EIF music review: Dàna with Ellie Beaton

Dàna, a quartet who emerged from the Royal Conservatoire’s traditional music programme. | Gillie O'Flaherty

MUSIC

Dàna with Ellie Beaton ★★★★

The Hub

A tightly co-ordinated all-female quartet who emerged from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland’s traditional music programme, Dàna – the name is Gaelic for “bold” – delighted the audience at the first of the International Festival’s intimate and eclectic Hub concerts. Energetically plugging their recent debut album, The Deep End, their opening set from it, Ladies, Oh Ladies, celebrated International Women’s Day with a flourish, a delicate intro from Alex Wotherspoon’s keyboard and Laura Penman’s harp launching a purposeful jig on fiddle (Anna Robertson) and whistle (Eleanor Tout) that set the tenor of their set, brisk but lightsome and with well-balanced instrumentation.

Much of the material was their own, often reflecting places visited, ranging from Edinburgh’s Blackford Hill to New Zealand’s Crown mountain range. The former opened as a poised but sprightly hornpipe, while another tune, Shakti, was a harp-led strathspey celebrating the women’s aid organisation.

Their set was complemented by interludes from Aberdeenshire’s Ellie Beaton, whose mellow but powerfully articulate singing opened with a fine Rigs o’ Rye. One melancholic song of her own she sang at the piano wasn’t so convincing, but her Turra Coo gave a possibly bemused international audience a droll lesson in North-East social history.

Jim Gilchrist

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