Eileen Ivers & The Cleveland Orchestra @ Severance Hall 12/16/09

A fiddler and a concert violinist are two very different artists, sometimes both enclosed in a single skin but more often distinct.

The fiddler, a vernacular artist, is a popular entertainer. While custom and tradition mark her route, she is expected to include highly individualistic, extended, improvisational and – if she is capable - virtuosic detours, in the midst of familiar tunes. She must utilize cadence and color, discord and bold dynamics, and invite audience interaction, to make her a mainstay in the rough theater of the pub or arena.

The concert violinist, on the other hand, while expected to be a musician of the highest caliber, and a consummate technician, is, for the most part, asked to subsume her individuality, her virtuosity, to the director’s vision for the music that the entire orchestra plays as a unit, as a single organism. She is not expected to stand out – except upon request – but to blend in.

So it was quite interesting and a step outside normal expectations when Celtic fiddler Eileen Ivers and her ensemble, Immigrant Soul, appeared, on Wednesday and Thursday this last week, with the Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall (lit for the holidays with faux stained glass windows overlooking the stage and swirling patterns of color playing against the already elaborate decorations of the proscenium walls. The effect was far from staid).

The Orchestra started things off with a medley of Christmas carols. Then conductor James Feddeck brought on Ivers and her band.

“Hello, Cleveland,” she called to her many fans in the audience, many of them familiar with her through her appearances at the Cleveland Irish Cultural Festival held in Berea each July. After some pro forma praise for beautiful Severance Hall, and Cleveland’s World Class orchestra, she added, “Maybe we’ll make it sound like an Irish pub tonight!”

Which is pretty much what she did.

Ivers and Immigrant Soul started with the up tempo Planxty Loftus Jones, then, after some engaging explanatory intro, went on to what Ivers called a “jiggified” Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring, followed by a medley, Bygone Days, which included The Wren Song (“give us a penny to bury the wren” -- you had to be there). Then came a sing-along version of Holly Tree, and another medley, again with some audience sing-along. Sandwiched between the layers of all this was a whole lot of virtuosic fiddling, virtuosic dancing, accordion, percussion et al., as Ivers and company confidently took the measure of their audience and moved ever more thoroughly into the conventions of the pub, the arena.

The contrast between the vernacular musician, the fiddler, and the classical musician, the violinist, could not have been more obvious. The contrast between the band and the orchestra, could not have been more obvious.

The Orchestra, without a whole lot to do, except occasionally supply background music, looked on, mostly bemused (it seemed to us), as, between numbers Ivers introduced her musicians and flogged her CDs, on sale in the lobby. The audience cheered at the mention of County Mayo and laughed at Ivers’ assertion that her birthplace, the Bronx, is Ireland’s 33rd county. During numbers the audience cheered enthusiastically as Ivers and her musicians took solos and when Irish dancers, Patrick Campbell and Rebecca Brady-Campbell, entered stage left to dance along, adding their own percussion with their flying feet.

Performers who do shtick (!); a vociferous audience that sings along and cheers on cue (!): This is not the serious way things are usually done at Severance Hall (!).

The opening number after intermission was another example of the classical versus vernacular approach, as the Orchestra played Farandole from L’Arlesienne by George Bizet. Like the farandole in Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty, a 19th century composer reached back to a country-dance from the 16th century. Different sections of the Orchestra passed the theme around, much as vernacular musicians take solos; cymbals crash. But the audience sat quietly. An orchestra (any orchestra) does not invite the audience to participate. They are asked only to appreciate.

In the most satisfying collaboration among the two musical groups, Associate Concertmaster Jung-Min Amy Lee joined Ivers and Immigrant Soul in Pachelbel’s Frolics, a freewheeling, interesting arrangement of Pachelbel’s canon in D Major in which Lee seemed to provide the central melodic theme around which Ivers wound and wended her highly individualistic and richly colored voice. We were pleased that Lee also got to get in some licks.

After that it was all Ivers and crew to the end, with the audience lapping it up.

As it happens, we are fans of Eileen Ivers, and we assume that bringing Ivers and Immigrant Soul (excellent musicians all, with impeccable credentials in popular music) did indeed broaden the audience - but it seemed to us a not wholly comfortable experience for the Orchestra, whom we would have like to have seen more intimately participant in the making of the evening’s music.

The Cleveland Orchestra performed with Eileen Ivers and Immigrant Soul at Severance Hall on Wednesday and Thursday evening, Wed 12/16 & Thu 12/17/09.

From Cool Cleveland contributors Elsa Johnson and Victor Lucas. Elsa and Vic are both longtime Clevelanders. Elsa is a landscape designer. She studied ballet as an avocation for 2 decades. Vic has been a dancer and dance teacher for most of his working life, performing in a number of dance companies in NYC and Cleveland. They write about dance as a way to learn more and keep in touch with the dance community. E-mail them at vicnelsaATearthlink.net.