Tonight I went to a concert at the Lowry in Salford featuring four of the world’s greatest guitarists - Martin Carthy, Martin Simpson, Martin Taylor and Juan Martin. Two folk guitarists, one jazz player and one Spanish flamenco player.
The venue is fantastic - a fairly small hall with the best acoustics I have ever heard for a gig - perfect reproduction of the natural sound of the guitars, crisp and balanced and with very little of the boomy reverb you normally experience in anything larger than the tiniest venue.
First up was Martin Carthy, who played a short set of folk tunes and a song from a film. His style is technical in its chord forms and picking patterns, but simple in its sound and melody, and perfectly suited to the music he plays, and his powerful and controlled voice is the definition of English folk music. Martin Taylor played next - an amazingly talented jazz player who can make his guitar sound like a full orchestra. He even made it sound like a steel band at one point. He did a stunning version of “Don’t Know Why” - the song that was made famous by Norah Jones.
Juan Martin was another change in mood and genre, playing very complex and technical flamenco music on his nylon-strung acoustic. His ability to play staggeringly fast flurries of notes but still pick out the melody of the tune impressed me the most about his performance. He was followed by Martin Simpson, who plays bluesy folk music and also threw in a Bob Dylan song. He started with a gorgeous slide guitar piece and played three or four others before inviting the rest of the players back to the stage.
The final part of the show consisted of all four Martins playing together. Initially it sounded a little crowded, but that was because I had been used to listening to solo players all night. I had been very interested to see how the different playing styles of the four guitarists could be made to work together. I quickly acclimatised to the sound and it became obvious that it really did work - rhythmic folk music with flamenco fills and jazz licks played over the top (or varying combinations of these) made a sound unlike anything else. These are four players who are used to performing solo and having to play the parts of a full band on their own. Put them together, and you have a band who all play the same instrument, but are capable of switching between the roles of the rhythm guitar player, lead guitar player, bassist and drummer at will, several times during each song. It’s an amazing sight to watch, and the players clearly enjoyed performing it as much as the audience enjoyed watching.
Overall, this was certainly the best guitar-centric gig I have seen, and I’m already looking forward to watching the Four Martins DVD I bought at the show!
