Springfield, IL

STATE JOURNAL-REGISTER
CELTIC FIDDLER EILEEN IVERS MOLDS MANY MUSICAL STYLES INTO HER OWN

Saturday, March 04, 2001
DAVID J. LEONATTI CORRESPONDENT

 
Just your run-of-the-mill Celtic-fusion/world-beat big top revival and travelogue. That is all you got at Saturday night's musical mini-hurricane at the Sangamon Auditorium at the University of Illinois at Springfield.
 
Celtic fiddler Eileen Ivers and her band, a multimedia, multicultural circus, played to a modest but appreciative and boisterous crowd on Saturday evening
 
The boundlessly energetic Ivers has been playing music since winning an all-Ireland contest on the banjo at 8 years of age. She is best known as the featured soloist for the smash new-age step-dancing extravaganza "Riverdance."
 
Aside from being all-Ireland fiddle champion eight times running, Ivers has recorded and appeared on more than 75 recordings and is one of the most in-demand Celtic instrumentalists in the U.S. and Ireland.
 
Her ability to absorb countless music styles and uniquely re-invent them effortlessly was on display Saturday night. The violin master played everything from Irish standards to original compositions from her latest release, "Crossing the Bridge."
 
Ivers is an exuberant ambassador of all musical styles, threading together everything from flamenco, reggae and blues, to traditional Celtic to Hendrixian psychedelia.
 
But it is not simply her and the band's encyclopedic knowledge of styles or technical superiority; not just her liquid, quicksilver fingering, but also the merging of mirthful spirit, pop sensibility and extraordinary individual talents in absolute service of each song or style that elevates each performance.
 
What the Eileen Ivers Band appears to have conceived is a sonic architecture, which converges and honors key elements of a particular style (Irish jigs or reels, calypso), then inserts replacement sound elements or effects (fuzz-wah-wah screaming fiddle; Afro-Cuban percussion) in place of traditional instrumentation. Ivers has a tuneful, open mind and historic reverence whether gently dissecting or exploding, then reorganizing individual chords or progressions in a single song.
 
There was the discreet, romantic intoxication of love songs ("Black is the Color") to blues-inflected excursions. The highlights were too numerous to count, each song spellbinding and detonating in its own little universe of melody and percussive execution.
 
The ache of her keening melody in the reminiscing ballad "Bygone Days" was sublime.
 
Try the faux-scratching and boom-box infections of the hip-hoppy closing reels; thunderous bottom-end, skittling hand percussion as substitute 'scratching' and Ivers' scalar melody lines.
 
A great showcase of hybridization was "Gravelwalk", an integration of key structural elements of the Irish reel with electric jazz, yielding a Chieftains-meets-Weather Report hopscotching fantasia, including a scalding, screeching fuzz fiddle solo.
 
Then hear the elegantly honored embroidery of Pachelbel - the straightforward arrangement with lithe nuance, like rickrack highlighting the pattern of a simple garment - then tearing the garment to shreds as the opening cadenza crashes into a trademark electric reel workout.
 
Let's see: Sophisticated jazz-folk with the blues. Yes, that too.
 
Bluegrass legend Ralph Blizzard's "Lost Train Blues" kick-started with the propulsion of a locomotive. Then we hear simple hand-percussion and jungle soundscapes transform into calypso polyrythms; wondrous Celtic melodies merge with traditional steel band formulations on the Montserrat-inspired "Islanders."
 
Did I mention there was tap dancing? Bronx bomber and Broadway veteran Tarik Winston in his black Yankees jersey percussively merged with the band on countless occasions becoming yet another form of Afro-Cuban or West African drumming lock-tight, in step with the beat. And for the first time in my life, I saw a lead soloist (fiddler Ivers) trades fours with a tap dancer!
 
Stars turns of the evening included every band member.
 
Jerry Sullivan, a recording veteran with a diverse pedigree including works with Sinead O'Connor, James Galway and Dolly Parton, chicken-wings those ungainly Uilleann pipes, pumping note-for-note solo runs parallel with the fiddle master with his feathery fingers. He also aided the creation of haunting melancholy with his breathy low whistle and flute.
 
New Yorker Leo Traversa executes a flawless, pan-African jazz fusion bass with muted percolation, and ceaseless puffy percussive drive. His solos, curt but brimming with melodic invention, were continually inspired.
 
Singer Tom McDonnell is a veteran of the Blues Brothers, and though his Memphis soul blues belt was a tad out of character now and then, his crying wail on the closer "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" was howling-mad perfect for this global revival. His squalling harmonica and deft hand percussion filled out each song's landscape as needed.
 
The youthful guitarist James Reilly, chopping and chugging chords without ceasing, surely needed a note from his mother to come out and play this evening (how old is that kid?). His role in the band is clearly defined and his strumming, cut-chords or high register harp-tone fingerpicking played perfect foil to Ivers incessant sawing.
 
But the master gear of these magnificent clockworks has to be percussionist Emedin Rivera (whom Ivers claimed was from the "Irish county of Puerto Rico"). Every possible struck or sticked device is in his arsenal of drums, conga, shakers and bird calls. Yes, bird calls, as he uncannily created a lush junglescape with an interlude flush with fluttering wings, screeches and echoing chirps. Rivera's inventive and crisp drumming adds that international pulse and hard roiling or dryly-bubbling backbeat unique to these pan-cultural compositions.
 
And the crowd's devotion was cemented when Ivers jogged down into the orchestra pit to dance with bounding, sweaty children prancing about in their best "Riverdance" impressions. Add yet the Ogilvy Dance Studios young (some very young) dancers step-dancing and showing their Scots-Gaels best backed by this romping band.
 
Ivers' is a craft of rare proficiency and refraction, taming a polyglot musical palette and rendering it unique through sound and spirit. She pledges fidelity to the original and manages to coalesce the multiple instrumental elements to the best effect. Each and every time.