Mrs. Wilberforce duo welcomes March with music at Gore Place
By MAUREEN KING
It was more lamb than lion escorting March into Gore Place on Sunday afternoon as sunlight streamed through the carriage house’s tall twelve-over-twelve windows for a concert that felt like spring’s first breath.
From a small platform stage in the barnlike room, musician Sean Smith strummed his tenor banjo and declared, “It’s time to come out of confinement.” The full house, fortified with English tea and ginger biscuits, responded with applause for the lively folk duo known as Mrs. Wilberforce, named for the character in the Alec Guinness film “The Ladykillers.”
Framed by golden light, fiddler Kyra Davies, dressed in a handkerchief-hemmed gown the color of claret, played with a touch as smooth as Irish butter. Her bow moved like liquid velvet through jigs and reels that carried the audience from Cape Breton to Ireland and the windswept Shetland Islands. When she switched to viola, her tones turned poignant, filled with aching, lonely moans along the A and E strings.
The affable pair’s set included playful detours “down a coal mine” and “atop a blanket at Woodstock,” where Smith traded his bouzouki for a soulful rendition of Stephen Stills’ “Four and Twenty,” leaving the roomful of toe-tappers quietly spellbound.
