The Green House
Nova Scotia Kitchen Party
Canada
Since becoming passionate about Irish music in the early 1970s Grey Larsen has excelled on the Irish flute and also found time to master the tin whistle and concertina. I first became enamoured with his music after listening to his award winning CD collaboration with Quebecois singer/guitarist Andre Marchand entitled The Orange Tree. Larsen's partner in crime on The Green House, guitarist/percussionist Paddy League, wasn't even around when Larsen first became enamored with Irish music. Despite his youth, League has made quite a name for himself over the last few years having been featured as a percussionist on over two dozen albums including recent releases by Susan McKeown, John Whelan, Mick Moloney, Bonnie Rideout, and Connie Dover.
The Green House is essentially a recording featuring Larsen's lilting flute, whistle and concertina accompanied by League's percussion and guitar. Larsen's pace is unhurried and allows the true beauty of each individual tune to unfold. His deliberately slow B-flat version of The Wind that Shakes the Barley and unhurried version of O'Carolan's Draught are just wonderful. Along the way Larsen also clearly came to understand the deep importance of the roots of Irish music. He illustrates his reverence for those roots with as fully fleshed out set of liner notes as I've seen in some time and three bonus tracks from his musical mentor melodeon player Michael J. Kennedy. I found the context provided by Kennedy's interviews particularly refreshing and hope it becomes standard practice. Amongst lovers of Irish music The Green House and the coupling of Larsen and League will rightly receive comparisons to Clare fiddler Martin Hayes and his musical partnership with guitarist Dennis Cahill. If I had both thumbs The Green House would certainly have them standing upright.