The mill in the title is red, the color red dominates the album cover and the performer boasts a head of red hair. We are definitely into "red for danger" zone here.

Don't worry too much. The only real danger here is that you will exhaust yourself tapping along to this beautifully produced collection of 16 tracks from Sarah Blair.

Opening with the reels "The Crooked Road to Dublin" and "The Crib of Perches," Blair will have anyone with a smidgen of love for traditional Irish music in the palm of her talented hand. The majority of tracks here are traditional, but one that is not is a slow air, beautifully titled "Lament for the Yew Trees." She continues that haunting slow playing with the marvelous "Droimeann Donn Dilis."

Blair shows herself as more than a great player of Irish music by including her own composition, "The Hope Jig," in a lovely set with "The Wandering Minstrel." I dare you to play "Ebb Tide" and " The Ace & Deuce of Pipering" with your feet and fingers tightly set to floor or table.

There may not be any hit songs on here, but the overall album is a treasure to be sought out by lovers of good music and passionate playing.

by Nicky Rossiter
Rambles.NET
3 May 2008

Sarah Blair's Flower of the Red Mill is sweetly unassuming, a purely traditional recording of some three dozen tunes spread over 16 tracks.

Blair's fiddle is at the heart of every tune. She's supported by several other musicians -- Hilari Farrington on harp, Paul Groff on concertina and guitar, Benedict Koehler on the pipes, Colin McCaffrey on guitar and Ben Power on flute -- with whom she plays in a series of duets and trios.

The tunes on the album are each special to Blair for various reasons. Many of them are unfamiliar to me, but it's a great collection: "The Crooked Road to Dublin," "Hurray for the Gallant Tipperary Boys," "The Spailpin's Lament," "The Stone in the Field" and many more. (Of note is her one original composition on the recording, "The Hope Jig," which she wrote while awaiting the arrival of her son Adam from India.)

The New England fiddler plays skillfully and with a great deal of heart. She's not striving for an especially different or unique sound here; she's playing tunes the way they were written, which is of course the foundation of the Celtic tradition. Every fan of Celtic music should have at least a few CDs like this in their collection.

by Tom Knapp
Rambles.NET
14 March 2020