MARTIN HAYES

MARTIN HAYES with Gerry O'Beirne (An Béal Bocht, Dublin)

Sometimes trad musicians seem to be scampering to the bridge for a pile-up. The impatient foot gets locked on the accelerator and the music surges to that climax when all tension is released. Martin Hayes doesn’t play it that way at all.

Gently and elegantly, the tunes’ individuality get stressed and explored instead of being just another ticket to the rollercoaster. It’s a teasing process but also an unusually logical one. Martin Hayes may have the technique but his technique serves the tune instead of squandering it in gaudy display.

This night wasn’t always perfect but that was also its beauty. Hayes had never previously played with Gerry O’Beirne, while the guitarist had only briefly inspected the violinist’s recent debut album. Both men were sometimes winging it, which often only made the surprises more special.

It was a standard of improvisation rarely heard, both concentrating on feeling their way into each other’s approach as well as the material. The contrast could have been disorientating – Hayes, an inheritor of the severe and subtle Clare tradition, O’Beirne as likely to attach an echo gizmo to a ukelele–- and sometimes O’Beirne seemed to be taking Hayes down paths the violinist would have preferred left unvisited.

But they more often colluded than collided. Then, Martin Hayes showed that there’s far more to the traditional treasure-chest than craic, caint and the sometimes sadly subordinate ceol. Some toss you the bones but Hayes gets to the marrow of the music; to an easeful yet almost chess-playing complexity that isn’t about spectacular and sometimes superficial surges for the grandstand.

If Irish music has many mansions, this Hayes hotel definitely merits an immediate visit.

• Bill Graham