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PRESS REVIEWS
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Review in November ’06 Issue of Hot Press - Written by Sarah McQuaid
With little in the way of fanfare or hoopla, Cork fiddler Edel Sullivan has quietly gone and made the best traditional album I’ve heard all year. Thanks to her classical training, she manages to blend a smooth sweetness of tone with life, swing and spot-on rhythm. It’s as a composer and arranger that she really stands out, though. Her own violin, viola and piano are blended beautifully with contributions from pianist Brid Dunne, guitarists Brian Hanlon and Donncha Moynihan and cellist Ilse deZiah. Several of the lovely original tunes on the album came about as a result of www.musicpresent.com, an online service that allows punters to commission a tune from Edel in honour of a particular individual or event. Something to bear in mind as December 25th looms on the horizon.
NINE POINT FIVE/TEN

Comment in the Folk Column of Hot Press (Nov.’06) - Written by Greg McAteer
It’s the season of CD launches and one of the most intriguing new albums has to be Edel Sullivan’s solo début ‘In The Time Of’ which got a good send off into the big bad world in her native Cork. Anyone who was impressed by the quality of her string arrangements for Ger Wolfe’s The Velvet Earth album is going to be equally impressed here. Playing professionally since her teens – she was in Hank Wedel’s Princes Street – she has never shied away from experimentation and has played with everything from rock bands to Lord of the Dance – all that wealth of experience is beautifully fused in the record.

Review in The Irish Times (November 3rd ‘06) - Written by Siobhan Long
There’s a hint of dilettantism Edel Sullivan’s CD debut, ‘In The Time Of’ that quickly dissipates as the sheer eclecticism of her composing and playing coalesce. Sullivan bears a close kinship to the playing of the West Ocean String Quartet’s Seamus McGuire – her long bowing and her keen ear for the grandeur lurking within small gestures both hinting at a player far longer in the tooth than she is. There’s a baroque quality to the air, Ravi and Aisling’s Wedding, that dissolves seamlessly in the pair of jigs, Off to the Island and Billy Rush’s Own, the trio stitched together with gracious guitar accompaniment. Ilse deZiah’s cello amplifies the classical lines of Red Sky, but this time one that highlights Sullivan’s intuitive relationship with slingshot pianist, Brid Dunne. Spellbinding.
[4/5 stars – A cut above the rest]

Comment in Best of 2006 (Trad.) The Irish Times (Dec. 15th ’06) - Written by Siobhan Long
Some new musicians released traditional albums of impressive vitality………..Sullivan’s In The Time Of came out of nowhere but registered high on trad’s Richter scale, with its uncluttered fiddle lines.

Review in THE IRISH ECHO newspaper, New York City.
(December 13th ‘06) Written By Earle Hitchner Copyright (c) Earle Hitchner. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of author.]
Classically trained musicians are often instructed to play "the right way." But even the most rigorous, meticulously notated classical scores invite stylistic interpretation from soloists. Otherwise, all this martinet conformity would congeal into musical marble.

Nollaig Casey and Winifred Horan use the technical discipline of their classical violin training as a tarmac for the imaginative flights of their Irish traditional fiddling. It is not an easy equilibrium to achieve, and competence alone in each genre does not guarantee success. It's hard for classical violinists to get a limber instinctiveness or a whiff of turf in their Irish traditional fiddling, and it's hard for strict Irish traditional players to bring a classical regimen to their violin work without it sounding forced.

Like Casey and Horan, Cork City's Edel Sullivan has a classical background. She studied classical violin at the Cork School of Music in Ireland and earned a B.A. Honors in Music from Anglia University in England before she took up Irish traditional fiddling as an adult. Also a pianist and violist, Sullivan extended her musical education by earning an M.A. in traditional fiddle performance from the Cork School of Music in 2005.

