New Liz Carroll Album Throws Listeners For A Loop

By archive-Earle-Hitchner

May 2, 2000 / 1:32 AM

Irish fiddler Liz Carroll, whose most recent solo recording was in 1988, has broken her lengthy solo silence with a new Green Linnet recording, Lost in the Loop.

Carroll has scheduled a number of concerts, including an appearance at Washington, D.C.'s Kennedy Center as part of the two-week "Island: Arts From Ireland" festival. She performs on May 15 with the cream of America's Irish musicians: Philadelphia's Mick Moloney, Boston's Joe Derrane, New York's Andy McGann and Jack Coen, and fellow Chicagoan Joe Shannon.

"Liz is one of my all-time favorite fiddlers," said Lost in the Loop's producer, Seamus Egan, a founding member of the acclaimed band Solas.

Liz Carroll's music embodies taste, touch and tenacity, all of which are in evidence on Loop's blistering opening track, "Sevens/Michael Kennedy's/The Cup of Tea." She wrote the first reel in that medley for Mark Howard, director of the Trinity Irish Dancer Company, an award-winning Irish step-dancing school in the Midwest. "He asked if I could come up with a really flashy tune for his dancers," Carroll recalled, "and I made one up then and there."

As much satisfaction as that spur-of-the-moment original gave her — 13 of the album's 25 tunes are her own — Carroll takes equal pride in the freshness she brought to standards. "My version of 'The Cup of Tea' is completely new," she said. "And I don't know if anyone will recognize my 'Old Maid of Galway.' "

Freedom Within Tradition

Nowhere is her freedom-within-structure approach more realized than in "The Silver Spear/The Earl's Chair/The Musical Priest." Carroll's febrile bowing is breathtaking, a model of rolls and triplets executed in fleet, articulate clusters. She sounds almost possessed, yet not once does she lose sight of those traditional reels' melodies in one of the more exhilarating Irish fiddle tracks ever recorded.

Much of Carroll's grounding in Irish traditional music came from her Offaly-born father, Kevin, who played the accordion and inspired his daughter to do the same. A few years later, she switched to the violin and took classical piano and violin lessons in parochial school. "But my mom told me it was easier to carry a fiddle around than a piano, so I switched," she said.

On The Road To 'Liz Carroll Day'

Carroll's fiddle progress was rapid. She won the all-Ireland junior fiddle championship in 1974 and the following year, at just 18, she became the second American to win the coveted all-Ireland senior fiddle championship.

In 1977, she recorded her first album, Kiss Me Kate, with button accordionist Tommy Maguire and pianist Jerry Wallace. A year later, she made her first solo album, A Friend Indeed, with pianist friend Marty Fahey. Five of the tunes on that recording were hers. Since age 9, when she composed her first reel, Carroll has written a staggering 170 tunes. "They're all transcribed, but I've recorded only a fragment of them," she admitted. "I have to put out a book someday."

Until that time, lovers of top-tier Irish fiddling and tasty tunesmithing will have to content themselves with Carroll's other albums, including Liz Carroll (1988) and two recordings as part of the trio Trian that serve up 10 of her compositions. Those albums, Trian (1992) and Trian II (1995), feature Billy McComiskey on button accordion and Altan's Daithi Sproule on guitar and vocals. Her tunes also can be heard on albums by Donegal-born fiddler Liz Doherty, England's the Poozies, and America's Solas, among many other Irish groups.

In recognition of her achievements as a fiddler, composer and teacher of Irish music, Liz Carroll has received two honors, one federal the other local. In 1994 the National Endowment for the Arts awarded her a prestigious National Heritage Fellowship. And Chicago's mayor proclaimed Sept. 18, 1999, one day before her 43rd birthday, "Liz Carroll Day."

Carroll remains modest about these accolades. "Of course they're flattering," she said. "But I think many other musicians are just as deserving. Besides, I couldn't get a big head about 'Liz Carroll Day.' That night at a bar I kidded into a microphone, 'It's my day, and I can do what I want.' Then another musician yelled out, 'Hey, Liz, it's 10 after 12. It's over, baby. It's over.' "

Not by a long shot. Liz Carroll is back with a vengeance.

Liz Carroll tour dates:

May 12; New York, N.Y.; The Blarney Star (with Solas guitarist John Doyle)

May 14; Southport, Conn.; Pequot Library (with John Doyle)

May 15; Washington, D.C.; Terrace Theater, Kennedy Center

June 24; Lafayette, Ind.; Old Time Fiddlers Gathering

July 3; Gainsborough, England; Trinity Arts Centre

July 4; Glasgow, Scotland; Cottier Theatre

July 5; Manchester, England; Band on the Wall

July 6; Birmingham, England; Irish Centre

July 7; Oxford, England; Roots.net

July 8; London, England; Hammersmith Irish Centre