Mr McFall's Chamber - Birds & Beasts (Music by Martyn Bennett and Fraser Fifield): Martyn Bennett combined the traditional and modern, the local and international. A long-planned collaboration with Mr McFall's Chamber was never realised during Martyn's tragically short lifetime. Robert McFall has put together a programme of his own sympathetic arrangements of Martyn's music, alongside original works by Fraser Fifield, another of Scotland's virtuosic musical innovators.
Mr McFall's Chamber are Robert McFall (violin), Greg Lawson (violin), Brian Schiele (viola) and Su-a Lee (cello) with Fraser Fifield (Border pipes, whistle, Highland pipes, Scottish smallpipes), Rick Standley (bass), Phil Alexander (keyboard), Tom Bancroft (drums, percussion) and James Mackintosh (drums, percussion).
A quintet of classical string players both thinking and playing out of the box, a jazz pianist and two drummers, and a piper with both folk and jazz leanings – it can only be Mr McFall’s. The music is equally eclectic – two compositions by Fraser Fifield (the piper in question), Martyn Bennett’s once lost ‘Piece for string quartet, percussion and Scottish small pipes in C’, and a half dozen arrangements by violinist Robert McFall from Bennett’s music. The McFall’s have a track record in adapting Bennett’s ground-breaking folk-meets-techno experiments for this instrumentation, and it is good to see it now on disc. Tunes from Bothy Culture and Bennett’s stage music for Knives In Hens lend themselves well to the treatment (the later, even more studio-dependent Grit could have been a trickier proposition), and they capture the excitement and vitality of Bennett’s creative thinking in convincing fashion, while Fifield’s fiery ‘The Beast’ is a virtuoso achievement all round.....The List
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