A Little Help From Your Friends: Aoife O’ Donovan, Chris Eldridge and Julian Lage At First Unitarian (Burlington, VT 3/19)

The sheer brilliance that each of these three artist beholds on their own is mind shattering. Last evening the beauty and utterly sublime nature of the performance put on by Aoife solo, Julian and Chris together and then the three of them was pure bliss.

The evening begun with Eldridge and Lage performing quite a few new numbers from their latest collaborative effort “Mount Royal”. The two of them lending their own very unique playing styles to a synergistic explosion of jubilee. Melding distinctive techniques and spirits ranging from jazz to bluegrass to country and everything seemingly under the sun to create a single genre-defying sound emanating out into the hall through the one condenser mic on stage. Virtuosity doesn’t begin to describe the set we got from the two guitar juggernauts last evening and quite possibly the most pleasant surprise was Eldridge leading a few tunes vocally. The guy has an incredible voice that lends itself to singing out on his own or blending with another singers…which we got plenty of later on in the evening.

Aoife O’ Donovan slowly worked her way out onto the stage, witty banter abound she is an enchantress and lights up a room whether she is singing or telling the back story of a song. Weaving her way through songs from her latest release “In The Magic Hour”, a few choice selections off her debut solo release “Fossils” she entranced the crowd under the spell of her songs. There is an intimacy to her music and voice that is unrivaled by any other artist I have seen live. She simply dazzles with each expertly picked note and word that very obviously spills forth from her heart.

After a slew of beautiful solo renditions of songs Chris and Julian joined Aoife on the stage to close the show out with a medley of Aoife’s originals and some truly wonderful covers. One of which was Joanna Newsom’s “Good Intentions Paving Company”. The synergy between the voices of O’ Donovan and Eldridge was magic and the layers and textures that were strewn out on the stage amidst the flurry of notes from Lage and Eldridge in an epic battle of note cascades and the steady finger style guitar that Aoife provides as a backbone…well we all left that church hall a little bit better, with a sense of the beauty that still exists in the world as we headed home for the night. 

 

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