If you like crossover styles of music, and you enjoy both Celtic and jazz music, you'll love Bachué. Taking traditional tunes and mixing them with a strong jazz styling, Bachué adds their own unique flavor to a wide variety of Celtic tunes. Add to this concoction a healthy dose of original material, and you have the recipe for this outstanding and unusual duo.
Corrina Hewat is one of the top harpers in the world, playing with a crisp, clean technique and giving her music a strong rhythmic beat with her inventive accompaniments. With her many strengths, it's hard to imagine there being any piece of harp music Hewat couldn't play. Equally impressive are her vocals, featuring pure, centered tones and gentle, expressive nuances. Simultaneously capturing the authenticity and experience of the smoky barroom singer and the youth and innocence of a child, Hewat's vocals are heartfelt, precise, and fluid. Hewat's partner in crime is David Milligan, an extraordinary pianist, displaying confident, exacting rhythms with unquestionable control. He is particularly gifted in his articulation of the notes, which makes this album particularly pleasurable, since he plays an acoustic piano rather than electronic keyboards, which tend to muffle and lose the clarity of sound needed to accent great articulation. Milligan also plays guitar, giving depth and texture to the music with his unusual guitar style, incorporating some classical guitar technique, some rhythmic strumming, and unusual chord progressions.
The duo collaborates with several skilled guests to bring a wider scope to their music, adding Brian Sheils on double bass, Davy Cattanach on percussion, Phil Bancroft on saxophones, and Horse McDonald on harmony vocals. These guests add great depth to the music, from the bright and cheerful percussion on "Gravel Walk/Kissin' is the Best of A'/Robert the Minnow," to the dark and meandering bass line that gives the essential syncopated beat on "My Johnny was a Shoemaker." Horse McDonald's harmony vocals, combined with the bass-line, make Hewat's unusual version of "Johnny" work to great effect. The result is a stunning, catchy version of this song.
Stand-out tracks include the evocative version of the traditional "Sgian Dubh" paired with a David Milligan original "Disnae Waltz." Opening as an air, "Sgian Dubh" goes from a contemplative, emotional piece to an upbeat, swingy jazz dance. This gently melts into a cascading waltz, gently flowing from piano to harp with ease and grace. The synchronized playing of harp and piano is amazing! Also remarkable is the Hewat original, "Fiddle-idle," written to encourage a fiddler to practice. The unusual notes and patterns remind me of some of the more percussive of Debussy's works, perhaps most like "Golliwogg's Cake Walk."
The combination of harp, guitar, and vocals shines on "Loving Hannah," sung with contemplative remorse. Hewat's mellow tones combine with McDonald's surprising harmonies to create an atmosphere of reluctant acceptance appropriate to the lyrics of this song of lost love. Perhaps the most varied set on the recording is "Set to Rights" which features Robert Lowe's "The Warlock," Hewat's "The Arras Fisherman," and the traditional Irish hornpipe, "The Rights of Man." Wandering from a strong Scottish snap with a syncopated beat to a gentle wave of harp notes over a single, repetitive guitar note, this set crosses international boundaries as it journeys upriver, sampling the local customs as it goes. This is a truly inventive and original arrangement.
Jazz fans will delight in the complex chords and unusual rhythmic patterns given to these strong tunes. Music fans in general will be taken by the crisp, clean, professional playing of the musicians and the passionate rendering of the lyrics. Although this won't be in the traditional Celtophile's top ten recordings, there's something delightfully fresh and new coming from this exciting group.
