Up She Flew

In the near-decade since her solo debut, 2009's The Open Road, New York-born, Galway-based flautist Steph Geremia has immersed herself in the music of her adopted home. The result, on the evidence of her recommendable second album, is a vivid blending of New World energy with the Old World vibrancy of North Connaught, Sligo and Leitrim that sounds wholly, often blissfully, contemporary. It's an album full of surprises, not least Geremia's own sultry, soulful soprano saxophone accompaniment on Joe Liddy's ‘Moon Man’ and her gorgeously wispy vocals (a feature of her long collaboration with the Alan Kelly Gang) on ‘Path Across the Ocean’. There's a thrilling sense of experimentation and a cross-fertilising of styles in Geremia's own accomplished arrangements, leading to subtle and nuanced playing that flares into moments of bright, sky-blue poetry. Surrounding herself with a team of crack musicians, she proves a formidable ensemble player, providing passages of silvery, lyrical brilliance lifted by superb breath control and dexterous, dancing fingerwork. A deserved mention too for Jim Higgin's bodhrán and percussion, Seamie O'Dowd's guitar and bouzouki lute, Ben Gunnery's fiddle and co-producer Donal O'Connor's keys.