Genre: Pop/Rock
Members: Joanna Hogg (vocals, piano, keyboard), Dave Bainbridge (guitars, keyboards, bouzouki, vocals), Troy Donockley (pipes, whistles, guitars, bouzouki, harmonium, vocals), Phil Barker (bass), Frank Van Essen (drums, percussion, violins, vocals)
For fans of: Clannad, Genesis, Yes, Enya
Label: Forefront Records

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Only time will tell just how important a year 1996 was for Iona. The band's superb fourth album, Journey Into the Morn, was released to such critical acclaim that it was listed among the top five folk albums in Q magazine's Year End Review and even more importantly gained a berth in their Top 50 Albums of the Year list where they were described as "an exhilarating contemporary folk act, able to press traditional instruments convincingly into service alongside their electric counterparts." Best known for their live performances, Iona played a series of concerts at the end of 1996 that were recorded for this, their first live album.

Running almost two hours, Heaven's Bright Sun is a musical tour de force. The band have taken tracks from each of their four studio albums and breathed new life into them. There's a new energy in the music. The sound is at one and the same time more sinuous and more sinewy; more fluid yet more powerful. To quote Q again, "rarely has the Celtic thing been given so many welcome twists, or played with such conviction." The current lineup of Dave Bainbridge (guitars/keyboards), Joanne Hogg (vocals/acoustic guitar/keyboards), Phil Barker (bass), Mike Haughton (saxophones/flutes/whistles), Troy Donockley (whistles/uillean pipes/guitars), and Terl Bryant (more percussion instruments than you could shake a rainstick at) blends superbly well. There is such a clarity to the sound that it is hard to believe it's not a studio recording.

Clearly, Heaven's Bright Sun is about glorifying God through the music and lyrics as the spoken introductions and on-stage conversations are kept to a minimum. Joanne describes her first visit to "The Island" (Lindisfarne) and recalls how she first heard her sister sing "I Will Give My Love An Apple"—one of the new songs on the album—at a school concert. The song is a traditional folk song and the Iona arrangement starts with Joanne's plaintive voice singing the beautiful melody. The other "new" track is a collection of "Reels"—"The Mountain Road/The Ivy Leaf/The Hunter's Purse/Rip the Callico/The Ivy Leaf (Reprise)"—which have long been concert favorites. If the musical dexterity of the rest of the album is something to wonder at, then the speed of some of these passages is almost beyond belief—especially the duets and trios between Bainbridge, Donockley, and Haughton.

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