Ken Pollard wrote: > I've recently run across John Taylor, out of California. He plays for the > local Scottish Country Dance organization (Sacramento?) and has three CDs > out now, any one of which is top notch. > > One is called Live, and that's what it is -- recorded at a dance. > > Another is called After the Dance, and is the best for listening by a > general audience. Has a great MacPherson's Lament/Rant.
Although I'm a dancer as well as a fiddler, John Taylor & Andy Imbrie's 'Live' is one of the few CDs of Scottish Country Dance music that I like to listen to apart from dancing (and it would have been on my favorites list if Bob hadn't already mentioned John Taylor). Recordings of SCD music tend to bore me because they're typically 6x or 8x of the same kind of tune but there's an energy level in this recording that's just great, and the performances are amazing; Andy and John just work together so well on this recording (Andy's an excellent accompanist; he plays for a lot of dance groups around here. He has a neat syncopated style that really gets the dancers going). I love the sound of John's fiddle; It's really distinctive. I asked him about it and he said it's a Scottish instrument (I can't remember the maker, darn it) that used to belong to his grandfather and which he found in the attic. He said he didn't know what he'd do without it! I was actually a little disappointed in After the Dance because I was expecting more of the energy of Live, but I suppose that's unrealistic for a studio album. However I don't want to discourage anyone from getting it, because it's a nice CD! -- Steve Wyrick -- Concord, California Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music & Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
