The Birnam Quartet launch The Music of Burns

Feb 16 2010 by Alison Anderson, Perthshire Advertiser Tuesday

ROBERT Burns is best known for possessing a fine way with words and a fine eye for the ladies. Yet he also had a fine ear for a tune – and it is this attribute which is celebrated in a new album, The Music of Burns, collated and recorded by the Birnam Quartet.

And appropriately, it was in the Birnam Arts Centre where this delightful album of instrumental versions of the beautiful old melodies which Burns collected and set his lyrics to was launched as part of the Fiddle Tree’s eclectic programme of live music.

The Music of Burns project was cultivated just a stone’s-throw from the Arts Centre when, in 2006, some tip-top musicians played some sessions in a Birnam hostelry.

The musicians were local writer/musician Jamie Jauncey, Shooglenifty’s Angus R Grant and Luke Plumb, and virtuoso fiddler Anna-Wendy Stevenson.

“It was the beauty of the old tunes Burns chose for his songs that really brought the Birnam Quartet together and provided the fertile common ground for our creativity,” says Jamie.

“It seemed that Burns’s choice of music offered another layer to our understanding of his character – a kind of charting of his emotions, the moods ranging from whimsicality through melancholy to lyrical passion.”

The outcome of those Birnam sessions were a collection of demos, but busy lives got in the way of taking things further – Anna-Wendy moved to Benbecula to teach fiddle at the Gaelic College, Jamie wrote two award-nominated novels, and Angus and Luke continued to travel the world with Shooglenifty.

But you can’t keep a good project down, and last year the four came together again and with assistance from the Scottish Arts Council, the Birnam Quartet became ‘official’ – and this was endorsed in Birnam on Saturday with the CD launch albeit with Sarah Hoy taking the place of Anna-Wendy in the line-up.

With Jamie at the helm, the large audience at the launch evening enjoyed the play-through of The Music of Burns, interspersed with the ensemble members’ lighthearted and informative explanations and anecdotes of how each tune fitted into Burns’ short life and from whence they originated.

This commentary is replicated in the sleeve notes of this highly-recommended CD.

And Jamie emphasised the huge debt we in the 21st century owe to Robert Burns for seeking out and preserving so many wonderful pieces of music.

And thanks too to the Birnam Quartet for having the courage to strip the songs of their words and let audiences appreciate the beauty of the melodies which inspired Burns.

Some of the album’s tunes are played as Burns would have heard them more than 250 years ago, while others are successfully given a 21st century twist of jazz and blues, none more so than Lord Gregory. Just before his untimely death in 1796, Burns wrote the words to this ancient melody, and 214 years later the Birnam Quartet rejuvenated it with a Gershwin-esque makeover.

With the album packed with 13 beautifully-arranged tunes, it’s hard to single out other highlights, but perhaps Wandering Willie and the closing A Man’s A Man for A’ That are other stand-out tracks.

‘The Music of Burns’ by the Birnam Quartet is available through Shoogle Records www.shoogle.com