Rua Macmillan Trio

WINNER of the Young Trad Musician of the Year Award 2009, Nairn’s latest fiddle star Rua Macmillan should be set to follow in the footsteps of so many of his fellow award winners who have forged strong careers in the business, including local hero/ine, Anna Massie.

UNDOUBTEDLY he has the ability – his high-speed playing is astonishing, laden with apparently effortless trills and ornaments. His eponymous trio includes the redoubtable Tia Fyles from Oban, a guitarist whose solid talent is reminiscent of the young Massie and Adam Brown from Cambridge whose mastery of bodhran is astonishing. So here we have three precocious virtuosi. What could possibly go wrong?



Rua Macmillan Trio


Somehow, the first half of the evening is curiously unsatisfying. The most memorable moments are Brown’s jawdropping bodhran solo, Macmillan’s slow air ‘Halves’, where Boris the bass fiddle and plain, unadorned playing create magic, and a set of tunes from Macmillan’s tutor, the legendary Lochaber fiddler Aonghas Grant.

Partly to blame may be the guitar having been set unbalancingly high in the mix and a tendency to have all three instruments playing nearly all the time – compare, and contrast, Liz Carroll and John Doyle. There’s also the choice of material; it is not enough to structure and play one set well, the show has to be paced like a play and what works in a village hall doesn’t always translate to a more formal venue. Playing for the first time in a hometown professional venue with one’s entire family in the audience must be at the least slightly intimidating, too.

The sound seems to be slightly better at the start of the second half and all three performers have relaxed. The first set comprises two sizzling Macmillan-composed tunes, ‘Hard Core Prawn’ and ‘Bloody Tia Maria’, and then things really catch fire with some sets of reels, before Macmillan calms it down with an exquisitely beautiful lullaby learned at his granny’s knee.

More reels follow with flashes of pure brilliance, particularly on that fine staple of the modern traditional repertoire, the Gordon Duncan tune ‘Jock Brown’s 70th’, paired here with Jay Unger’s ‘Vladimir’s Steamboat’, and the encores are greeted with uproarious applause.

© Jennie Macfie, 2012
- Northings

This thoroughly enjoyable instrumental album from the recipient of the BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year Award 2009, reveals the work of a musician who is unafraid to mix the traditional with the contemporary, spiced up with generous helpings of original material, with an equal measure of energy, drive and passion. Whether performing within the ranks of the popular Paul McKenna Band or muckling about with the Muckle Loons, Ruairidh 'Rua' Macmillan has recently taken his musical prowess further a field and to wider audiences, performing for example at last year's Cambridge Folk Festival and the St Louis Highland Games.




Originally from Nairn, in the Scottish Highlands, Macmillan graduated with a B.A. (Honours) in Scottish Music from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in 2008 and has since toured extensively throughout Europe and the U.S., picking up accolades and peer praise along the way, from the likes of ex-Battlefield Band multi-instrumentalist Brian McNeill, who also makes an appearance on this album. Enlisting the assistance of two bright young musicians, Bodega's Tia Fyles on Guitar and Adam Brown on Bodhran, Macmillan's debut album showcases a tightly intuitive ensemble, augmented by Alasdair MacLeod on drums and the aforementioned Brian McNeill on concertina and bouzouki.



From the opener, Traditionally Incorrect, the traditional, the contemporary and the original are fearlessly fused to reveal a very contemporary take on ancient music. The mysteriously entitled Ooh Pierre! also shows a remarkable aptitude for arrangement. Those who were present to see Rua's trio thrash it out at the BBC Radio Scotland Young Musician Awards in Coulter in 2009, will already have some idea of what to expect from this and other pieces on TYRO.




That trio's first efforts at arrangement can be found in the set known as Kitchen Criminals, where Macmillan and McKay's percussive composition is seamlessly coupled with Donald Shaw's Ornette's Trip to Belfast and the traditional Breton tune Cape Breton Puirt. Macmillan's more sensitive treatment in the art of fiddle playing can be found in his own composition Harv's, written for Orkney fiddler Kristan Harvey and Bidh Clann Ulaidh, the traditional tune used effectively to convince the BBC judging panel that he was a crucial contender and a worthy winner at the awards.




In the true sense of a living tradition, this music continues to be passed down through the generations, in Rua's case, benefitting enormously from the teaching of Bruce MacGregor and Aonghas Grant Snr., and through Macmillan's playing, goes directly to the next generation of traditional musicians who now attend his tutorials and workshops.




Allan Wilkinson

Northern Sky - Northern Sky

Rua MacMillan "Tyro"
Label: Greentrax; No.CDTRAX346; 2010
See also the German
review in this issue
It was only a matter of time for this stunning first solo album of Rua MacMillan to be recorded - Rua's outstanding fiddle skills have been already in the centre of the sound of the superb Paul McKenna Band, whose debut "Between Two Worlds" caused a stir not only in FolkWorld (FW#38).
"tyro" is one of those fiddle albums that stands out because not only is the playing technically perfect, but the fiddle playing has this certain something - it has soul and personality and warmth. Suitably and excitingly accompanied by Tia Files on Guitar and Adam Brown on Bodhran, and joined on some tunes by Alasdair MacLeod on drums, Lorne MacDougall on pipes and whistles and Brian McNeill on bouzouki and concertina, the CD has a rounded folk sound, making it very appealing listening. The tunes are a mix of traditionals, contemporaries and Rua McMillan compositions. Being produced by Brian McNeill gives another hint that this has to be an excellent album. This is an impressive album that shows again that the next generation of Scottish folk musicians is well on the way to make their mark on the international folk music scene.
www.greentrax.com
Michael Moll - Folk World

What an assured and brilliant debut this is. Rua Macmillan was awarded the BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year in 2009, and studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. The highlander from Nairn starts with a remarkable flourish as ‘Traditionally Incorrect’ kicks off, before ‘The Crooked Horn’ allows Macmillan to fly circles round the figures of guitarist Tia Files’ solid rhythmic backing. Then a driving rhythm with Alasdair Macleod on drums lights up ‘The Chancer’, a tune picked up from a nightclub in Dumfries following the Trad Awards. The closing title-tune of this opening salvo is reminiscent of the vintage play between Thompson and Swarbrick in early Fairport. It’s a fabulous opening – featuring brilliant traditional techniques bending into new shapes.

That initial rush is kept up more or less throughout. We get quicksilver jigs – the traditional ‘Donnie McGregor’s’ and two tunes from Allan Henderson and Jerry Holland, while further down the line the lullaby ‘Bidh Clann Ulaidh’ (the tune which won him his 2009 Young Traditional Musician of the Year award) sweeps away any competition. This is an album that could well be garnering Rua Macmillan with yet more awards in the not too distant future.

Tim Cumming - Songlines