Perhaps the finest person working in his craft at the minute, Martin Hayes’ latest project, The Martin Hayes Quartet, seeks to uncover new meanings and variations from familiar reels.
Gracing the stage with as little pomp as possible (aside from some atmospheric smoke emerging from behind the stage), the four members cut relatively modest figures. Their stage is one of raw intimacy,
with the musicians doing as much as possible to limit the fourth wall between them and their audience.
The set begins with six reels rolled together beautifully, starting off with the delicate ‘Easter Snow’, from debut album The Blue Room. By far the highlight of this opening salvo is ‘The Orphan’, a dramatic, building reel where the full driving rhythm of Dennis Cahill’s guitar playing and the power of Doug Wieselmann’s bass clarinet are allowed to be felt.
During the midway point, the fourth member of the quartet, Liz Knowles, introduces the audience to her Hardanger fiddle, or Norwegian violin, an instrument with an extremely light touch which has become popular in Irish traditional music in recent years. The resonation of the instrument’s “sympathetic strings” (strings underneath the traditional four which aren't played), coupled with the deep reveries of Wieselmann’s bass clarinet, adds a textured dimension to these timeless, common-sensical reels and jigs.
Even in times of trouble, like when Wieselmann’s bass clarinet hits a few flat notes right when he’s asked to take centre stage, the quartet remain calm and use the awkwardness of the situation to showcase their adeptness for improvisation (The Blue Room was, after all, a project created with variation, improvisation and playful spontaneity at its core).
Adding another string to his bow (sorry) with this quartet and with an extended residency at the National Concert Hall, Martin has further widen the scope of what we understand to be trad music. He admits the liberation that comes from knowing that most of these reels were never composed in the exact way that they were intended to be heard, their authorship never entirely certain, and their structures open to interpretation. While maintaining a deep connection with the origins of these reels and maintaining their melody, The Martin Hayes Quartet have given them new life to them entirely.
We should count ourselves lucky to have them.