Forming
a patchwork of parkas, slickers, and umbrellas, the capacity
crowd sat and stood in a pelting chill rain to catch
one of the most exciting Irish traditional bands to emerge
in many years, Solas, who were performing in an open-air
theater on the spacious grounds of Wolf Trap Farm Park.
This brilliant acoustic quintet was the headlining act
at the 20th annual Washington, D.C., Irish Folk Festival
sponsored by the private, not-for-profit National Council
for the Traditional Arts, the nation's oldest organization
for presenting folk and ethnic culture. The concert by
Solas (Gaelic for "light") was so rousing that the audience
cheered and clapped for more in the merciless downpour
at the end.
This
surprised no one, however, for in the year and a half
they've been together, Solas has electrified crowds everywhere
they've performed. Combining great virtuosity and versatility,
they already seem poised to join the elite of Irish traditional
bands active today, including the Chieftains and Altan.
But unlike those groups, Solas originates not in Ireland
but in the United States and features three Irish Americans:
button accordion-concertina player John Williams, fiddler
Winifred Horan, and multi-instrumentalist Séamus Egan.
The other two members, vocalist Karan Casey* and guitarist
John Doyle, are both Irish transplants to New York City.
Recently released by Shanachie Records, the self-titled
debut album by this homegrown group fully confirms the
promise of their stage performances.
Their
imaginatively arranged medleys of Irish dance tunes are
tight, polished, and propulsive, while the singing of
lead vocalist Karan Casey, blessed with a two-and-a-half-octave
range, is as clear and beautiful as the famous hand-cut
crystal from her home county of Waterford. Even without
the media entrée of this stunning first recording, Solas
has already appeared on two very popular Public Radio
International programs, "Mountain Stage" and Garrison
Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion." They will also
be sharing the evening concert stage with Grammy-winning
bluegrass sensation Alison Krauss and the 1994 National
Heritage Fellowship-winning gospel group the Five Blind
Boys of Alabama at the fourth annual American Roots Fourth
of July Celebration that will be broadcast live at night
over National Public Radio from the National Mall in
Washington, D.C.
Remarkably,
all these bookings for Solas came strictly from strong
word of mouth. "I've waited a long time for a band like
this to come along," said John Williams, a five-time
All-Ireland champion living near Chicago, to which his
father had emigrated 39 years ago from the tiny fishing
village of Doolin, West Clare. In 1989, John became the
only American ever to win the coveted All-Ireland senior
concertina title.
"All
of us, I think, were looking for a way to express what
we've learned in the Irish tradition and put our own
collective stamp on it. John Doyle's guitar, for example,
gives us a big bottom end without veering into a rock-and-roll
idiom. It's something we can build on, and I often play
rhythm on the accordion to flesh out what he does." From
Dublin, Doyle came to New York City at the beginning
of the decade, playing first in Chanting House, an Irish
duo that for a time expanded into a quartet featuring
Séamus Egan. Since then, Doyle and Egan have often performed
and recorded together, including on Egan's latest Shanachie
solo release, "When Juniper Sleeps."
Doyle's
hard-driving style of guitar picking in Solas is counterbalanced
by a more lyrical side of his talent, evident in the
acoustic-guitar "effects" he so nimbly plucks and sustains
to accompany slow airs and many of Casey's traditional
songs. Irish traditional singing was not always the primary
pursuit of Karan Casey, who in the late 1980s began as
a music major at University College Dublin and also studied
classical piano at the Royal Irish Academy of Music.
"At
the end of my first year at UCD," she recalled, "there
was a concert at which I sang a jazz song. I was told
afterward by the head of the music department that that
wasn't music. It was one of the reasons I left the music
department: they were too narrow-minded." The strong-willed
Casey still loves jazz, especially the scat singing of
the late Ella Fitzgerald, and formally studied it after
she had emigrated to New York in May 1993. "I used to
sing jazz at a friend's house on Friday nights," she
said, "but then I started to go to traditional sessions
[informal jams of Irish music] around the city because
I was really lonely. That's how I got back into traditional
singing again. I think jazz musicians have the same kind
of history as Irish traditional musicians in a way--this
incredible skill that too often is overlooked or dismissed
by the public."
Winifred
Horan has performance skills just as impressive as Casey's.
One of the most accomplished Irish stepdancers New York
City has ever produced, with nine North American titles
to her credit, Horan took early lessons in Irish fiddling
and won an All-Ireland junior championship at age 11.
Then she switched to classical music. For 15 years she
devoted herself to it, winning scholarships to the Mannes
College of Music in Manhattan and later the New England
Conservatory of Music in Boston. There she performed
with a number of string quartets and orchestras, including
the Boston Pops. But Horan returned to her first love,
Irish traditional music and dance, not long after she
returned to New York in 1990. Initially she was asked
to stepdance with Cherish the Ladies, an ensemble featuring
many of the best Irish American women performers today,
and later she played fiddle with them. After four years
in Cherish the Ladies, Horan left to form Solas, and
she now also plays with the band headed by button accordionist
Sharon Shannon out of Ireland.
"When
I got back into Irish traditional music," explained Horan,
"I was completely amazed at how big the repertoire is,
even bigger than in classical music. I feel I've missed
15 years of sessions, but by the same token I wouldn't
turn back time and change the way I learned or the approach
I took. Classical music has given me the training, the
tools, the discipline, while Irish music has rekindled
the sheer love of playing again. I want to bring all
of that to Solas." What Séamus Egan brings to Solas is
no fewer than eight instruments: flute, tin whistle,
low whistle, nylon-string guitar, four-string banjo,
mandolin, bodhrán (a hand-held frame drum), and uilleann
pipes.
Also
in demand for movie soundtracks--his playing can be heard
in both "The Brothers McMullen" and the Academy Award-winning
"Dead Man Walking --Egan alone offers a versatility
that ensures Solas's sound will be varied, spirited,
and refreshingly risk-taking.
"He's
an unbelievably quick learner with impeccable instincts,"
affirms Limerick-born musician and ethnomusicologist
Mick Moloney, his mentor, friend, and frequent playing
partner. "I think it took hundreds of years of Irish
music in America to produce somebody like Séamus Egan."
The
same might now be said of Solas. Made in America, it's
an Irish traditional band bearing all the marks of greatness.
The
Solas article by Earle Hitchner originally appeared in
the June 20, 1996, issue of The Wall Street Journal.
*Karan
Casey leaves Solas (for article, click here)
For
more articles by Earle Hitchner, click
here.
