CONCERT AT THE KESWICK MUSEUM & ART GALLERY, 28th JUNE 2007



THE ROCK ORGAN
(See also my later post - here with a 1976 reference to this instrument)
Well I enjoyed the concert a lot more than I expected. I’d gone along mainly out of curiosity, hoping to hear and see the famous musical stones being played by someone who knew what they were doing. In the end the stones were the least interesting part of the gig, mainly because, surprisingly because the instrument is so BIG, they were almost inaudible and were mostly drowned out by the fiddlers and the Lancashire step dancer.

Jamie Barnes, the museum’s Curatorial Assistant and House Manger, played them, and so far as I could tell he probably played them very well, albeit with rather piddly little rubber mallets which probably did nothing to increase the volume of his output.

EVELYN GLENNIE AND THE ORIGINAL, SMALLER, ROCK ORGAN
The instrument normally stands just inside the door of the museum, and most of it was still there when I arrived: they’d only taken about a third of it - the easiest part to move, I suppose - into the art gallery area. This meant they’d left the ‘black notes’ behind, restricting somewhat the sort of tunes that could be played.

With this part removed, though, you can see, hidden underneath the rest of the beast, the little, original, 17-note rock organ, which was made before the more famous behemoth. It sits on a little sort of barrow thingy. When Evelyn Glennie came to play she tried both instruments with a variety of beaters, and apparently pronounced the smaller, older model to have a better tone.

THE LAKELAND FIDDLERS
The Lakeland Fiddlers started the concert with a selection of long-neglected Cumbrian tunes. These were almost exclusively hornpipes to begin with, and most of their repertoire, in fact, seems to be dance tunes. As well as a number of fiddle players the band also has a guitarist, a bodhran player and one of the oldest double bass players on the circuit - I’m told he’s 83 but he doesn’t look a day over 70. The audience obviously loved them!


CAROLYN FRANCIS & HER BORDER PIPES

The fiddlers are led by the talented and versatile Carolyn Francis, who is also a member of Striding Edge, one of Cumbria’s top ceilidh bands. As well as leading the fiddlers with style, she also plays a rather unusual set of border pipes, which she had specially made for her by Julian Goodacre of Peebles. Modern border pipes are
bellows-driven, and have the unusual feature of stopped end-holes, making the fingering quite bizarre to us ‘normal’ woodwind players, as you have to lift just one finger at a time and replace it before you lift the next one. These older, mouth-blown pipes had more or less died out, but have the more sensible open ended
chanter.

ALEX FISHER, LAKELAND STEP & CLOG DANCER
Alex Fisher the virtuoso Lakeland step & clog dancer, was recording a DVD about the history of clog dancing, and so we were treated to a fascinating trip through time as she described and then demonstrated the various types of dancing.

Lancashire is the natural home of clog dancing, but it was also found in other industrial areas such as Yorkshire, the Midlands and Glasgow. Lakeland step dancing, though, wasn’t traditionally done in clogs. The men did step dancing and turned it
into a very competitive art form. The first World Championships were held in 1880, and won by Dan Leno, who went on, like many others, to lead a career on the music hall stage.

A PACKED HOUSE
The concert was much busier than the museum staff had expected, and the biggest audience they’ve had for years. With over 100 bums on and off seats they soon ran out of chairs. I guess the rain might have driven a few damp tourists inside, but most people seemed to be really enjoying themselves.