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Review: Altan has crowd stomping, clappingSaturday, March 13, 2010By Geraldine FreedmanTROY — The celebrated Irish traditional band Altan played Friday night at the Troy SavingsBank Music Hall in a pre-St. Patrick’s Day concert that thrilled a large crowd filled with adevoted following. The concert, which was part of an almost four-week U.S. tour, marked theband’s 25th anniversary.Fiddler/vocalist and co-founder Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh, fiddler Ciaran Tourish, bouzouki playerCiaran Curran, accordionist Dermot Byrne and guitarist/vocalist Daithi Sproule, who is the onlyband member who lives in America, have accumulated high honors over the years ranging fromhaving an official Irish postage stamp and making very successful world tours to playing forpresidents and selling thousands of recordings. The fame is well deserved.Based just on Friday night’s performance, the band produced a robust sound with energy levelsthat never slackened. The band’s high level of technical expertise and the players’ delightfullythick brogue allowed them to create an illusory atmosphere redolent of the best Irish pubs.Many of the tunes they played came from Donegal — even Altan is the name of a mysteriouslake behind Errigal Mountain in Donegal. Some tunes band members wrote. Reels and jigspredominated with their traditional style of repetitive motifs that tend to hypnotize before they allsuddenly end. Sometimes they started slowly and then picked up steam and volume. This causedaudience members to stamp their feet and clap their hands in time. Most tunes, especially thevery quick ones, got delighted whoops and loud applause. These instrumentals included“Highland Man,” “Cliffs of Glen,” “Old Cuffe Street,” “Silver Slipper,” “The Roseville” and“Danny Meehans.”When Mhaonaigh sang, she told funny anecdotes as to where she found the song. Althougheveryone was miked, Mhaonaigh managed to alter the quality of her voice to suit the songs,which were all strophic (different lyrics, same music) and often in Gaelic. For “As I Roved Out,”her voice was a light soprano. In “A Love Song,” it was like a dramatic clarion. Her “I Wish MyLove Was a Red, Red Rose” with Sproule was a sweet ballad. Sproule also sang a few, which hewrote. They were sunny with discernible melodies filagreed with traditional ornamentation.In the second half, they opened with “Is the Big Man Within?” and “Tilly Finn’s” in whichByrne was especially hot. “Dark Haired Lass” got audience members dancing in the aisles.“Come ye by Atholl” was followed with each member taking a solo. Byrne’s and Mhaonaigh’ssolos got wild applause.The show ended with several reels in which sparks flew, followed by a fast song for an encore.