All this schooling could have left Edel Sullivan's fiddling stiff and sere. But as her self-issued solo debut, "In the Time Of," shows, she brings a back-of-the-pub sensibility to her playing, which is classically pristine yet traditionally pliant. It is the reason why fellow Corkonian Ger Wolfe, a well-regarded singer and songwriter, invited her to appear on four of his solo recordings and why she was invited to tour America with Michael Flatley's "Lord of the Dance."

Edel Sullivan's "In the Time Of" should be sipped, not gulped. Like a fine wine or whiskey, her music often spreads its effects subtly but surely and leaves a palate-pleasing aftertaste.

Her playing of slow airs reflects the precision of her classical training yet remains free of any notational enslavement. "Albyn's Journey," the air preceding "London Winter" and "The Snowy Reel," and "Ravi and Aisling's Wedding Air," which precedes the jigs "Off to the Island" and "Billy Rush's Own," are beautiful and haunting. Sullivan brings the nuances of her own musical thinking to those airs, which become head-and-heart statements of equal appeal to classical and trad fans.

Album co-producer Donncha Moynihan, former member of the Cork-based band Calico, opens with some note-bending, bottleneck-like guitar work in "Climbing the Stairs/The Feakle Reels No. 1 and 2." This medley of a slip jig and reels features fiddle and guitar, and the quick-pulsed playing of the reels by Sullivan and Moynihan especially sparkles. Also skillfully conceived and executed are the jigs "Winnie Hayes/The Flickering Bit." Brid Dunne's piano playing leads off this track, and the combination of joint and alternate melody playing from her piano and Sullivan's fiddle creates a lambent magic.

Edel Sullivan's fiddling can also be muscular and robust, as one of the album's best medleys, "30 Degrees/The Blue Mountain Reel/O'Donoghue's," proves. There she takes the listener on a nearly five-minute journey from an intriguing, miniaturist opening reel flecked with exotica, into a reel wound tighter with fiddle and guitar, to a sly flurry of fiddle, guitar, and Christy Leahy's button accordion in the last reel.

Exotic garnish becomes a full-fledged dish in the album's title track, one of more than two dozen tunes Sullivan wrote and recorded on this CD. Inspired by Sullivan's viewing of "Time of the Gypsies," a 1988 film about a Romany community in former Yugoslavia, "In the Time Of" is Balkan in flavor but hews in rhythm to the time signature of a Kerry polka. The blend of Sullivan's fiddle, Dunne's piano, and Ilse deZiah's cello has a tang all its own.

Composed by Sullivan and Dunne, "Red Sky" is another heady brew of a tune, part-Continental and part-jazz, from those three instrumentalists, while Irish-style polkas are performed outright in "Dan Sullivan's/East of Ballydesmond No. 1 and 2." The first is a traditional tune learned from Liz Carroll's "A Friend Indeed" solo album in 1979, while the latter two original tunes represent Sullivan's nod to the vibrant traditional music of Sliabh Luachra. Aideen Curtin's whistle and Brian Hanlon's guitar mesh well with Sullivan's fiddle to draw out the danceability of all three melodies.

Three more tracks allow Sullivan's vitality as a fiddler to shine in whole or part: "Coast of Austria/Trip to Cullenstown" reels, which combine fiddle and sean-nos stepdancing (courtesy of Suzanne Leahy) and were recorded live in July 2005 in Cork City's Lobby Bar; "The Driveway Slip Jig/Speeding in Beauty"; and "South Mall/Donnybrook Hill" jigs, backed by Barry O'Donavan on guitar.

Two other tunes composed and performed by Sullivan, however, slip into a studied attractiveness, a niceness bereft of heft: "McCarthy's Waltz" and "The Wedding Reel." Despite her ornamentation, the fiddling there is more cerebral, even glacial, and the melodies offer a circularity edging toward colorlessness. Ironically, those are also tracks in which her classical training tends to displace her trad instinct.

But two wobbles amid 13 tracks do not make this an off-balance or shaky CD. Edel Sullivan has unquestionable talent and skill, and both sound snug in this laudable solo album where classical mostly animates, not enervates, trad. In that sense, "In the Time Of" is a rarity to be championed.

