Review: Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Eireann in Shanghai

Subject: Review: Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Eireann in Shanghai
From: Shanghaiceltic
Date: 23 Mar 05 - 11:56 PM

Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Eireann group Bru Boru from Cashel have been visiting Shanghai over the last few days and it has been great.

The 21 singers, musicians and dancers (often doing all three but not quite simulataneously) gave a masterclass on Irish music to students at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music on Monday afternoon.

On Tuesday evening they held a session at the Blarney Stone pub here in Shanghai. The area where we normally perform is quite small, the pub area is very narrow and long, so we had to shoehorn 11 musicans into it. Sadly there was not enough room for the dancers even down the space 'tween tables, but the combination of an uillean piper, four flutes, 3 fiddles, a harpist, two button accordion players and a melodeon player was fantastic.

What is best is that these are all young musicians aged between 16 and 25, the piper was probably the oldest of the group at 30'ish. It was great to see young musicians putting their all into the music.

They had the pub bouncing!

Then last night they held an official concert at the Conservatory. I had never been in the concert hall before. It is housed in a lovely old red brick building which was built around 1920. The concert hall has been totally refurbished inside and though not large has fantastic accoustics.

The session that Bru Boru put together was superb. Designed to give non Irish music listeners an appreciation of the individuality of the instruments used alone or in combination, added to that there was beautifull singing in sean nos tradition as well as lilting.

The dancers were fast and percussive and brought roars of applause from the mainly Chinese audience. One of the singers did introductions in both Irish and Chinese to some of the pieces.

The only down side of the evening....it was too short.

There visit marks the end of what I can only call a St.Patrick's fortnight, which started on the 12th march with the first ever St.Patricks Ball to be held in China, rivers of whisky flowed, there was lakes of Guiness, good food and music. St.Patricks night at the Blarney saw more than 250 people crowd into the pub until the wee hours. We played solid from 8.30 till 2 p.m.

The visit by Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Eireann marked then end of the period.

Why all this activity? The Irish Consul General in Shanghai has made it a point to bring over Irish musicians for major events ever since the Consul was established here just over 6 years ago and by doing so has forged many links with China that has benefited Irish business in China.

I wish I could say the same about the British Consul General which still relies on Pimms and Purcell's evenings and the Queen's Official Birthday gathering to do its promotion, 'nough said?