On the back of 42 songs over the five volumes of Songs for Christmas (2006), Indie Folk singer Sufjan Stevens released last month Silver and Gold: Songs for Christmas – Vol. 6-10, adding 58 more songs to the collection. Like the previous opus, Silver and Gold is a miscellany of old carols, hymns and new songs. The […]
Jon Hopkins: Monsters theme
Monsters is a 2010 British independent science fiction film written and directed by Gareth Edwards with a wonderful soundtrack by Jon Hopkins. Monsters chronicles the journey of an American journalist and her fellow citizen from alien-infected and quarantined Mexico to the American border. Filmed on a shoestring budget with only two professional actors, Monsters was entirely […]
Misha Alperin: Her first dance
Two simple chords, a few notes on the piano and a soaring theme on the flugelhorn. Neither classical nor jazz but floating somewhere in between, a slow piece replete with subtle internal rhythms, “Her first dance” is a superb composition by Ukrainian pianist Misha Alperin. Instantly captivating and quintessentially spellbinding. Misha Alperin’s Her First Dance was […]
The Gloaming: Live in Dublin
The Gloaming is a new Irish “supergroup” composed of Sean Nós singer Iarla Ó Lionaird, pianist Thomas Bartlett, hardanger fiddler Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, fiddler Martin Hayes and guitarist Dennis Cahill. A 21mn live track recorded in August 2011 at the National Concert Hall is available to listen to & download on Bandcamp and an album is due in the […]
Martin Hayes and Mary MacNamara: John Naughton’s/Tommy Coen’s
Featuring Martin Hayes on the fiddle and Mary MacNamara on the concertina, this is a vintage clip dating back to 1981 from the RTE TV archives (available on the Come West Along the Road DVD). In the Irish traditional music context, musicians from East Clare tend to play jigs, reels and hornpipes at a slower pace and […]
Sam Jackson: The Gramophone
Sam Jackson is a Dublin based pianist, but when I heard “The Gramophone” for the first time on the radio, I mistook it for what could have been a track from an early recording from the Esbjörn Svensson Trio. Sam Jackson’s music is of the same calibre. “The feeling I have something to say, the great difficulty […]
