Mary Black holds full Cork Opera House in her thrall with reminiscent performance

[rating]4[/rating]

A young Mary Black fills the screen on the Cork Opera House stage, a monochrome montage of her singing No Frontiers, intercut with the RTE National Symphony Orchestra playing the seminal song.

She fills the screen, with her 1989 choppy hair cut (did we all just cut own hair back then? Was it a rule?) and those eyes, even in black and white, those piercing eyes that look through three decades to her future self, singing to us, in glorious technicolor.

Black sparkles in a bejewelled jacket with eyes that have lost none of their power. Her voice is strong, tender, and utterly inimitable. And the hairdo is only gorgeous.

The 64-year-old troubadour holds the full house in her thrall for every second.

Of the new album, Orchestrated, she "is chuffed". She didn't bring the orchestra with her, she smiles, but the recordings on screen, combined with her 5-strong band works just fine.

Black has a kinship with her audience that only certain artists have, the ones whose songs define fans' life journeys.

A moment snapped back into focus with the opening chords of A Woman's Heart, a dance with your dad remembered as Mary jigs to Carolina Rua.

A memory of a loved one's partypiece, Sonny.

The bedroom duet with your best friend, singing Katie into a hairbrush.

Fans have visceral connections with her songs, they intertwine with the landscapes of lives, of Irishness, of us.

Storytellers and poets, the best and worst of our passions and culture.

One lady bursts into tears when Bright Blue Rose starts, her friends press tissues and they hug and sway together.

The encore is Dylan's I Shall be Released, dedicated to sister, Senator Frances Black and the Palestinian people. (She links songs to issues throughout; homelessness, domestic violence, climate change.)

Support Hank Wedel (his Monday night residency at Charlie's will be well-known to Cork music fans) pitches in for a verse, and we're treated to two more songs before the standing ovation carries them from the stage.