The Gloaming – Auckland Town Hall

In spite of my surname I haven’t often listened to traditional Irish folk music and I have never coveted it in my personal music collection. It’s a genre I associated with another world, an old world, far removed from my own. My experience last night at the Auckland Town Hall with The Gloaming has changed this.

As with the genre itself, I was not familiar with The Gloaming. They are hailed as an Irish super group, five gifted musicians from Ireland and America, with a style described as a rich mixture of Irish folk tradition and contemporary New York music. I felt unsure about how the two would meet and whether they really could harmonize.

From the beginning, I felt the old and new connect. Haunting piano chords that could have opened a modern ballad, pre-empted the old Irish violin sound, paying homage to tradition with characteristic trills and repeated riffs, making me feel somehow that I was part of their story, their folk lore.

Often large groups showcase only one or two members but with these five, The Gloaming achieved a precise musical balance, which meant I could discern the individual movements of each instrument. Yet the group as a whole blended with happiness and ease, the beautiful harmonies created allowing each instrument to be presented and played with respect.

Songs were played in succession: for example the opening number showcased five pieces in one- “The Pilgrim / Shechan’s Gigs / Maud Miller / The Tap Room / Rolling in the Barrel”. The band stopped occasionally to talk to the audience, eliciting laughs with their dry Irish humor and endearing accents.

Sudden changes in tempo added to the sense of Irish storytelling and while lyrics told tales in Old Irish Reel, the music itself depicted the hero’s conflict and resolution. There were desperate notes played with urgency changing to slow lamenting hums, then warm, familiar harmonies which would suddenly turn to a haunting minor.

These vibrant changes lent a wildness to the music. Somehow, it reminded me of a waterfall where untamable waters surge and flow with an intrepid beauty. The waterfall controls the water but allows it to spray and dance as it is meant to. Equally here, the music was incandescent, but the musicians in their mastery of it, did not alter its state. Rather they allowed the beauty of its wildness and unpredictability to come to the fore.

Violins carried the melodies of lamenting and longing, of rousing, energized humming or of whispering notes, daring the audience to listen. Playing with such mastery but so little ego, it seemed that the musicians were less interested in reaching the audience and more in telling their stories accurately. That quiet absorption, the lack of overt, exhibitionist performance, lent authenticity, allowing the music to be presented for what it was- magic.

The piano danced seamlessly around the melody, at once playing with and against it, speaking to traditions of Jazz, reminding me of the freedom of music played without expectation. Contrasting musical ideas cemented this sound as a meeting of past and present.

But The Gloaming was far more than the meeting of two musical worlds. The passion and commitment of the musicians, which infused their magical Celtic sounds, enchanted the Auckland Audience.

– Margie Cooney