FOLK

Martin Hayes Quartet: The Blue Room

251 Records/nch Named after the room in Bantry House, Co Cork, where it was recorded, Martin Hayes’s latest disc sees the fiddle maestro and regular playing partner, guitarist Dennis Cahill, in the company of bassclarinettist Doug Wieselman and Liz Knowles on hardanger d’amore. Sounding utterly at home with one another, they range through classic Irish repertoire with peerless style. You might be forgiven for thinking you’ve put on the wrong disc as Wieselman sounds a gorgeouslytoned harbinger for The Boy in the

Gap that might have drifted all the way from Kashmir, before Hayes enters with characteristic lightness. Knowles’s hybrid viola adds sensitive countermelodies, unison lines and textures, as in the string murmurs that open the air Port Sabh or in some almost baroque counterpoints. Hayes lingers beautifully over another air,

Easter Snow, while Cahill carries this inspired musical colloquy with snappy drive or delicate chiming.