This was the most exhilarating gig I've ever attended. Featuring some of the best musicians Ireland has ever produced, it had the intimacy of a session in your back parlour.
Apart from the musicianship there was the remarkable warmth, first between audience and performers, and then among the performers themselves towards Donal Lunny, a man who has been at the coal face of Irish music for the past five decades.
That warmth was noticeable from the moment he walked on stage to a standing ovation that might have lasted forever, except there was music to be played. He joined Mairtin O’Connor for some reels, each spurring the other to increasingly frenetic heights. Philip King joined them with his evocative voice and harmonica, but it was arguably Roisin Elsafty who stole 1,500 hearts and minds with the sheer purity of her voice.
At times you felt as if she was singing for Donal and Donal only, and the audience took on the role of mere bystanders hushed by the sheer intimacy of it all.
Yet there were new heights to be scaled when a vocal-free Moving Hearts came on. Davy Spillane for me was the central focus, excelling on a batch of slow airs, his deft playing able to absorb and be challenged by other strands of music without ever losing the core of the tradition.
Despite a supposed curfew, the gig continued into the early hours. Highlights of the Hearts’ set were ‘The Storm’ and ‘Tribute To Peadar O’Donnell’, the latter a generous thank-you to a man without whom they might never have survived the realities of the commercial music scene. And then there was Lunny, grinning and happy to be immersed in it all. But it wasn’t just his night, it was a night to celebrate the music he brought back to us too.