Eclectic Company: Ice and Snow

Turns out there were other musical offerings on last month’s cruise that also floated my boat. Did I mention that the Independence of the Seas has an ice skating rink onboard? Thinking about it now, that seems particularly risky — bringing your own iceberg could be seen as asking for it. Of course, that could also be a rabbit’s foot, preventing high seas disaster. I must admit I never for a moment considered skating myself, but the POSSLQ and I did enjoy the ice show, “Strings,” a Las Vegas-style productions with a sketchy plot device — tracing the movements of an Amati violin across time and space beginning in 17th-Century Italy and ending in the modern-day American south.

As the skaters danced, leaping up for triple axels and twirling out of sit spins in about a dozen costume changes, a virtuoso violinist — New Zealander Juliette Primrose — soloed her way through a familiar repertoire of light classical and popular pieces from many European countries and styles, and finally Charlie Daniels’ “Devil Went Down To Georgia.” Later in the week, Primrose joined Ian Millar in the pub for a few fiddle tunes and proved to be as adept a fiddler of Irish traditional songs and improvisations as she is a classical string player. I took home her Gypsy Swing CD of stripped down numbers — a soundtrack for a smoky café — and was transported there.

But the unexpected absolutely top entertainers of the entire voyage gave a performance I nearly missed because the adverts made it sound tacky. Graffiti Classics is the name of an Irish/English string quartet whose impossible-to-describe show is a mix of physical humor, dance, song, and (mostly) classical music performed tautly and flawlessly. Bandleader Cathal O Duill plays upright bass (his bass having missed the boat was replaced by a mini-me electrified version of the big box fiddle on a long spike) and channels Elvis, bass baritone Stephen Kennedy vocal-and-jowl waggles “Flight of the Bumblebee” true-to-tempo (this defies description, find it on youtube and prepare to guffaw), and violinists Emma Blanco and Ruth Elder saw, sing, and cancan their way through a dozen+ numbers that prove the individual parts are as talented and clever as the whole. One incredible moment came when O Duill singing Elvis’s hit “It’s Now Or Never” cross harmonized with Kennedy singing the Italian popular classic, “O Sole Mio.” (Apparently everyone on the ship but me already knew they were the same tune. No wonder I kept blowing the easy music questions of the daily trivia quizzes.) Then O Duill sang an overblown “Danny Boy,” to the razzing of the others behind his back (including bic flicking and an impromptu “Riverdance” in green headgear), and I laughed so hard I nearly wet meself.

The POSSLQ and I carried on into London, where it snowed! At least FOUR INCHES! Which quickly turned to ice with a brisk drop in the temperature that made walking in the wrong shoes adventurous, not to say treacherous, and as it happened, a necessity, because all the buses going our way suddenly changed their destination signs to Not In Service and lurched and slid by all the stops. The previous day, the air had been frozen, but there was blazing sunlight, so we’d ridden the London Eye ferris wheel to see what we could see, which was 360 degrees of 500 years of mixed architecture on both sides of the Thames for miles in each direction. Then Saturday night it was off to Sheila Miller’s folk club, The Cellar Upstairs, these days in a pub behind Euston Station, to hear the glorious voices of the sisters Jane and Amanda Threlfall and the guitar-, banjo- (did I make this up?) and concertina-playing of their foil, Roger Edwards. Our host and my old friend David Winner (whose new book, Al Dente [Simon & Schuster], reveals a quirky history of Rome as tasted through its food and as seen through a brace of popular movies using the city as a backdrop or character, arrived the day we did), and came along to the club for his first time ever (though he’s known Sheila for longer than the 25 years he’s known me). He too fell in love with the Trio Threlfall. Debriefing about their music, we reflected on the number of songs they’d performed that began “As I went walking one morning in May” and how many of the songs were about women deceived by conniving men. Mostly, the songs were woven from their incredibly paired gossamer voices and sensitive accompaniments on various instruments, including bouzouki, viola, guitar and concertina. I might have missed out one or two, because helping carrying cases downstairs at the end of the night, I know we moved at least double those I’ve mentioned. As the snow fell around the pub piling up like wet sugar, the Threlfalls sang “Cold and Haily Night,” which suited perfectly.

There were other musical delights in England, and I and we got to hear some of them. In London, before the POSSLQ left for home, we sat for a small-cast Mikado, enjoying Gilbert & Sullivan sung brilliantly by every voice in the ensemble as they avoided bumping into one another or the set composed of nine red wooden cubes. Their orchestra was a pair of pianists playing four hands on one piano. Absolutely charming. I’d see it again if I could.

Then me for Oxford; after it snowed again (not quite four inches) I visited my old College, and stopped in for a lunchtime recital by graduating tenor Guy Cutting to piano accompaniment by assistant college organist and university music faculty member Steven Grahl. Cutting is a pro of long standing, having begun his singing career at New College as an eight-year-old chorister. Grahl’s playing was attentive and nuanced, despite his subordinate role. Their hour-long program of Couperin, Handel, Haydn, Britten, and Tchaikovsky was almost a religious experience in both senses, performed as it was in the Fourteenth-Century antechapel under the watchful eyes of the Eighteenth-Century Joshua Reynolds stained glass window and the Twentieth-Century Jacob Epstein sculpture of Lazarus. Bravo.