REVIEW FROM www.livingtradition.co.uk

With these recordings I find myself on yet another Canadian back catalogue expedition and as so often in the past, it's been time well spent.

Nightingale are based in Vermont but the music they play has travelled from Quebec, Newfoundland, Scandinavia, Cape Breton, France, Ireland and Scotland. The style in which they play allows their chosen material to remain fairly true to its origins whilst picking up a new flavour or a rhythmic hint from "somewheres else". So you will hear a Scottish traditional song, "The Brewer Lad", successfully joined to a Quebecois foot rhythm and a Don Messer tune, "The Popcorn", fitted in during the musical breaks. The many new compositions from members of the band also have a mix of themes and styles underlining the band's many strengths and qualities.

The members of this trio are Keith Murphy, a fine singer both in English and French as well as adding to the mix playing guitar, mandolin, piano and harmonica; Becky Tracy, a fiddle player with an excellent grasp of many styles of playing and a sureness of pitch and tone; Jeremiah McLane who plays piano and piano key accordian to great effect, from the "distant thunder" of the lower notes of the piano accompaniments to some of the most tasteful accordion work I have heard in a long while.