Two bands with unusual mixtures of instruments and two band names with a mystical feel, No Snakes in Heaven from Munich and Maggie Sand and Sandragon from London were at the Hinterhalt on Thursday evening.
Gelting - It was no dusty folk music and definitely not the folk of yesterday that was heard in the arts centre. BSC Music's proprietor and promoter of the evening made an observation on the music scene," There is a return to the roots in music and here we have a good example".
 
In the second part of the concert the musical journey moved from today back to the times of the alchemists with Maggie Sand, a cosmopolitan born in Mexico at home in the world, a multi instrumentalist with seven languages. With her project Sandragon she experiments and mixes almost magically different styles of music. She draws from many sources, a little from the Celtic, a dash of Medieval, a drop from English, French and Spanish folk and stirs the elixir until a special sound is formed. Helping her are the bassist and percussionist Will Hughes, Mark Powell with an assortment of string instruments and Stephen Clark with a table full of wind instruments.

The audience at the Hinterhalt were allowed a taste of the brew. With her trancendental high voice Maggie told stories of a magical time. She accompanied herself on a table harmonium, a box with a door as bellows. Everyone on stage was constantly changing instrument. Clark sometimes used a whistle, a flute, a euphonium, a tiny bamboo ocarina and finally the raucus mirleton. Mark Powell didn't stay on guitar, he played mandola and hurdy gurdy. The audience were impressed by over two hours of musical narrative.

Andrea Weber, Isar Loisachbote

http://www.netrhythms.com/reviewss.html#maggie

Maggie Sand & Sandragon - Susie Fair (WildGoose Studios)

Maggie, an attractive-voiced singer, has already released three solo albums in Germany (two in collaboration with fellow-musician Mark Powell), and for her fourth she brings an unusual new flavour to the illustrious WildGoose menu.

Maggie's special musical gift is the creative blending of English traditional songs with the stance, gait and instrumentation of medieval and renaissance-era music. This description may lead you to expect something like Anthems In Eden, with a hint of Amazing Blondel perchance, but what you hear on this disc probably has more of a kinship with the modern-day minstrelsy of, say, Pint & Dale or Maddy Prior and her Carnival Band than the more rarefied Shirley & Dolly intensity or the experimental Gryphon edge.

Maggie and her musicians (playing hurdy gurdy, recorders, crumhorns, flute, harmonium, mandola, cittern, guitar, bouzouki and percussion) together make a predictedly bright, lively and busy sound, which, in consort with its typically hi-energy dance-bedecked treatments (interposing saltarello, estampie or jig as appropriate), will by its very nature suit some songs better than others. For example, The Banks Of Sweet Mossom and Cob-A-Coaling are irresistible, as are the disc's two items of French origin (although Maggie's a bit naughty sneaking a snatch of Grieg into the nonsense song À La Porte Au Palais!)

What may count as a stumbling block for some listeners (I run the risk of generalisation here, but it's not a criticism) is that Maggie's musical aesthetic tends sometimes to make her interpretations feel more setting-driven than text-driven, the words being at the service of the musical arrangement and idiom rather than the other way round. The brightness of the settings, with their sometimes stylised dance-like textures and tempos, can give a false impression of insubstantiality which belies the thoughtfulness of Maggie's interpretations, and these can seem unduly detached. Rigs Of The Time might be judged too jolly for its message.

Having said that, Maggie employs a more restrained and sombre instrumental complement for Bushes And Briars, while her trouvère-ballad-style treatment of Rosebud In June is not inappropriate (although on the latter, along with If I Were A Blackbird, Maggie might appear to mildly over-indulge her ornamentation skills).

In all, Maggie has produced a stylish, entertaining and fresh-sounding record that provides an interesting twist on the interpretation and performance of traditional song. The key is to acknowledge and celebrate its differences from the standard folk approaches to this material, and on those terms I found myself readily warming to the charms of Maggie and her Sandragon consort (Mark Powell, Malcolm Bennett and Anthar Kharana, with guests Will Summers and Will Hughes).

www.wildgoose.co.uk
 
David Kidman May 2009