Celtic Connections: Simon Thoumire and David Milligan

Glasgow City Halls Recital Room - 02/02/24

Wheatstone and Steinway are the acme of their respective instruments so it is apposite that they should find expression in master musicians, Simon Thoumire and David Milligan. It is at first hearing an odd combination, the metallic, reedy voice of the concertina set against the sonority of the grand piano, but it works. ‘Mrs Grace Campbell Grierson’, for example, switches the lead melody between the two instruments, before a busy development drops down to a serene close. The tune is one of several that, written by Thoumire and arranged by Milligan from a project entitled ‘Portraits’, offer musical pictures of family members, friends, and colleagues. The pair recorded them last year and they form the main part of their set

The pieces, although influenced by traditional melodies, do not in the main follow the dance tune form but are structurally more adventurous, with sections looping into each other often underpinned by spicy chords, as likely to have been influenced by McCoy Tyner as Violet Tulloch. Dance tunes do form part of the set, however, ranging from strathspeys, reels and hornpipes to wedding tunes from the Basque country, and sometimes, as in the case of ‘The Tipsy Sailor’ set, played at a ferocious velocity.

Such is his command of the idiom that one of Thoumire’s portraits ‘Su-a Lee’s Fiftieth Year’ could have been written by a Gow or a Marshall, which leads one to speculate that he might well be seen in the same light in years to come. 

The pair’s playing got tighter and tighter as the set went on, with the overtones from both instruments melding beautifully, and underlining that however unlikely the combination of instruments, music is music.