Awake! Arise! was created as a CD in 2019, followed by Winter tours, as a celebration of Winter and Christmas by the three-woman folk group Lady Maisery, plus the duo Jimmy Aldridge and Sid Goldsmith. This year, Sid being otherwise employed in the States, Kit Hawes stepped into the breach with some superb guitar work and the odd embarrassed reading.
The voices of Hazel Askew, Hannah James and Rowan Rheingans contrast and blend beautifully and the range of instruments deployed makes for a huge range of sound. For the opener accordion, concertina and fiddle were added to Jimmy and Kit’s banjo and guitar and by the end of the evening we had a chance to sample harp, harmonium, drum, assorted bells, scrapers and the scratchy sort of percussion, plus James using a soundboard to beat out a compulsive rhythm and dance a little – more would have been welcome.
For all the range of instruments the unaccompanied songs were among the highlights, Hail, Smiling Morn, for instance, for voices only as sung in the pubs of Sheffield. The same balance of voices was found as they all came a-wassailing, harmonising, filling in the gaps, repeating lines in the time-honoured tradition. Typical of the style of the Awake! Arise! concerts, Hail, Smiling Morn was prefaced by a reading explaining which areas of Sheffield sang unaccompanied, which used accompaniments, even brass bands.
Uniting the material of two groups produced a wonderful array of songs. Jimmy, for instance, went wren hunting (a sort of wassailing) with The King, engaging in a banjo duet with Rheingans, and impressed with his dramatic delivery of a Romany song from the Balkans celebrating the end of Winter, his soaring voice backed by wordless vocals and a drone from accordion and harmonium. Askew, on the other hand, gave us London Lights, a moving tale, probably a music hall song.
Many of the numbers featured spoken elements. Up in the Morning Early morphed into a reading from Laurie Lee; The Bear Song, a whimsical piece backed by Rheingans’ pizzicato violin and James’ dancing among other things, ended up as a story; a Shetland fiddle piece for Christmas morning moved from Rheingans’ splendid interpretation to speech to some fine guitar work from Hawes to Askew taking up a quite different song.
It was an excellent, musicianly concert, ego-free and well planned, and, for a favourite number, how about John Tams’ atmospheric Snow Falls, from his wonderful score for Lark Rise to Candleford at the National many years ago?
Reviewed on 19th December 2022.
1 Comment
A fair review. My particular favourite was “The Old Churchyard” a version of a An American hymn from the singing of Almeda Riddle of the Ozark mountain region. A thoroughly enjoyable performance.