Based in Portland, Oregon, Elizabeth Nicholson & Stringed Migration are an acoustic band with a repertoire of mostly Irish and Scottish traditional material. Though (so I judge from photographs) a young woman, Nicholson is already a formidably skilled harpist and a striking vocalist besides. She's surrounded herself with four comparably gifted musicians (fiddle, guitars, pipes, percussion, bass) with experience in a range of genres, including rock, jazz, classical, Appalachian and Middle Eastern.

Celtic sounds, however, are very much at the forefront, with others incorporated with charming, unforced ease. Though the playing and the arrangements are sophisticated and modern, they don't feel that way, which I mean as flattery. The consistent excellence notwithstanding, nothing showy is happening here, and the band seems at once to be floating outside time while yet rooted firmly in place. As the best bluegrass bands do, the finest Celtic ensembles -- happily for all of us who love the music -- never run short of creative approaches to what are in prosaic truth a finite store of ideas. Of course, the longer this goes on, the higher the level of technical excellence and musical imagination required. That's not a problem here; in Fly Not Yet, Nicholson and company achieve the desired, if in lesser hands elusive, feat of feeling both familiar and fresh.

The line-up consists of instrumentals and songs in approximately equal measure. The latter comprise, with a couple of exceptions, classic Scots ballads from the Child canon: "The Unquiet Grave," "Lord Thomas" and "The Dewey Dens of Yarrow," performed with the sort of resonance that separates masters from neophytes. Ballad singing, like blues singing, is a whole lot more demanding than it looks. My personal favorite vocal cut, however, is the title piece, with lyrics by the 19th-century Irish poet Thomas Moore set to an air ("Planxty Hugh Kelly") associated with 17th-century Irish harper Turlough O'Carolan.

Among the instrumentals, the traditional Italian harp piece "La Botta" and an old Swedish fiddle tune identified simply as "Waltz from Orsa" join in exquisite medley. A Lebanese melody shows up as an intro to "Unquiet Grave," and the klezmer "Romanian Hora" shares medley duty with "Galway Bay" (not to be confused with the song of the same name). Fly Not Yet, let us hope, is just Stringed Migration's first flight.

[ visit the artist's website ]