IN the 1970s the Irish music world frowned on the use of fiddle pickups in gig situations. Whatever about playing for a noisy dance, or a wedding hooley, the general opinion was that they muffle the player's finesse.
John Carty, on fiddle at the Harcourt Hotel in Dublin, was not only too weak for Brian McGrath's too loud keyboard, but to those who have heard his recent, truly wonderful album, his delicate as a bee's wing touch was marred by transmission via inappropriate technology. Nowhere was this more evident than in his Bunch of Keys and Jacksons set, where he magnificently keeps a free string in practically constant sympathetic drone. This criticism may seem trifling for a player with such abundant grace and sheer engagement, but it is that deficiency which towards the end of the night may well have been the ingredient that damped the spark of the playing to this listener's ear.
Both musicians offered fine diversion on banjos from Dixieland to Barney McKenna via The Darlin' Girl from Clare but together were most impressive with "bassing" in octaves on a Star of Munster set. Carty on his own pranced nicely on the tightrope with 618 into 414 time interweaving on jigs, but it was on the economically bowed fiddle that he excelled, going straight to fingered variation on every piece and teasing all tunes out in borderless permutations of both note patterning and key signature. If his playing was dark, it was still cheerful, suggestive of an older age group in its intensity, but located in his own by a showy coolness, the emphatic raising of a foot, swing of the body or dipping of the head.
