Spellbinding Music
Genre-bending & spine-tingling
Since his professional solo début in the early 1990s, County Clare born Irish musician Martin Hayes has not only recharged the fiddle tradition on the national and international stage, he has also graced the music scene with one remarkable project after another. His highly expressive duo with Chicago guitarist Dennis Cahill - …
Continue Reading about Martin Hayes & The Common Ground Ensemble: Peggy’s Dream →
In 2014, the Model Arts Centre in Sligo commissioned Irish contemporary traditional septet Ensemble Ériu to write new music during a two week residency. The Model is home to the Niland Collection which includes 42 paintings by Irish artist Jack Butler Yeats (1871 - 1957). Composed as a response to the paintings held there and …
Rooted in the traditional styles of North and West Clare, Ensemble Ériu is a unique combination of young Irish musicians revisiting a familiar repertoire with a highly original and innovative perspective. Following up on the band’s self-titled début in 2013 and released in June 2016 last on Raelach Records (in association …
“Ensemble” is a great word choice: it conveys the idea of a group of musicians playing in the field of either classical, contemporary or jazz music, while in the Irish context, composer Seán Ó Riada’s band Ceoltóirí Chualann introduced the idea of ensemble playing in traditional Irish music in the early 1960s. The music of …
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. In the Irish traditional music context, musicians from East Clare tend to play jigs, reels and hornpipes at a slower pace and with minimal ornamentation while putting more emphasis on …
Continue Reading about Martin Hayes and Mary MacNamara: John Naughton’s/Tommy Coen’s →
