St. Matthews Church Hall, Rainham, Kent – 9 July 2011

[BRC]

I have attended a number of Gordon Giltrap concerts over the years and on each occasion have introduced at least one new fan to his music each time.

This concert was a little different for me for personal reasons, but also the first time I have seen and heard Gordon in a smaller setting. Another difference was that the audience was made up, largely, of people who had probably never heard, knowingly, Gordon’s music before and, for certain, quite a high number of the 140 audience members may never even have heard of Gordon before. I know, unbelievable, but true.

Gordon’s set up consisted of an array of guitars from the Vintage GG signature collection of 6 and 12 strings, together with the ‘baby Rob Armstrong’ and Fylde guitars. The amplification was provided by Gordon’s portable Yamaha system together with the customary set-up of effects box, loop station and other gizmos.

Gordon introduced himself with his usual self-effacing humour and established an instant rapport with the audience, particularly with reference to the sausage and chip supper to be served in the interval and the importance of his not running overtime past 20:30 to avoid the wrath of the ‘sausage man’. The opening number of ’A Dublin Day’ with its Celtic influence cemented that rapport. I won’t run through the set in it’s entirety but suffice to say that finishing the first session with ‘The Dodo’s Dream’ was a masterstroke, and clearly from the rapturous applause that followed, any lingering doubters about Gordon’s music and guitar virtuosity (how could there be) were truly captured and would have forgiven him had they had to forgo the ‘sausage & chip supper’.

I did a straw poll at the interval of a dozen or so people who I knew had not heard Gordon’s music previously and received a unanimous response of ‘excellent, brilliant’.

Gordon started the second session with reference to the ‘chippy’ atmosphere that now pervaded the hall and endeared him further with his comments on his affinity with Kent and very tongue in cheek alluding to certain holiday islands nor far away. Given that the majority of the audience were, shall we say, mature in age many asides and alluding to his time spent in Kent were well judged and well received in the context of their local knowledge.

The concert, sadly, had to come to end and Gordon finished with a specially dedicated version of ‘Lucifer’s Cage’. A bold move when taking into account that St. Matthews Church is annexed to the hall – fortunately he forgot to actually name the piece to the audience and no seismic rumblings were heard, just more enthusiastic and rapturous applause.

I admit to being biased when it comes to Gordon’s music so the measure is how others see and hear his performances. Those I spoke to were effusive about the ‘brilliant’ concert and performance and that they found Gordon so engaging and down to earth. One person, when I asked what they thought, told me they were really not very keen on guitar music but they thought the concert had been very, very good. Praise indeed!

Oh, by the way, not only was Gordon the performer he was also the sound engineer and general factotum for the evening.
Brad Carter

[GORDON]

Brad.

It was a pleasure to dedicate the evening to someone who was obviously a VERY special person.

Thankyou for that lovely posting and for taking out the time to do so, I really do appreciate it sir.

Be Well.

G