Review: Tony Cox at Cromarty Old Brewery
Folk music lovers looking for some multi-cultural adventure are invited to a West Highland Safari tonight, when award-winning South African guitarist Tony Cox will take to the stage with Lochaber fiddler and storyteller Aonghas Grant in Glasgow's Tron Theatre.
The words-and-music event, part of Celtic Connections, promises to take the audience on a musical journey through the culture and landscape of each artist's homeland.Material will be drawn from Cox’s current album Audient, and from Grant’s 2007 collection The Hills of Glengarry, which was his first release in 30 years.
Zimbabwe-born Cox should be thoroughly warmed-up, following his Friday night gig in the intimate confines of the Old Brewery in Cromarty.
Taking to the stage for his first of only two confirmed Scottish dates this year, Cox exuded humble confidence and the calm of a master musical craftsman, privy to the comfortable knowledge that his audience was about to be entertained.
The strength and precision of what emerges from this quiet man's Mervyn Davis SmoothTalker guitar is quite breathtaking.
Cox sweeps you away on racing waves of the gutsiest rhythms and chest-pounding bass notes, then lifts you to the highest clouds with playful, spritely melodies.
By the time you find yourself carried sleepily back to earth by the ghostly textures of an African lullaby, it is clear that Tony Cox can playfully conjure any emotion or sense of place that he might choose for you to experience.
It is hard to imagine a more rounded and multi-timbral sound being produced by any other unaccompanied musician, and for this reason alone Cox could stand out from the crowd as a novelty figure.
But this phenomenal talent, which might otherwise become something of a gimmick, is leashed by an insistence that the storytelling of the music comes first. Cox's defining skill is never pushed to the fore, being used only when it is right, to enrich the panoramas of his wordless songs.
The fulsome power of Cox's music — even in the quieter moments — will surely expand to larger venues. If his warm and friendly persona can magnify equally then he will prove a hit with tonight's Glasgow audience.
Gaelic touch
With a fiddle-playing career stretching back more than six decades, Gaelic-speaking Aonghas Grant is one of the most experienced musicians taking part in this year's Celtic Connections festival.
Grant's repertoire includes a range of airs, reels and Highland pipe tunes. Known as the Left-Handed Fiddler of Lochaber, he describes his performance style as “pipey” with a Gaelic touch.
Throughout his career, Grant has found great success as a fiddle instructor, and continues to teach at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, and at a fiddle summer school at Stirling University.
He had no such formal tuition himself, however. Lore has it that the 13-year-old Aonghas was shown how to play Dornoch Links by his uncle Archie, and the half an hour it took him to master the tune was the only fiddle lesson he ever had.
Also featuring in tonight's session-style performance will be Ewen Henderson on fiddle, pipes and whistle, accordionist Paul Connolly, and Canadian cellist Christine Hanson.
The international line-up of established artists will be joined on stage by four upcoming Aonghas Grant mentees: 16-year-old Euan Wilkie from Roy Bridge near Lochaber, 18-year-old Elaine Reid from Fort William, and 16-year-olds Lucy Doogan and Kirsty MacIntyre from Glencoe.
Tickets for Tony Cox and Aonghas Grant at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow on Saturday, January 16, are £12.50 from 0141 353 8000 or book online at www.celticconnections.com.
