I’m certain that if you’re reading this review you don’t need to be told all about Liz Carroll, but she’s so amazing I aim to tell you, anyway. She has been receiving awards and honors for her Irish-style fiddling since she won the All-Ireland under 18 championship in 1974 and the senior championship the very next year. Born in Chicago to Irish parents, she has made numerous recordings and toured as a solo artist, as a duo with Irish guitarist John Doyle, with the trio Trian, with the String Sisters, and now as another trio with Seán Óg Graham (guitar) and Trevor Hutchinson (bass) behind her latest release, On the Off Beat. She received the National Heritage Fellowship award in 1994, is the first Irish-born American traditional musician nominated for a Grammy (for Double Play with Doyle in 2009), and in 2011 became the first American-born composer to be honored with Ireland’s top traditional music prize, the Cumadóir TG4.
Liz is almost as well-known and honored for her compositions as for her playing. The book of her works published in 2010, Collected, is in its second printing. In performance, her down-to-earth personality belies the beauty and casual virtuosity of her playing.
You can hear plenty of that playing on On the Off Beat, named for one of two tunes on the second track which she refers to in the liner notes as “A three-part, 7/8 romp.” It has a driving Balkan sound to it, as does the tune it’s paired with, “The Fruit And The Snoot,” and she’s abetted by Winifred Horan (Solas) on fiddle, Natalie Haas on cello and Catriona McKay on harp, all of whom give it a full big-band sound. That gang also plays on a couple of other tracks, the lovely slow march “Never Far Away” and the set of “Liam Childs/Balkin’ Balkan/The E-B-E Reel.”
Liz has a few other guests on this disc of 12 tunes and sets including Keith Murphy playing piano on the engaging set “The Wolf’/The Duck” and Seamus Egan (the disc’s producer) on mandolin, but the core trio plays most of the music. My favorites are the fourth track, a three-tune set the middle of which, “Fiddle Heaven,” is dedicated to the late, great Jerry Holland of Cape Breton Island (who I saw with Liz there in one of the most memorable concerts of my life); and the sixth, which pairs the lovely slow reel “Jerome Lacy” with “The Rogue’s Reel.” Graham’s picking and Hutchinson’s bass on this one are both sublime and perfectly complementary to Liz’s expressive fiddling.
The photo on the back of the CD sleeve says it all: The focus is on the fiddle, which is as it should be. On the Off Beat is another excellent set of fiddle tunes from Liz Carroll.
(self-released, 2013)
