CD REVIEW
Reviews of ANÚNA 2002 AKA ANÚNA
February 2002
There are times when listening to Anúna that one imagines having stepped into a timewarp, that magic combination of wispy solo vocal and earthy choral work capable of turning hearts of stone into pure putty. So it is with this album, a new recording of their debut, issued in celebration of 15 years together, and replete with extra tracks. The groups leader Michael McGlynn, has a peculiar talent for blending disparate voices, but it works beautifully, not alone with the choral pieces such as Cormacus Scripsit but also with the different timbres of the female leads. The key to everything is of course the groups total empathy with their material, guitar, violin and percussion accentuating the power of tracks like The Raid, a 900-year-old piece, to devastating effect. With Anúna, the worlds of choral, classical and traditional music intersect with ease, a place where heaven meets the horizon in perfect coalescence.
Oliver Sweeney, rated 11 out of 12 [Hot Press
January 2002
Michael McGlynn and Anúna have become one of the few constants of Irish music, occupying a position long vacant in that place where choral and traditional music intersect. 2002 is another impeccably assembled collection of set pieces, a welcoming gabháil that lays its table as readily for the intensely scriptural and spiritual Cormac Scripsit as the decidedly temporal Sí Do Mhaimeo í. Lead vocals come courtesy largely of Lucy Champion, Kim Lynch and Joanna Fagan, and each contribution is tangibly different. Expected ethereal moods are leavened by the unadorned folk reading of The Sally Gardens by Fagan. The gender balance is somehow more striking in this collection, rooting some 20 tunes and songs in the present, rather than in a stratospheric netherworld to which they were prone to disappear in the past. Replenishing.
Siobhán Long