"Hip hop, folk, traditional, I wanted the fiddle to thread the needle through all of these," Eileen Ivers declares, demonstrating as precise a flair for metaphor as she does for fiddling. Crossing The Bridge is the title of her new album, and if she were seeking challenges, she couldn't have hoped for a more varied terrain than the one she navigates on this, her latest solo recording.
Having cut her studio teeth with the well known Irish American label, Green Linnet, Eileen Ivers has now found a new home with Sony Classical, a prestigious label that's less concerned with fads than with fine tuning. It's a departure that's surprising, and at the same time apt, given Ivers' penchant for stretching the boundaries of her playing to encompass everything from trad to classical, taking in hiphop, klezmer and folk music along the way.
Unsurprisingly, after the manic globetrotting of Riverdance and the equally fired solo live shows for which she's famous, Crossing The Bridge has a certain savoir faire that only comes with experience. Ivers has already garnered the laurels and tasted the sweetness of success. What Crossing The Bridge has allowed her to do is to high kick her way beyond the terrain that she knows like the back of her hand.
"It's so funny, you know", Ivers remarks, recalling the endless road miles that were the stuff of Riverdance, "we were hanging out a lot together: there was Marie Pagas, who's a wonderful flamenco dancer, and I slowly began to realise that what was happening to me at that time was just so important, and you've got to take advantage of it, and appreciate it, because it won't always be there. So when I was recording the album, I was still seeing a lot of those guys and I figured I just had to seize the moment. Carpe diem, big time!"
This time out, Ivers basks in the glories of rhythm, surrounding herself with some of the world's most spectacular percussionists. With wondrous South African bassist, Bakithi Kumalo, providing much of the rhythmic backbone of Crossing The Bridge, there are virtual choruses of time-keepers gathered round the fire just to keep the temperature up. Congas, talking drums, trap drums, rainsticks, udu drums, brushes, spoons, not to mention bodhrans - all puncture the melodies until a tapestry of Bayeux proportions emerges. And it's this cultural interplay that fires Ivers these days, in the same way that raw, driven Irish dance tunes did so majestically in the past.
"I've always felt that Irish music is so rich both melodically and rhythmically," she offers. "It is dance music, when you get into jigs, reels and hornpipes: it's there to make you move. And then of course you have the great airs which are the kind of Irish blues, and I've been very lucky to work with some wonderful African percussionists for many years now. In fact, we had the launch of the album here in New York two nights ago, and boy, did we have a blast! I felt like Gloria Estefan and The Miami Sound Machine, we had that much percussion!"
Born and bred in Brooklyn of Mayo parents, Ivers has long been a team player with a rake of different bands, ranging from the all-female line-up of Cherish The Ladies to the funky hip hop of Paddy A Go Go. Of late though, it's her name only that sells tickets. No longer able to lie back and relax in the bacchanalian comforts that the band milieu brings with it, she's got to constantly promote, tour, and record on the back of her own franchise. And while her solo career blossoms, Ivers is philosophical about the perils and potholes of the lone artist.
"I've always loved playing in bands", she avers, "but I guess I found, especially when it came to recordings, that I began to question whether things were done in the way that I would do them. And then, gradually, I gravitated towards doing my own records."
Ivers has often paid tribute to her fiddle teacher, Martin Mulvihill, a man who traipsed around New York, harnessing the musical talent in Queens, The Bronx, and wherever there was a whiff of an appetite for the tunes. Times have changed now, and there is a wealth of musical role models for young musicians to admire. Ivers stands tall beside the likes of Cape Breton fiddler, Natalie McMaster and of course, Sharon Shannon, all phenomenally successful in their chosen fields. Is Ivers conscious of the gender role model that she has become for aspiring players, and might her presence on the world stage make it easier for women musicians to follow her path?
"It is interesting, the Natalies, the Sharons, Lilith Fair and Maire Brennan," she says, "and I think that they're all wonderful musicians. But it's funny when you say 'role models', I think of Maire Brennan, whom I think is a great lady, and she's a mother as well as a working musician. I guess I've been thinking about this a lot lately, because I'm going to get married later this year, and it's a real question: how do you combine family life and work? And that's a real priority for me, maintaining a good personal life. The role model is something a bit different, I guess, but when I was younger, I really looked up (and I still do) to Liz Carroll, who's a great lady. She's a wonderful player and she has two great kids. She's got her priorities set."
Returning to Crossing The Bridge, and its undeniable strength of identity, Eileen Ivers is quick to point out her allergy to the 'C' word. Albums of celtic mists, and celtic sunsets have already devalued the currency of traditional music, synthetic flotsam and jetsam masquerading as the real thing. It was a pigeonhole that she was more than careful to avoid when she entered the studio this time 'round.
"Everybody's been jumping on the bandwagon", she declares with uncharacteristic vehemence, "and I tell ya, it's frightening. The amount of junk out there! Compilations up the wazoo, it's sad. So I was very clear when I went into the studio about what I wanted, and of course with Brian Keane (who co-wrote/arranged all the tracks with Ivers), he made sure we were totally in control."
"We had hip hop beats, be bop, Irish beats", she laughs, "and why not? We had such a good time playing around with it and it just took off. It was like bringing the sounds of Mayo that I grew up with right up against New York, which is the hip-hop thing."
Elsewhere the mood shifts to sampling early Irish fiddle sounds from Tom Phaidmn Tom (a revered Connemara fiddler), to sean nss out-takes and South African chants that marry bible belt gospel with tribal rhythms - not forgetting the wonderfully titled 'polka.com'. Hardly your common or garden set list of jigs and reels, but then Eileen Ivers has never really been your common or garden musician. There's even a veiled tribute to the Irish influence on Monserrat ('Islanders'), that doomed volcanic Pacific island that's fast hurtling towards its nadir.
Fact is, it's in this lateral thinking mode that Ivers thrives best. Only a few credits shy of a Masters in Mathematics, she's in her element when pondering the algorithms of jigtime or the statistical significance of playing the same set twice.
Ivers laughs and launches into what can only be described as a raucous contemplation of the two art forms.
"You know, there are lots of obvious links, like the difference in time between jigs and reels, and there's a big part of me that still melts when a news story comes on about NASA. It's funny though when you look at the music by Bach, for example, they really progress mathematically. I wrote a paper about this when I was in college. It's wild! So while harmonics and counter-melodies are the obvious connection, there's much more to it than that. The only thing is - this is a conversation that I'd need at least another hour to explore properly! And of course, over a few beers, the explanations would get wilder and wilder too." n
Crossing The Bridge is out now on Sony Classical.