John McCusker's career advancement since he left Battlefield Band has been impressive. For the fiddler and multi-instrumentalist turned record-producer-of-the-moment to be commissioned to celebrate the flagship events in Scottish and English roots music - Celtic Connections and Cambridge Folk Festival - only confirms his status within the UK scene.
With Under One Sky, McCusker sought to create a musical event that would be equally at home on the stages of both festivals, and in this aim it succeeded.
McCusker is a skilled composer and he had fashioned an opening sequence of tunes - well-developed from quiet beginnings to rousing drama - and a footstompin' finale, both of which made maximum impact. It didn't take much effort to imagine these and other lowland reel-morris dance-compatible tune sets and John Tams's anthem-like contribution going down as easily with the Fenland ales of Cambridge as they did with McCusker's home crowd.
Elsewhere, the work, probably by its very nature, was rather episodic. McCusker has wide-ranging contacts and the 12 musicians he involved at the conceptual, as well as performing, stage included pals from the pop scene such as Idlewild's Roddy Woomble and former Blur guitarist Graham Coxon, alongside the reliably creative folkies, guitarist Ian Carr, accordionist Andy Cutting and piper/flautist Iain MacDonald.
Coxon's vocal delivery briefly lent an idiosyncratic character but among the singers it was really only the rising force of Gaelic music, Julie Fowlis, with her affecting lament and spirited mouth music, who set the blood flowing.
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