Ireland's music: harp & accordion

The harp: its stately elegance is is often thought of in connection with orchestras. The button accordion: the small lively button box is often thought of as anchoring sessions down at the pub, or accompanying the beat of step dancers’ feet. True, harps and accordiona are found at home in all those places. What happens when you put them together, though?

A wonderful confluence of creative and engaging music, as it happens. Floriane Blancke -- she’s the harpist -- and Dermot Byrne -- he plays accordion -- decided to do just that. Their differing backgrounds add to the ideas they bring to the music they create, too

click on the album cover to learn more about the recording

Blancke, who was born in Paris, has Hungarian gypsy jazz and classical music among her family influences, and studied classical music for ten years. In 2006, she moved to Ireland and has become part of the Irish music scene Byrne is from Buncrana in the north of Donegal in Ireland, where Irish traditional music, especially the fiddle music of that area of northwest Ireland, formed a part of his day to day life as he was learning his instrument.

The music they make draws in Irish tradition. Their original music and their arrangements of traditional pieces stir in these additional flavours as well, and the creative sounds their instrument make together. I was fortunate to be present at a concert the duo gave at the Celtic Connections Festival at the National Piping Centre in Glasgow. Should you have the chance to see Blancke and Byrne play live, take it. Meanwhile they have released a self titled album, well worth you time.

You may get a taste of their music and backgrounds in this video.

Photograph is by Kerry Dexter. It was made at the Celtic Connections Festival, with the permission of the artists, the venue, and the festival, and is copyrighted. Thank you for respecting this.

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Dermot Byrne and Floriane Blancke's web site

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music and community

The varied landscapes and legends of the county of Kerry in the southwest of Ireland inspire artists of all sorts, and have, across the years. Musician Niamh Ni Charra and her mother painter Olivia O Carra are two such artists.

Niamh took to the fiddle and the concertina early. While still in primary school she was playing at local sessions nearby her home in KIllarney. As it happened, attending one of those sessions was Terry Teahan, an accomplished fiddle player himself, who had emigrated to Chicago years before and made a life for himself there. He told the father of one of the young players that he saw in her the gift for a career in music. That player was Niamh.

While still in primary school Niamh won the All Ireland under 12 in concertina and continued to play her fiddle to high standard as well. At first she followed another career, becoming a software engineer. The music called to her, though, and she decided to follow it full time. This led to a ten year career with the production of Riverdance, and in recent years two well received solo albums. Her third solo recording Cuz is a tribute to Teahan, who when helping others find work in Chicago told them all to say they were his cousins, and so acquired the nickname Cuz.

Archival recordings of Cuz’s own sound add flavour to Ni Charra’s selections for the album, as do contributions from other musicians connected in some way to Teahan, among them Liz Carroll, Séamus Begley, Anne and Nicky McAuliffe, and Donogh Hennessy. It is Ni Charra’s fiddle and concertina and her artistic vision which anchor the project, though There’s a fine balance of music made for dancing -- you can almost see the dancers swirl and hear their steps through the opening set of slides which begins with The Lonesome Road to Dingle -- and quieter tunes. There are slides and polkas a plenty for the dancers and toe tappers, tunes which set off a set of slow highlands or a waltz, and in the midst of it all a fine and thoughtful song in Irish. It might be one of those evening sessions in Kerry, indeed, if the music is to a very high standard and the community feeling and sense of land and landscape very present.

Olivia O Carra knows how to evoke that sense of land and landscape with her brush as much as her daughter does with her instruments. Olivia’s chosen subject is the land around her Killarney home and the national park nearby. She likes to go out into the landscapes, to sit and reflect and watch as the light changes, and then bring what she’s seen and learned back to her easel. Though her style is representational and holds a distinct sense of place, O Carra’s not afraid to move things around a bit -- light or landscape -- to address the story she wishes to tell. The countryside through the seasons as O Carra sees it proves to be a place of welcome and one that yet holds a bit of mystery. In creating this, she invites one to come back and look again at her work, much as Niamh’s music invites one to listen more than once.

You may see and hear the work of Olivia O Carra and Niamh Ni Charra here

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Niamh NI Charra’s first solo album Ón Dá Thaobh / From Both Sides
Niamh’s sister Deidre is also a talented musician
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Highlander's Farewell: Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas
photograph at top of page is by Kerry Dexter and is copyrighted. thank you for respecting this.

by Kerry Dexter

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From Ireland: tunes new and old from Caitlin Nic Gabhann

Caitlin Nic Gabhann grew up a house filled with music in County Meath in Ireland. In her album called Caitlin, you’ll hear the wisdom of tradition, compositions which take tradition onward, and the rhythm of the dance as well.

Nic Gabhann’s instrument is the concertina. The music she’s chosen for the fifteen sets on her debut album as a solo artist show that she well knows how to tell stories through melody, from the opening set which opens with a Galway tune, The Rookery, through to a version of The Flying Column which she learned from her father, fiddler Antoin Mac Gabhann which forms a set with two session tune favorites, The Eel in the Sink and The Shallow Reel. There’s a set of hornpipes, and a set of reels which begins with her own tune Elevated, which, she explains, was written while she was stuck in an elevator in Brisbane in Australia and trying to keep her calm. Nic Gabhann’s own tunes -- there are six of them on the album -- are standout tracks. The reels, waltzes, and the air of her own she offers make clear that she well knows how to create stories through music, along with having a deft hand for interpreting those others have made.


