Morag Brown and Lewis Powell-Reid

St Andrew Blackadder Church, North Berwick 15/6/25

Morag Brown fiddle, Lewis Powell-Reid guitar, cittern and accordion

 Bright evening sun filters through St Andrew’s great stained-glass window onto the performance area to make up for the cold, unecclesiastically glaring side-lamps. This is the last in a series of concerts Maureen Morrison has arranged here and at the same time the end of a tour this duo have completed around Scotland.

 They plunge into their first number without preamble—a dramatic composition by Powell-Reid in traditional style, inspired by the tidal peninsula Sunderland Point. Thereafter the programme comprises the duo’s creative arrangements of traditional music— from the Gaidhealtachd down through Scotland to the Border Lands, and some from the Balkans, an area of particular interest to Lewis. Alongside these are expressive, original compositions with Celtic, Balkan and French influences: five from Powell-Reid, and one from Brown—seventy bars for her father on his seventieth birthday.

 Morag then handles most of the introductions, relaxed and chatty. She is the fiddler. She fiddles on both a standard four-string and small five-string; she fiddles sublimely, and from fingertip to toe. In her, musical and kinaesthetic expression seem to fuel each-other. She stands up, swings, sits down; squirms and bounces on her chair; arms, elbows and bright-green be-stockinged legs going like a tee-to-tum.

 If Morag bears her fiddle like a dance-partner, Lewis cradles his instruments like a loving father. He has brought three: a six-string guitar, an elegant mandolin-like cittern and an accordion, coaxing gold from all of them. At times it sounded as if he had an extra right hand tucked away, invisibly plucking out an extra layer of melody.

 Much of the Scots traditional music dates from the 1700s, originally for the pipes, and that can be heard. The duo’s awareness of the musicology underpins their compositional work, adding depth. I particularly liked the languid, weeping elements from the Balkans and Near East, which included ‘Ajda Jano’, a Serbian take on a haunting melody familiar all over the Eastern Med.

 My personal favourite of the evening was Powell-Reid’s most recent composition, ‘The Funambulist’s Walz’. Two of his ancestors were funambulists (tight-rope walkers). This “waltz” had an intriguing five beats to the bar. Passages of staccato violin over his flowing accordion conjured up figures teetering above a rolling river, in a fine French landscape. Morag said afterwards that tonight they had felt on a tightrope themselves as it was almost their first time performing this complex piece. Appropriately, something of this tension came through, enhancing the performance to further enthral the audience. And of course they had not slipped.  

 Rapport between them was strong throughout, with moments where they leaned in, listening as if in skilled improvisation. There were elements of Folk Rock; Morag’s playing put me in mind of Fairport’s Dave Swarbrick.

 All in all, this evening exceeded expectations taking us on trips through time and space— some inspired by distant places, some by distant times, all here and now.