Ter aanvulling op het optreden in Acoustic Roots van Phillip Henry & Hannah Martin van 21 maart a.s. 21:00 – 22:00 uur, alvast voor de voorpret:
Dit is een verslag van een concert dat zij onlangs in Engeland gaven en is geschreven door Peter Cowley:
Phillip Henry And Hannah Martin
Venue: The Atkinson
Town: Southport
Date: 15/03/14
Website: www.philliphenryandhannahmartin.co.uk
Tonight, Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin played for the first time in Southport [although Phillip is a local Lancashire lad]. It is just over three weeks since they won the coveted BBC Folk Award for Best Duo. On the strength of tonight’s stunning performance and their superb album “Mynd” [which was one of my favourite albums of last year] they fully deserve that accolade.
I was eagerly awaiting tonight's show and I was not to be disappointed as their two sets were exciting, innovative and thoroughly entertaining, combining virtuoso musicianship with superb vocals, both individually and in harmony, not to mention some great original songs. As Steve Knightley has said they are "utterly captivating".
Phillip and Hannah are nothing if not eclectic as their music encompasses traditional British folk, blues, bluegrass and classical Indian music [which Phillip studied in Calcutta under the tutelage of Pandit Debashish Bhattacharya, India’s premier slide guitarist ]. Phillip is a stunning dobro player but is also amazing on the harmonica, which he combines with beatboxing to create some remarkable sounds, none more so than on the epic "The Nailmaker's Strike" which concerns a strike of Bromsgrove nailmakers in 1862. Somehow Phillip created a dub/reggae feel with just his voice and harmonica, over which Hannah wove the folk tune with her lyrical violin. The reggae influence was emphasised by the inclusion of the chorus from the Rastafarian song "Declaration of Rights" by The Abyssinians.
Another harmonica tour-de-force was Phillip's version of "Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning" on which he multi-tasked to sound like an entire band. The Indian classical influences in his dobro playing came to the fore on "Elegy", a gorgeous instrumental based on a raga called "handshavani" that he learned whilst studying in India and which is dedicated to the memory of Gerry Jordan.
If Phillip is the master of the dobro and harmonica, then Hanna is the mistress of the fiddle, viola and banjo. Not only that, she is a fabulous singer and wonderful lyricist.
Tonight, the duo performed several of her excellent songs about [mainly] historical subjects. We had “Silbury Hill” [ a wonderfully evocative song about the ancient barrowlands]; “Song For Caroline Herschel”[ about the pioneering female astronomer who was awarded a Gold Medal by the Royal Astronomical Society];”Thirty Miles” [about Sixo, an African American slave]; “Mrs.Willmott’s Ghost”[which tells of the Victorian guerrilla gardener who would secretly plant seeds in other peoples’ gardens] and, poignantly, "The Painter" which concerns her great grandfather, an artist, who was killed in an Allied bombing raid on Germany.
By way of demonstrating their interest in American roots music, Phillip and Hannah played a couple of choice covers, Gillian Welch's "Wichita" and, from Alison Krauss and Union Station, a stunning version of "The Boy Who Wouldn't Hoe Corn", on which Phillip and Hannah's duelling dobro and fiddle left the audience agog and demanding more. And they got more when the duo returned to play their "favourite end of the night song", a beautiful version of James Taylor's lullabye "[You Can] Close Your Eyes".
And so ended a wonderful show by this amazingly talented pair who have, quite rightly, been recognised as folk music's "Best Duo". Outstanding.
Peter Cowley
