The painting musicians are: Mick O’Connor (flute), Aoife O’Connor (concertina), John Kelly (fiddle) & Peadar O Riada (concertina etc.).
The exhibition runs at the Teacher’s Club, 36 Parnell Square, Dublin 1, from Thursday 17th February to 25th February.
A John Kelly image in 'Na Péintéiri Ceolhmhara'
The multi-instrumentalist, composer and fabulous flute player from the County of Mayo, Emer Mayock, has a busy year ahead, filled with lots of great stuff for us to look forward to:
She will release a CD with piper Mick O’Brien and fiddle player Aoife Ni Bhriain exploring music from the Goodman Manuscripts.
The band Tarab (Emer, Kate Ellis, Francesco Turrisi, Robbie Harris and Nick Roth) will release it’s debut recording.
Emer will work with Rough Magic Theatre in a new production of Ibsen’s ‘Peer Gynt’.
She will perform in Ireland and abroad with a new ensemble she has put together with Lasairfhiona Ni Chonaola, Donal Siggins and Steve Larkin.
And she will travel to Nova Scotia in July to perform at the Boxwood festival.
Nasa astronaut Catherine Coleman. Photograph: Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters
American Nasa astronaut Catherine “Cady” Coleman, who blasts off today from Kazakhstan for a six-month stint on the International Space Station (ISS) orbiting the Earth, will be bringing Matt Molloy’s flute with her.
“We had done a concert and as always we had a tune afterwards with local musicians,” said the Westport-based musician. “It transpired she played the flute and we have been friends ever since.”
On a previous trip into space, she packed his Shadows on Stone CD in her space suit. “Cady told me: ‘Your music always brings me to a special place, so I thought I’d bring yours to one’. I was really moved,” said Molloy. “She told me she was going to be heading there for six months and asked me if I had a flute that she could play while on the station.” While joking that his response may have been “a moment of weakness”, Molloy gave her one of his most prized possessions, his E-flat flute, which he played on his first solo album made with Dónal Lunny in 1976. (Irish Times) >>>
Two new compositions that are being premiered in Dublin this week (including Aontacht by David Flynn, commissioned by RTÉ for Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra) show that contemporary classical music can be gloriously accessible: Arminta Wallace in the Irish Times >>>
“What we’re doing here is different. It’s bringing two worlds together; taking ideas from the Irish tradition and merging them with a contemporary orchestration. Contemporary without being completely off the wall.” Is this music very different from what, and how, he usually plays? “There was a lot that was familiar,” he says. “But there was also a thing where it pushed me in ways, technically. A lot of third- and fourth-position playing, which doesn’t come up in traditional music very often. And the slow air is a complex piece of music with a lot of parts to it. You don’t learn it in one day, I can tell you that much.” “I wrote it in one day,” Flynn puts in. “Did you? It sounds like it,” Hayes retorts.
[From Irish Times: >>>]
“Music is communication,” he says. “With Breanndán , either he or I throw something at the other, and we’re off! We immediately respond, amplifying whatever the other has played. It’s so dynamic playing with him. There’s no fear. We can go to crazy loud places or incredibly quiet places. It’s all an adventure.”
“I don’t really subscribe to this sterilised studio thing at all,” Ó Raghallaigh says. “I don’t think it offers us as humans what we need. What I need from music is the rough edges. I need to feel the grain in the wood. I need to see the dirt under the finger nails. And that’s the approach Breanndán and I took on the record.”
“One of my favourite records is Tony McMahon’s I gCnoc Na Graí/In Knocknagree ,” he says; recounting a conversation he had with MacMahon many years ago. “What’s the difference between playing a tune with heart and without? I remember asking Tony about that, and what he told me was that it has to come from living. You have to live the highs and the lows, and then you put them into your music. That was a huge step: my transition from thinking of great musicians just as musicians, to thinking of great musicians as people, and that the music comes from the entire way they look out of the lenses of their eyes at the world. It’s not just the way they think about music.”
“A lot of artists see the music coming from something beyond themselves,” he says. “For me, that’s even more interesting than harnessing emotions. It’s when you actually subtract yourself from the equation altogether and you’re just trying to let the music flow, without any filters.”
“The material has to be yours,” he enthuses. “If the material isn’t yours, then why are you playing it? The notion of music preservation isn’t interesting to me. You have to be at that point where new ideas are brought into existence. That’s the whole idea behind creativity. For any artist, you want to be at the coalface, the cutting edge where ideas are being formed in music. Where the sparks are coming out of the pick at the face of the rock. That’s the only interesting place to be.”
“Instead of time being a metronome, think of time as a reaction to gravity,” he suggests. “For Breanndán , time is what happens when you’re dancing sets. So it’s not a straight line. It’s rotating. Centrifugal time is completely different to linear time. The second is a completely arbitrary division. It’s fine if you want to make a business meeting, but for walking in the mountains or playing music it’s not very relevant.”
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Máirtín was honoured today for his lifetime contribution to Irish traditional music with an Honorary Masters Degree from NUI Galway.
Speaking ahead of the ceremonies, Dr James J. Browne, NUI Galway President, said: “NUI Galway is fortunate to be associated with many outstanding honorary graduates throughout its history. Today we are proud to honour Máirtín O’Connor and Councillor Norman Morgan for their contributions to music, culture, public service and education. They are particularly worthy individuals and NUI Galway is very pleased to be in a position to recognise their exceptional talents and achievements.”
Máirtín has had a successful solo career and was a member of many of traditional music s leading groups including, Midnight Well, De Dannan, The Boys of the Lough, and Skylark. He has recorded with many national and international musicians throughout his career and was the first recipient of the Allied Irish Bank Traditional Musician of the Year Award.
Irish Times cover it here >>>
[From Wikipedia:] Peter Horan (born 1926,died 17th October 2010 Killavil,County Sligo) is an Irish flute and fiddle player who is known for having developed a unique style influenced by the local irish fiddlingtradition. For nearly 30 years performed as a duet with the famous fiddler Fred Finn. More recently he has performed with Sliabh Luachra fiddler Gerry Harrington and the pair released a CD called “Fortune Favors the Merry,” accompanied by Ollie Ross on the piano. He continues to perform and teach in Ireland and at Irish arts festivals around the world, including the Catskills Irish Arts Week and the Ennis Trad Festival. In 2002 he was given the Irish Music Awards Hall of Fame award. In 2009, St. Angela’s College Sligo and NUI Galway recognised and honoured Peter as one of South Sligo’s most talented and best known traditional musicians by awarding him an Honorary Master of Music. For “His authentic, natural style, which is firmly rooted in the Coleman tradition, stands out as a unique musical talent and resource within our region and our country.. . .” Peter Horan died on 17th of October 2010 in the North West Hospice, Sligo.
