Elsa Jean McTaggart, Palace Theatre Studio
IT WAS like your own private gig, with a few friends invited along.
Yes, just ten of us sat down to what turned out to be one of the highlights of the year in the upstairs Studio at the Palace Theatre.
On stage was the multi-instrumentalist Elsa Jean McTaggart, accompanied by her husband Gary Lister on keyboards, telling her remarkable story, the story of a life lived, literally, on the edge.
It was a story that deserved to be heard too, and one that Rubicon Leisure, the company running the Palace, should have been shouting about from the rooftops.
Born in 1977, Elsa McTaggart grew up on a hillside in Perthshire, one of 11 children of parents who were bitten by religion.
Interspersing her story with songs, Elsa described a happy childhood in Perthshire, although it was plain the family lived on the margins, and one song, describing them as the ‘Hallelujah kids’, showed how the rest of society regarded them.
But her mother sang and her father played no end of instruments, and so music was imbued in Elsa from an early age.
From there the family moved to the edges of the UK, her parents to the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides and Elsa, now a student, to Thurso, the last bit of land before Orkney.
Then it was on to Aberystwyth, on the edge of Wales, before settling in County Kerry in Ireland, the heart of Irish music and as far west as you can get in Europe.
Music eventually took her to the fringes of Spain too, to Gran Canaria.
Now back in Britain, she and Gary have also moved to Lewis.
Unsurprisingly, she’s a star on the margins of Europe, a hit in Holland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, and of course, in Scotland.
But no crowds in Redditch, which was a huge shame.
But for us in the audience, we were treated to jigs, reels and polkas, jazz, blues, songs happy and sad, and yes, rap too.
It was a truly great evening and If they ever come by this way again, don’t miss them.
Ross Crawford
