@michael-marra
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Video footage of Michael Marra's performance at the conclusion of the recent Herald Angel Awards where he sang "O Fellow Man", a song written for Scottish actor Tom Watson. Sadly Tom Watson died recently.
Michael Marra has won a Herald Angel Award for his recent performances at the
Edinburgh Fringe -
Keith Bruce writes in The Herald
"Michael Marra is a songsmith from Dundee, whose craft has been revered for
years, and whose collaboration with dancer and choreographer Frank McConnell was
revived last year and has been presented at the Acoustic Music Centre at St
Bride's as part of the Made in Scotland showcase. On Tuesday, Marra returned to
play a solo concert and showed how he has achieved complete mastery of his
material and his relationship with the audience. A Bank of Scotland Herald Angel
goes to a national treasure."
Full piece at -
http://www.heraldscotland.com/arts-ents/music-features/eyes-on-the-prizes-1.1051
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Cutting a Bohemian figure in beret and black suit, Dundee songsmith Michael Marra brought Saturday’s Bank of Scotland Herald Angels awards presentation to a superb conclusion with a performance of his song O Fellow Man, written for the actor Tom Watson, who died last month.
Marra had received an Angel from this week’s guest presenter, Simon Callow, for his triumphant Fringe appearance at the Acoustic Music Centre. The solo gig had followed a run of performances at the same venue of the revival of A Wee Home From Home, the show he created 20 years ago with dancer and choreographer Frank McConnell and director Gerry Mulgrew. Accepting the award, he told his audience, “I’m as proud as a Dundee man is permitted to be.”
***** - Review by Rob Adams from today's Herald
It may seem strange to talk about new-found confidence when considering a musician who has some 40 years’ experience of treading the boards and a substantial body of recorded work, but the recent flowering of Michael Marra as not just a songwriter of singular gifts but as a performer, indeed entertainer capable of bringing these songs to vivid life has to do with belief in himself and his talent.
They were always brilliantly observed songs but these days, to hear Marra sing of General Grant visiting Dundee with haughty disdain or Dr John laying his voodoo groove on Blairgowrie is to be transported right to the heart of the action and reminded just how many ingenious lines Marra can invoke in one verse.
He sings these lines with fabulous relish in that distinctive foggy growl to his ever-concise piano accompaniments, bringing out every nuance of characterisation, and as a man of persuasive wit, he revels in the Dundonian art of geein’ cheek.
His use of acronyms in the love-in-the-personal-columns mischief of She Said, He Said is superbly funny, his unaccompanied ballad-styled Muggie Sha’ scarily hilarious and if anyone else could have an audience community singing “butchers’ hough and tinkies’ gochles, wha can tell the diff’rence?”, tell me their names.
A by turns mad, touching and historically diverting performance from a true master.
Please note that Michael Marra's gig at Paisley Arts Centre has been rescheduled for the 11 September 2010 at 07:30 pm
Further information available at Paisley Arts Centre Box Office
Michael Marra is back on the road with his "band", Mr McFall's Chamber for four gigs in late August 2010 and early September 2010.
Check out the show dates on the calendar -
Visit Mr Mcfall's Chamber website
Read The Herald's Rob Adams review of a May 2010 gig
Mr McFall's Chamber with Michael Marra
The Queen's Hall, 28th May 2010
Michael Marra’s music has broad horizons. His songs’ subjects roam across Mull and Shetland, over the Canadian prairies, to the Schenectady, New York home of swing-era jazz broadcasting and down into Mexico. But his muse is governed by sound Dundonian principles, including the futility of going in the huff and the folly of vanity.
He was in splendid company here with a McFalls sextet offering strings, musical saw, accordion, harmonium and bandoneon that, between accom¬panying Marra superbly, visited Finland, Argentina and Cuba and captured a Dvorak bagatelle with an uncommon gracefulness that emphasised the setting of Marra’s compelling foggy growl in a chamber music cocoon as a sweet and sour recipe akin to Tom Waits’ Somewhere or One from the Heart.
Some of these songs have a long history of string arrangements but what impressed was the fit of the McFalls’ playing. They were alive to every Marra-esque detail, with eerie saw howls depicting the Yukon in the Lonesome Death of Francis Clarke, a churchy harmonium recalling Monkey Hair’s subject had married a minister and the keyboard picking out a solemn Flooers o’ the Forest for Happed in Mist’s coda.
Occasionally, as on the two Burns songs, The Slave’s Lament and Green Grow the Rashes-o, things became prosaic. But between Marra’s perfectly honed, withering song introductions and Robert McFall’s endearingly bumbling “church notices” there was much entertainment alongside the brilliant song content.
Rob Adams
31st May 2010
Michael Marra has a Edinburgh Festival Fringe gig on 24 August 2010 at 09.00pm.
He is appearing in The Big Room at the Acoustic Music Centre@St Brides Centre.
For ticket and other information visit The Queens Hall Box Office who are handling ticket sales for this event
Hamish has been recorded by the pupils of St John's High School. The recording will raise funds for the school's community enterprise project, with donations also going to United for Kids.
"Hamish the Goalie" will be sung by 6th year pupil Afioe McGuigan-O'Brien with instrumental backing by pupils and staff and also input from songwriter Michael Marra.