Bridges

Frank C. Edgley, Northumbrian Smallpipes, Scottish Smallpipes, whistle, and anglo concertina; Frank J. Edgley, fiddle; Brian Taheny, guitar, cittern, mandocello, mandolin and octave mandolin; Leon Taheny, bodhran

Does someone who already has dozens of concertina recordings–everything from William Mullaly, Elizabeth Crotty, Scan Tester, and William Kimber to John Kirkpatrick, Noel Hill, Chris Droney, and many more–really need one more CD of anglo concertina music? The answer is a resounding, "Yes"! The CD has a fine selection of tunes, fine concertina playing and piping by Frank C., fine fiddling by Frank J., and fine accompaniment on bodrhan (by Leon Taheny), guitar, mandolin, and the family of double-course long-scale instruments–cittern, octave mandolin, and mandocello (all by Brian Taheny).

If you need an reason to buy, I can offer several. The most obvious is that the playing is excellent, and the listening is a joy. There is the variety of instrumentation and tunes–jigs, reels, marches, airs, schottishes, and strathspeys. The 31 tunes on 13 tracks range from compositions by Turlough O’Carolan, the 17^th Century harper, to Chris Droney of today. Of course, there are Irish tunes galore, but also Scottish, Northumbrian, and other English tunes, as well as tunes collected from U.S. musicians. There is the consistency and quality of recording, mixing (by Brian Taheny), and medley selection. The medley tunes blend as smooth as silk.

It is impossible to satisfy the reviewer’s almost mandatory obligation to pick some favorite tracks. This is a start-to-finish CD. I have listened several times straight through, without the slightest urge a skip a single track, which is very uncharacteristic of my CD listening. If hard pressed to pick favorites, I must rely on purely personal and largely extraneous factors. My wife is a harpist so we both have a strong affinity for the O’Carolan and other harp compositions. We love airs and so are especially attracted to Frank J.’s mournful double-stop fiddling on Cutting Bracken/The Musical Priest (track 2). (It has that special aura, akin to Jay Unger’s Ashokan Farewell.) We love marches and, in particular, Sir Sydney Smith’s March (track 3), which we first heard on an early Battlefield Band recording. It is great to hear it done really well in a new setting on anglo concertina. But this is really reaching for favorites. Something special could be said about every track.

Accompaniment is oft unmentioned but so important. On this CD, the bodhran of Leon Taheny is right there, without the slightest hint of intrusiveness or overpowering. My wife and I take cittern lessons, and love cittern and bouzuki with pipes and British Isles music in general. Until we heard Brian Taheny on Bridges, we didn’t realize how well cittern/bouzuki went with the concertina, when played in a relatively understated way.

I only have one question about an independent recording of the Bridges caliber. I can understand why it is not on an all-Irish label like Claddagh, but why isn’t it on Green Linnet, Shanachie, Ossian, Celtic Crossings, etc.? Hopefully, the advertisement in the Edgley web page and the music crowd’s networking will spread the word that that it is a CD to own, regardless of how many CDs are already on your shelf.