in performance: maura o’connell
Given the bounty of love songs that continue to make up Irish songstress Maura O’Connell’s concert repertoire, it’s amazing she has not dissolved into a complete sentimentalist. Maybe that’s because this fine one hour and 45 minute performance at Cincinnati’s Seton Concert Hall on Jan. 12 allowed her to scatter the thematic perspective a bit.
There were songs of euphoric, gossipy, familial, cautionary and even violent love written by Van Morrison (the show closing encore of Crazy Love), John Gorka (a darkly melodic Blue Chalk), The Beatles (a soft but appropriately wary If I Fell) and Gerry O’Beirne (several, including a gentle remembrance of O’Connell’s native County Clare, The Shades of Gloria).
As fascinating as this emotional fragmentation was, the show didn’t spiral into a sentimental sinkhole because O’Connell’s confident vocal command never allowed it to. Her vocals were full of enough unadorned and unforced emotive detail that love ballads, as well as more despondent heartache tunes, were sold without theatrically inclined vocal tricks. Her only assistance came from longtime guitarist John Mock and bassist/harmony singer Don Johnson.
Appealing as the love notes were, the show’s most arresting moments came when O’Connell shifted gears to perform Holly Near’s Hay Una Mujer Desaparecida, a worldly lament for murdered and missing Chileans under Junta-led rule. Sung almost entirely in a capella Spanish, it conjured a chill that registered swiftly with a very different part of the heart altogether.
I am a native Kentuckian and freelance journalist who has been writing about contemporary music for the Lexington Herald-Leader since 1980. I have not a lick of honest musical talent myself, just a pair of appreciative ears for jazz, folk, blues, bluegrass, Americana, soul, Celtic, Cajun, chamber, worldbeat, nearly every form of rock 'n' roll imaginable and, when pressed, the occasional tango and polka.
