Fort Myers, FL

 

Review: Eileen Ivers' genius surpasses musical genres

Friday, March 16, 2001

 
 
Some people believe in the "six degrees of separation" view of the world: that everyone is somehow connected and that we're only six people away from everyone else. Even if it's a famous movie star or someone in another country, someone we know knows someone else who knows someone else ... until six people later, we arrive at that person. Celtic fiddler Eileen Ivers believes in the musical version of six degrees of separation: she sees how underneath it's all interrelated.
 
African and Irish rhythms? Not-so-distant relatives. Caribbean and Irish music? Common ancestors. Bluegrass music and an Irish reel? Kissing cousins.
 
Wednesday night at the Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall in Fort Myers, she played all those styles and more, including some classical music, hip-hop, and a healthy dose of jazz and swing.
 

Some artists play all kinds of music because they're the proverbial jack of all trades and master of none, but Ivers plays everything because she's somehow mastered them all. It's obvious that she just plain old likes good music, whether it comes from Ireland, the streets or the islands. She's toured with Hall & Oates, played with Paula Cole and Patti Smith, had a three-year stint as a fiddler with "Riverdance" and played with orchestras such as the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the London Symphony Orchestra.

Ivers plays with such genius that she surpasses genre.

 
Her band included an acoustic guitarist from Dublin, a percussionist from Puerto Rico, a musician on uilleann pipes, a singer who plays blues harmonica, and a man on electric bass. Tap dancer Tarik Winston was the sixth member of the band, providing percussion with his feet. (At one point, to the delight of the crowd, he even did some Irish step dancing, his arms straight and rigid by his sides, while his feet were a flurry of steps.)
 
Ivers and band played traditional tunes ("Black is the Color"), original tunes that sounded traditional ("Bygone Days," written for her parents who immigrated to the Bronx from Ireland), African-Irish mixtures ("Jama," which means "peace" in the Wolof language) and bluegrass/Americana ("The Lost Train Blues").
 
At times, Ivers played with her head tilted toward the left, almost as though she were listening to the fiddle telling her how to play it. She jammed with the other musicians and let them have their turn in the spotlight. At one point, she was trading licks with Emedin Rivera, the conga player, at another, playing off of Winston's percussive tapping. Every time I thought it couldn't get any faster or hotter, Ivers would turn up the pace another notch.
 
You could hear a whole world of music in her playing: swing, jazz, classical, country fiddling, Celtic, African, Caribbean. It all blended seamlessly together.
 
She and her band played Pachabel's Canon, which started out very quietly but soon became a rollicking reel. But she also played slow, hauntingly beautiful tunes such as "Lament" and "Maudabawn Chapel."
 
It was a wonderfully eclectic evening, and included a surprise performance by six dancers from the Drake School of Irish Dancing. The girls' steps, with their long, colt-like legs, seemed very delicate and fragile after Winston's muscular dancing.
 
The sound balance in the hall was excellent; even when everyone was playing, you could hear the acoustic guitar, the tiny ting of a triangle, and Rivera's hands on the skins of the congas. The person controlling the spotlight, though, didn't follow Ivers at times when she moved about on stage. And I overheard a couple people in the audience mentioning that although they liked the blues harmonica, they could've done with less singing and more Ivers.
 

At the end of the evening, Ivers left the stage and went out into the audience, running up and down the aisles, playing her blue electric violin, jumping and waving her bow, getting the audience to yell. She even high-fived a man on the aisle on the way back to the stage. The music was so lively and infectious it made you want to get up and dance and spin until you were nothing but a whirlwind of joy.

It was an invigorating, highly energetic evening.

 
Throughout the night, the house lights weren't totally turned off but kept dim, so Ivers could see the audience and interact with them. Ivers gave it her all, and the people who attended were wildly enthusiastic, applauding and cheering and clapping along with the music. They were a very attentive, highly appreciative crowd.
 
The evening seemed not as much a concert as a celebration of music. An 8-year-old girl sitting in front of me was absolutely entranced by the music, clapping along. By the last number, she was standing in the aisle, jumping up and down.
 
Afterward, Ivers came out into the lobby to meet people, shake hands and sign autographs. She was mobbed by people shaking her hand and thanking her for coming. As a recurring refrain, people kept saying to her, "Please come back," "Please come back and play again."
 

Eileen Ivers and her band were one of the most innovative and entertaining concerts I've seen at the hall.