EIF: A Great Disordered Heart - Shared Futures
Festivals have the right to attempt new things, and have the right to fail, and critics have a duty to tell the truth about it. So let me begin by saying this was a concept and a concert that in my view failed in its objectives and in its delivery. The title is a quote from Robert Louis Stevenson about dense family life in Edinburgh and in Aidan O’Rourke the curator of this three-part show and film about Irish life and culture in Edinburgh. The show may make more sense when you see them all together and with the film promised, but as a part of it this concert failed to entertain or enlighten.
The concert began with a “performance” by Aine O’Dwyer, replacing Irish folk singer Lisa O’Neill, who was originally scheduled to take part in this concert. Aine O’Dwyer is an Irish composer and performer who specialises in sound-art concepts. What you may ask is that? Well after her performance I’m not sure that I’m any clearer. She began by playing some rather tortured electronic music on a machine that could have been an organ combined with a sound mixer. She interspersed the music with “stories”, a term too strong for the rather loose collection of words she murmured to us, some of which we couldn’t hear because of the discordant music. She concluded her set by walking off the stage leaving the “music” playing and went round the back of the stage to howl to the music. This provoked laughter among the audience not perhaps the objective she was seeking!
The other part of the concert were three musicians from Lau, the well-known folk band. They were greeted with applause, partly I suspect with relief at the departure of the earlier act, but also because there were many Lau fans present, hoping for an upbeat concert to uplift them. Sadly, they didn’t get that either. The group began without an intro, meandering through some tunes and songs without description. They then talked a little about the importance of Irish culture and did sing a nice Irish ballad. However the concert never realised the central perspective of the project to illuminate Irish culture in Edinburgh. As I said earlier it all may make more sense when it’s finished with the film but tonight it was, to put it diplomatically, less than successful. The Festival has to be congratulated on its decision to put traditional music at the centre of its programme and there are some excellent concerts in the programme, but this wasn’t one of them.
