Kinnaris Quintet, Edinburgh International Festival review: ‘spangly and compelling’
With three fiddlers and energy to burn, the Kinnaris Quintet were a terrific curtain-raiser for the EIF’s folk, jazz and world music series at The Hub. By Jim Gilchrist
Kinnaris Quintet, The Hub, Edinburgh ★★★★
The formidable string-driven and spangly entity that is the Kinnaris Quintet energised this preview night for the Edinburgh International Festival’s folk, jazz and world music series at The Hub. With three fiddlers – Fiona MacAskill, Laura Wilkie and, on a five-stringed instrument, Aileen Reid – powered by guitarist Jenn Butterworth and mandolinist Laura-Beth Salter, theirs is a vigorously contemporary take on folk fiddle.
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Their opening number, Back Road to Schots, established their characteristically energetic style in a traditional-sounding reel, then morphed its way into a retreat march, while Period Drama began as a swingy hornpipe before gathering pace for some country-ish reels, mandolin sounding through jazzy triple fiddle strikes.
Reid’s composition Free One, dedicated to children in an uncertain world, started as a winsome melody that gradually took optimistic flight over string and wordless vocal harmonies, while MacAskill’s jig-time Happy Days saw mandolin ringing over waves of ascending fiddles. The philosophically titled This Too Shall Pass did indeed pass, and at quite a pelt, over pulsing guitar, but there was respite in a Salter tune, June’s Garden, with its delicate guitar and mandolin introduction and eerily whistling fiddle harmonics before it too took on compelling rhythmic heft.
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