Live music: Paul Brady & Andy Irvine - Cork Opera House

[rating]4[/rating]

Privileged we were. Four Jedi knights of folk/world music in epic form on a magic night that will live long in memory.

Brady and Irvine have been journeying together on and off since the 1970s. This show featured a selection of gems from each time their paths crossed over the years, with the first half of the show exploding with Andy’s rendition of ‘The Blacksmith’, and Andy inviting the audience to “have a drink for me” during the interval.

As the last few stragglers retook their seats, Andy joked: “I said have a drink, not 58 of them.”

An incredible first half, the first second half was even better, built around their album recorded in December 1976 and simply titled Andy Irvine / Paul Brady. The capacity Opera House show also featured the other two musicians from the album, violinist Kevin Burke and multi-instrumentalist Donal Lunny.

In fact, Lunny, Brady and Irvine all played an array of instruments, some of them fairly native: guitar, mandolin, electric piano, harmonica, tin whistle; others from a galaxy far far away: bouzouki, mandola, hurdy-gurdy.

They’re all Jedis. You couldn’t really single one out as Yoda. The stratospheric musicianship was the key feature of the night, but the audience also enjoyed the respect all four have for one another, chatting away to the audience while their mate (invariably Brady!) tuned up. The banter was great.

“Here’s another song about a soldier and a woman,” said Brady. “You’ll be hearing a few more like that. I don’t know why, but the women in the 1800s always seem to go for soldiers.”

“The guns,” came a woman’s voice from the audience.

“The guns?” laughed Brady at the lack of uniform thinking. “Whatever works for you, I suppose.”

The set included ‘Lough Erne Shore’, ‘Mary and the Soldier’, ‘Plains of Kildare’, and ‘Paddy’s Green Shamrock Shore’. A night of endless highs, the highest of which was Brady’s unique version of ‘Arthur McBride’.

Joe Dermody