Robert Burns Celebrated in Redpath’s Songs

Attending a concert by Scottish singer Jean Redpath is like sharing a warm, entertaining evening with a witty aunt--one who knows all the old songs and revels in adding a bawdy verse or a rowdy tale.

Redpath’s performance Saturday night at the elegant Huntington Library in San Marino was a commemoration of the centenary of the death of Robert Burns. “And isn’t it just like the Scots,” she said, with a sly grin, “to be celebratin’ the man’s death instead of his birth?”

In fact, except for the last portion of the program, Redpath’s mixture of songs, history and stand-up comedy was an affectionate acknowledgment, not just of Burns, but of all Scottish culture. She sang familiar tunes and obscure ballads, bantering with her listeners, and reflected on the stoic but lovable qualities of the Scottish character.

Redpath’s voice, a rich-timbred, flexible instrument that is as at home with a country song and French chanson as it is with her beloved Scottish pieces, sounded in prime form, even more expressive than it was in her early Greenwich Village folk years.

The concert was the highlight of the Los Angeles Burns Club’s yearlong celebration of the great Scottish poet. So it was fortunate--once Redpath launched into the only slow part of her program, an extended rendering of works from the Burns catalog--that the audience included a healthy representation of Scot-speaking, kilt-wearing, Burns devotees.