Cara Dillon, Union Chapel

With her impish looks and translucent, near-perfect voice Cara Dillon does well to avoid the “coffee table” epithet.  As a "product" she looks prime for mass marketing into the suburban dinner party circuit. But as an artist she is much better than that.

She’s much too good, for instance, to have become better known simply as folk star Seth Lakeman’s sister-in-law. It's true that she has faultless musical connections but her musical pedigree is also impeccable. Dillon grew up in Derry immersed in whistles and fiddles and at the age of 20 replaced Kate Rusby in the folk super-group, Equation. A year later she went on to form Polar Star with her future husband Sam. It was as “Cara from Polar Star” that she was credited on Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells 3. And there's a quality and innocence about her voice immediately reminiscent of Maggie Reilly, singer of his big hit Moonlight Shadow.

She carries off evocative without being Enya and Celtic without being Clannad In Hill of Thieves, Dillon’s fourth album, she has toned down the poppier elements of her earlier work, delivering a mature, soft and lyrical recording with a sense of mysticism. There’s an inherent danger with commercial Irish folk of veering into blandness, or a kind of  insipid new ageism. But Dillon never does. She carries off evocative without being Enya and Celtic without being Clannad by being true to her folk roots, and through the integrity of the partnership between her voice and her husband Sam’s piano and guitar. The acoustics of the Islington's Union Chapel may not caress or stroke, but they have a crispness and clearness that are able to showcase a pure voice. A grade 2-listed functioning  church complete with an ongoing “save the tower” fund, it’s an eccentric music venue. But it is intimate and welcoming and it has surprising rock’n’roll credentials. Noel Gallagher, Amy Winehouse and U2 have all played here.

Not that there was anything rock’n’roll about this concert. The refreshments largely consisted of tea, Kit Kats, and homemade quiche, and the eclectic audience seemed mainly dressed as if for a slightly formal family occasion. But they were rapt. Hushed. Spellbound by an environment that does greater justice to Dillon’s talent than her recorded work. In the context of a small concert she is truly able to communicate. And with tonight's bias to her newer work she and Lakeman showed they are truly impressive interpreters of traditional Irish folk.

The concert opened with the gentle False, False, with Dillon giving conspiratorial glances to her husband as he stroked out an arpeggiated piano accompaniment. The band, flute, pipes and guitar, joined for Johnny, Lovely, Johnny. Dillon demonstrated her instrumental versatility playing tin whistle on this, one of a series of songs on the general theme of no good men called Johnny, and Dillon’s hometown of Derry. Dillon’s broad musicianship was also showcased with her fiddle playing on a foot-stomping instrumental medley.  But the highlights of the evening were really where her voice was given reign to soar alone. Her reading of She Moves Through The Fair may rival the classic Sandy Denny/ Fairport Convention interpretation and after the prayer-like, a capella Fil Fil A Run O, that the audience gave an audible gasp before showing their appreciation.

In a set that only occasionally strayed from the new album, Dillon may not have shown any great versatility of style, or desire to explore or cross over into new territories, but she did make one thing clear. She’s not folk-lite. After thanking the audience for an hour and a quarter of appreciative silence they replied by clapping, tapping and whistling through the rousing P Stands for Paddy, and wouldn’t stop until she came back for the encore, The Parting Glass. And like much of the Dillon experience it was a gentle thing, a whisper in the breeze. And the Union Chapel breathed it in deeply.