Chris Stout Quintet/John McSherry’s At First Light, Eastgate Theatre, Peebles

ROB ADAMS May 23 2006 *****

The Scottish Arts Council's Tune-up touring series has been doing fine work in its first two programmes, but it's on nights like this that the concept really proves its worth.
Under normal circumstances, these two groups would only be packaged together on, say, a Celtic Connections stage, as they were in January. Here, they are out on the road, presenting tradition-based music at a level that can hardly be bettered and at the sort of pitch that comes from sustained live performance. In short, they were hot, not least when they conjoined for a rampaging finale.
Both groups were also cool and measured. Uilleann piper John McSherry's At First Light quartet plays with the sort of considered approach that, even at very high tempo, the contours and detail of a tune are always apparent.
With Donal O'Connor's fiddling shadowing McSherry's piping exactly, Tony Byrne adding spring-rhythmed guitar and Francis McIlduff doubling on bodhran and uilleann pipes, it's a band designed for excitement. Yet, alongside their recreation of one of Finbar Furey's classic, fasten-your-seatbelts sets, it was the slow air, Both Ghe, full of swelling, crying blue notes, that proved the top goosebump source.
Like McSherry, fiddler Chris Stout plays music in the moment. Whatever the tempo or setting, be it the fiddle-and-saxophone duet that opened the set with an improvisatory bustle, a gorgeous Norwegian hymn or the slippery, hectic Double Helix, the playing has a fresh-minted crispness. The music's always forging ahead confidently, the group sounds great and Stout leads it with a fiddle style that marries fabulous touch and tone variation with a thirst for adventure.

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