Rayna began.

So we all put the thought of President Trump to one side for the evening and got on with enjoying the visit of this renowned American fiddle player along with Kai Welch on guitar, keyboards and vocals, and percussionist Jamie Dick. Actually it proved almost Rayna Gellert playing at Whitstable Sessions Music Club on Friday

impossible to ignore the Trump spectre at our feast, but we made the best of it. When Kai joked of the apocalypse and remarked “we’re stuffed” or words to that effect someone in the audience shouted back “join the club” – having agreed on that, laughter and music

proved the best medicine on an extraordinary day.

I’m a big fan of the American old time string band Uncle Earl, of which Rayna is a founder member, but with this trio tour and the launch of the album Workin’s Too Hard, Rayna is blending a love of the old-time traditions and fiddle tunes with her own songs and music, which means we get a chance to hear her lovely voice as well as the fantastic fiddle playing she is known for.

In a nicely varied mix we got tasters of the album including the beautiful, lilting Perry, the instantly catchy Grey Bird and the soulful River Town, interspersed with blazing fiddle playing, the hilarious disarray of the gospel song I’m Bound For The Promised Land which went a bit awry and then the storming finale encore performance of the traditional tune Julianne Johnson.

It was a flying start to the tour and to the album launch. Afterwards Rayna tweeted

“Man oh man, Whitstable Sessions is the best! Amazing gig, perfect (and forgiving!) first audience of the tour. Thank you!”

So at least one inauguration on Friday heralded the start of something great. Debbie Neech

and performed the world premieres of well more than 100 new works, with many more in the pipeline for performance and recording.

The musicians – Niall Keatley (trumpet), Alan Thomas (trumpet), Andrew Sutton (tenor horn), Amos Miller (trombone) and David Gordon Shute (tuba) – are soloists in their own right, performing alongside orchestras at home and abroad.

The first half of the programme was, perhaps, what most of the audience had expected: excellent arrangements of cantatas, fugues and suites by Bach, Shostakovich, Couperin and Schumann.

The arrangements and interpretation of these pieces, rarely heard in arrangement for brass, came as a very pleasant surprise.

A real surprise was in the second half of the concert when, after a bright and cheerful rendition of

Ritornellos from Monteverdi’s Vespers and another pair of Fugues (Shostakovichand Bach), the group put their instruments down and stood to sing Tim Jackson’s Anything But, five musical poems (one of which was essentially silent!). A veritable tour de force.

The group then picked up their instruments to play Gwilym Simcock’s The Stomp and then gave the world première of Colin Skinner’s Sweet Suite, each of the three movements being named after a sweet.

Finally they played an arrangement of Gershwin’s They Can’t Take That Away From Me – a piece which allowed each of the instruments to shine, especially the trombone.

The Wihan Quartet play for the club at 3pm on Sunday, February 12, in St Gregory’s Centre for Music. They will play pieces by Suk, Janacek and Dvorak. John Davey