PRESS RELEASE

‘In The Time Of’ – Solo Fiddle Album by Edel Sullivan
[Distributed by Claddagh Records, Cat. No. ES001]

Release Date: October 21st 2006

At a time when the standard and execution of Irish traditional music has never been so high, it is becoming more and more rare to chance upon a collection that takes one’s breath away. ‘In The Time Of’, the debut solo album from highly-respected Cork fiddle player Edel Sullivan, is such a collection, an intoxicating blend of new and old music; showcasing Edel’s expressive virtuoso playing style, underpinned by tasteful arrangements featuring leading fellow exponents.

Described by Irish Examiner and Evening Echo music writer Paul Dromey as “an exquisite, compelling and authoritative CD” – if a finer album of traditional music has been released this year, I haven’t heard it”. Launching the album, RTE Lyric FM broadcaster Dr. Evelyn Grant said: “I’m a huge fan of Edel’s versatility and flexibility as a musician, together with her breadth of interest ranging through traditional, classical, music therapy, community music, and composition”.

Edel Sullivan’s art as both musician and arranger have been central to Cork singer/songwriter Ger Wolfe’s last four albums. Reviewing Wolfe’s most recent release ‘The Velvet Earth’ for The Irish Times, Siobhán Long wrote that “it thrived on some sublime string arrangements”.

An instrumental album with fiddle to the fore, the material on ‘In The Time Of’ is largely self-penned by Edel, but also features a Brid Dunne composition as well as a few choice old and new traditional Irish tunes.

Reference to the Irish dance tune tradition is strongly in evidence, with some cracking new reels, jigs and polkas performed with the integrity and skill of an established traditional fiddler. However, Edel also brings her experience of a wide range of musical styles to the music (see Biography) and creates some innovative and exciting arrangements and compositions that contribute further to the long tradition of experimentation in Irish folk music.

In addition to her fiddle playing, Edel adds piano and viola to some of the tracks and is also joined by top-class musicians: Brid Dunne (piano), Ilse deZiah (‘cello), Brian Hanlon (guitar/bodhran), Aideen Curtin (flute), Edel Mc Laughlin (piano accordion), Christy Leahy (box), Donncha Moynihan and Barry O’ Donavan (guitar). The final track, ‘Live in the Lobby’ is an excerpt from one of the last gigs to take place at the renowned Cork venue and features the sean-nos dancing of Suzanne Leahy.

Recorded, mixed and co-produced by Donncha Moynihan, in Cork, ‘In The Time Of’ was recorded between Summer ’05 and Spring ’06. Final mastering was undertaken by Dan Dan Fitzgerald (Mary Black, ‘Other Voices’ etc.).

Highlights include the ethereal string arrangements of Albyn’s Journey and McCarthy’s Waltz, the quirky use of pizzicato to accompany the slip jig of The Aberdeen Set and the tasteful improvised sections of The Flickering Bit and Speeding in Beauly.

In many ways, the title track, ‘In the Time of’, epitomises Edel’s own musical journey. Written by her after seeing ‘Time of the Gypsies’ (dir. E. Kusturica, 1988), a film set amongst the Romany community of former Yugoslavia, it popped out of her head and happened to be in a 2/4 polka-type rhythm. The energy and fire of the trio arrangement (fiddle, cello + piano) shows the influence of the music of Central and Eastern Europe as well as Edel’s own classical violin background, however the polka tradition of Sliabh Luachra is not too far away.

Worth a moment of thought is the fact that the tune-type that became the Irish set-dancing polka travelled from Bohemia (modern-day Czech Republic) in the early 19th Century with migrant dance-masters. We are again living in a ‘Time’ where we welcome people to Ireland from many parts of the world, particularly Central and Eastern Europe – so the circular dance of life continues!

Click here to listen to Audio Extracts from In the Time Of.