Su-a Lee @ Celtic Connections – City Halls, Glasgow – 30th January 2024

I get it, not an everyday name, but, if you have any love for music, you have probably heard her and of her. Not least if you picked up her album, Dialogues, last year. Lord knows I tried to give her traction when the album came out, but I’m a convert, familiar with her work. Over the past couple of decades, as well as her permanent role with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, she has also worked with folk and Americana artists, with neo-classicists and avant garde jazzers, all with the desire to raise the threshold of her favoured instrument, the cello. So, look through your shelves: Eliza Carthy, Karen Matheson, Duncan Chisholm, Max Richter, Gavin Bryars, she’s worked with all of those and more, working with a whole lot more tonight.

If you could bottle the evident glee, with which Lee was overflowing, you’d likely waste it; the fizzing welcome to the near-packed hall a joy to behold. With a mix, I dare say, of classical diehards and hardened folkies, it crossed all ages and included, I am sure, many simply cello-curious. Tonight was something she never expected to happen, she said, she thinking the album a one-off, destined for posterity rather than performance. So to have nearly all the A list of contributors present and correct, jings, you could forgive her skittish, feet-kicking excitement and enthusiasm. A tiny elfin figure, in a diaphanous green gown, she had a smile as broad as the Clyde. (You’re going to have to forgive my grainy shots; this was my first night of numbered seating, actually the only one of the week, this venue being also the home of her day job with the SCO.)

It was solo she started, with her glorious arrangement of Burns’ Ae Fond Kiss. Already both pins and jaws were dropping, as she brought forth all the emotional heft her instrument can offer. Donald Shaw is quite the bigwig for Celtic Connections, the musical director of the 2 1/2 weeks, so it was entirely apt that he should be here, his piano dialogue, SWIDT, a heady mix of concert hall and highland ball. Baroque Suite it’s called, with the setting making it all the more a snapshot of distant days. of Merchant City grandeur. Next up was clearly close friend, and cello co-conspiracist, Natalie Haas. Actually, all the guests seemed very good friends, each with back stories from their shared cvs, explained at length by their still gushing hostess. Haas, it seems, was the first to give Lee seed to the idea that cello could and should attain a right of place, in all genres and styles, away from the sometimes stuffier enclaves it has sometimes been relegated to. Nothing new nowadays, of course, cello popping up all over, from the bluegrass of Chatham County Line to the folk-rock of the Oysters, but this project displays the meeting points with a clarity that informs and delights. Haas and Lee clearly fire off each other and their cut and thrust was exhilarating, swapping pizzicatos and broad bow sweeps.

Rather than leaving the stage, Haas stayed put, with Lee explaining that the opportunity, to expand and adapt many of the pieces into a wider setting, was far too good to miss. So, the twin cello and guitar setting of Mill O’Tifty’s Annie (aka an abbreviated Andrew Lammie, minus a thousand or so the available verses) to accompany Karine Polwart was glorious. Polwart, as ever, sang her heart out, and it was a blinder. Further augmentation, with Polwart leaving the stage, as James Ross took to the piano, with three fiddles slotting alongside Haas. Fiddles? I guess tonight and at least for this tune, they were more likely violins, and were Donald Grant, Patsy Reid and, no relation, Jenna Reid, all three established performers in their own right. Straying more into classical and soundtrack territory, this piece, Stroma belied its genesis of improvisation, appearing now as a tightly chiselled construct of interweaving instrumentation.

Duncan Chisholm can do no wrong. with his position on the pedestal assured; the king of slow airs, as Lee introduced him to the stage. And, by golly, that’s exactly what he gave, the galling anguish of his long curved notes of melody a joy to the ears. Absolutely gorgeous. Whilst all were gathering their tumbled emotions back together, suddenly the stage was a throng. 14 players, no less, with all so far mentioned back, along with Phil Cunningham’s piano accordion, Julie Fowlis, on tin whistle, and Hamish Napier, her husband, he playing flute tonight. A harp and a long stretchy squeezebox were also represented, Maeve Gilchrist and Carel Kraayenhof respectively. Together the racket was wonderful.

The interval was a show in itself, at least in the foyer. I am uncertain whether merch desks play much part in orchestral circles, and Lee herself wasn’t so sure, but, as she told us, she had brought along as many copies of the CD as she could beg, borrow or steal, and was going to sell and sign as many as she possibly could. That Napier had to come and extract his wife, not without difficulty, shows how many were clamouring to meet and greet the tiny dynamo.

Part two and it was the Reid (P) and Lee show to kick things back, the regimented discipline of strathspeys the game in hand. We were reminded that cello had always been the natural preferred foil to fiddle, long before the wretched guitar ever came along. It was marvellous to see the pair duck and dive about each other, all in the strictest of tempo. Maeve Gilchrist then returned to add some courtly sprightliness to the proceedings. And the feel was now even more baroque than Shaw’s early piano piece, harp and strings providing that feel of a baronial ballroom. All very reminiscent of some of the fare on Battlefield Band’s Music In Trust project, with Alison Kinnaird.

Phil Cunningham is a firm favourite round these parts, and is always around and about the festival, not least in his part of the rightly celebrated Transatlantic Sessions band. So it was with fond applause he was greeted once more. His tune, The Wedding has long been dear to me, ever since picking up his Palomino Waltz album at the long gone Bracknell festival, after he had played a stunning solo set. It seems he had forgotten all about this tune, when Lee had invited him to reprise it for the album, and her wedding, so I was glad that she prompted him. Sublime on disc, live it was sublimer, whether that a word or not, with Grant adding accompanying fiddle and Napier, flute. Looking now, I see my notes are smudged at this stage……. Dusty room, I guess.

But the evening was still giving, with now Julie Fowlis adding a dash of Gaelic purity. The now entitled Dialogue Strings were back in force, with Polwart adding her vocal creaminess to Fowlis’s more mountain burn. Entirely beautiful, with the strings a smooth swell enveloping her pristine solo voice, made all the richer by the harmony beneath it. Feeling the end in sight, it was next the Shetland textures of Reid, J, one of the fires in the Blazin’ Fiddles ensemble. Shetland fiddles tend to be a group performance, and, with the wealth of talent available tonight, this became a given. Almost finally we learned about the long and stretchy squeezebox, it being a bandoneon, as beloved in the dance music of Argentina, and, particularly Astor Piazzolla. Which is what we got, Kraayenhof the current master of this most complex of squeezers. Even whilst playing, you could swear Lee was dancing, such was the passion displayed. It felt like the best b&w foreign language film you have ever seen. The final finale brought all back on stage, with audience participation being added to the classical audience repertoire, as Grant taught the words, and sang, a slow Gaelic air. The tongue swallowing nature the language aside, I will say we did him, and Lee, proud, the choral closer a splendid way to close the show.

Close the show? Not a chance, we wanted more, and more was what we got, the entire “orchestra” reassembled. The only contributor to the album unable to be present tonight was the Finn, Pekka Kuusisto. I have previously stated his section the furthest from my personal palate on the disc, but, here tonight, arranged for the 14 present, it was just perfect and made much more sense. Applause and standing ovations, with flowers for the main protagonist, as she thanked everybody and everyone involved, both with the project, the performance and Celtic Connections generally, revealing also that is wasn’t any old sound guy at the mixing desk, but only Andrea Gobbi himself, the producer of not only this album, but of nearly anything of a neo-Trad bent made in Scotland these days. Bravo!! And Ms Lee went back to the merch desk, Sharpie in hand.

If you have the time, take 20 minutes and learn about the whole project:

Su-a Lee online: Website / Facebook / X(formerly Twitter) / Instagram

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