Newfoundland-Irish music connections

Event a tribute to Irish fiddler with Newfoundland connection

A new summer festival is launching in St. John’s this weekend, a festival highlighting the links between Newfoundland traditional music and Irish traditional music. “There’s a lot of links between the two types of music,” musician and festival player Graham Wells told The Telegram this week. Local acts scheduled for Féile Séamus Creagh in 2010 include Daniel Payne, Billy Sutton, Sandy Morris and Anita Best. Visiting Irish players will include Jackie Daly, Conal O Grada, Matt Cranitch and Paul de Grae. >>>

Technology to track trad

From the Irish Times: An Irish musician and software technologist has devised an iPhone app that tells you the name of any piece of live trad music – regardless of the player, writes Karlin Lillington

The €4.99 musical search engine app, available from the iTunes App Store, also produces historical detail about every song and has become a boon to professional traditional musicians creating sleeve notes for their CDs.

Bryan Duggan says Ciarán Tourish (of Altan) and flute player Hammy Hamilton have used the app to prepare for concerts and supply background on CD recordings.

Then, five years ago, he began a PhD that looked at the overlap between computer modelling and creativity. That turned into the basis of producing a music-recognition application, and he created a website, Tunepal.org, to provide background information and a connection point for those interested in the area and his application.

But, as Duggan says, “People at sessions in pubs don’t have PCs with them – they have mobile phones.” Even five years ago, though, phones didn’t have the power to run something like Tunepal. Now, they do, so, last February, Tunepal launched for the iPhone. Duggan will have a version ready for Google’s Android phone operating system too in coming weeks. >>>

Martin Hayes & Dennis Cahill at National Library

In an unusual juxtaposition the National Library, as part of their Yeats season, had Gavin Friday on stage with Martin Hayes & Dennis Cahill interpreting Yeats poems. Friday read in-between (and over) tunes and airs from Hayes & Cahill. It was unusual, and would have been great if Gavin Friday hadn’t let the side down a bit.

Friday needed more rehearsal & creative direction to match the soaring effects of Hayes-Cahill. He fumbled a bit; and really should have memorised the poems instead of working off print-outs.

The skilled, hard-earned craftsmanship of Hayes-Cahill was never going to be in doubt; and while Friday impressed at first with his attempt to “give voice to the inner voice” of a poet, as if from the inside, almost whispering the verses; he Friday wasn’t up to it on the night, in my opinion. He wasn’t rehearsed enough; he should have done without print-outs of the poems as he occasionally struggled to keep the pace he set going while reading; he hadn’t bothered getting the pronunciation of certain place names right, and fumbled the odd line. In contrast, Hayes & Cahill were totally in control of and at home with what they were doing. Ultimately, it’s just a pity the words of the poems weren’t shown the same respect that the notes of the tunes were.