Though Caitlin is her first solo album, Nic Gabhann is no stranger to the stage or the recording studio. Her first band performed at L’Orient Interceltique festival in France, and she has toured the world as a dancer with Riverdance. She and her sister Bernadette, with accordion player Sean McComiskey of Baltimore and flute player Sean Gavin of Detroit, make up the trans Atlantic band NicGaviskey, who have released the album Home Away from Home.

This collection of tunes finds Nic Gabhann’s concertina front and center, however, and it proves a place well deserved. Caoimhin O’Fearghail offers tasteful accompaniment on guitar, and on several tracks you will hear the sound of Nic Gabhann’s dancing feet, as well. You’ll be well served by playing the whole album through and enjoying the pace of the tunes as they go. Several standout cuts, though, include that set if reels which begins with The Flying Column, the original waltz called Sunday’s Well, another original tune, the air Cill Dheaglain, and a set which begins with The Leeside Sessions and includes both original and traditional reels.



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Melodies and Irish fire: Fidil and Edel Fox

Fire on fire is one way you could describe Donegal fiddle style. Aidan O Donnell, Cíarán Ó Maonaigh, and Damien Mc Geehan, who make up the group Fidil, build that flame higher on Fidil 3.

“The only instruments used in this recording were fiddles,” they write in the liner notes, and that’s enough. Each man has deep background in the music of the west of Ireland and has experience playing in professional settings across the world as well. They bring these things together in sets including jigs and reels, highlands, a march, an air, a hornpipe, and a waltz. The fire burns bright, whether it’s flaming on high speed tunes such as the Hudi’s set or warming as with the waltz Alec McConnell’s.


Edel Fox brings a fiery grace to her music as well. Her chosen instrument is the concertina. Like the men of Fidil up north in Donegal, Fox soaked up music from the people around her whilst growing up in West Clare. The tunes on her album Chords Beryls include music she’s learnt from musicians who are pipers, flute players, fiddlers, and composers on the harp, and to which she’s put her own stamp and arrangement. Though she says not a word on the album, you can clearly hear the voice of an artist who knows and loves melody and story. Especially worth noting are The Knotted Chord Set and The Joyous Waltz.








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Irish exploration: Peadar Ó Riada

Triúr Sa Draighean

Music often rises out of landscape: that’s an idea especially true of Irish music. Peadar Ó Riada tends to think of himself as receiving music, rather than composing it. Listening to his latest recording, sixteen tracks of original music on which he plays concertina, accordion, and whistle, and Martin Hayes and Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh turn up on fiddle, one can hear both the landscape and the man, and the connection of friends who’ve come along to share the journey.

There are jigs, reels, hornpipes, and a pair of polkas, along with one song. They arise, as he explains in the liner notes, from and through varied circumstance. From that he has created musical comment and thought and conversation which carry on beyond that immediate place and time. The song, which finds Ó Riada using his voice as much as an instrument as for a conveyer of ideas through word, arose from a combination of ideas to mark a friend’s passing. Waiting for Connie came about while waiting for a session, while Bob and Bernie came to Ó Riada on watching two friends leaving after a visit. Fiddler Martin Hayes mentions in the notes that he could easily have thought these were tunes for an earlier time, and that is true. They hold the connection and energy of the three playing on this recording too. Martin Hayes and Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh each in differing ways reach for the edges and go to the heart of tradition in their own work, and that is present here as well.

“We recorded this ourselves three,” says Ó Riada, and that they did, in Ó Riada’s home in Clare, just the three playing and letting the recording run. That’s a fine way to listen, as well: just let the music unfold and see where it leads.

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traveling fiddles: Niamh Ni Charra & Jamie McClennan

Niamh Ni Charra hails from Kerry, in the southwest of Ireland, and has traveled the world as a fiddler with the show Riverdance. Jamie McClennan grew up in New Zealand, is based now in Scotland, and has seen a fair bit of the world through his music as a fiddler and guitar player, as well. Each handles travels and international influences in combination with respect for and enjoyment of tradition in current solo albums.

Ni Charra’s recording is called On On Da Thaobh/from Both Sides. The thirteen sets find her playing fiddle and also her well loved concertina. There are jigs, hornpipes, reels, and slip jigs. There’s also a set of Hungarian csardas paired with a reel, and a classical piece written for and played on the concertina. There’s a classical piece from another genre, too: bluegrass master Bill Monroe’s Crossing the Cumberlands, which Ni Charra has integrated into her own style. That’s a style filled with musical imagination and melodic sense, clear and vibrant tone and touch, and an eagerness to explore and bring home the fruits of those explorations to her own sound. There’s a fine helping of tradition, from The Jug o’ Punch to Trip to Athlone, as well as a generous helping of quality original compositions, usually played in sets with tunes from the tradition. To bring things right home, Ni Charra, who grew up surrounded by Sliabh Luachra musicians, ends the album with a set of slides, an original named for the area where she went to school, Lios Ui Bhigin, and the traditional Johnny O’Leary’s, An Choisir, and The Hare in the Corn.

Jamie McClennan’s album is called In Transit. The music begins with Emily’s Wee Tune, a jig with a nod to Scottish tradition in style and substance. which leads into the fast paced, edgy title cut. Together they open the door to moods of journey, travel, changes, and passing landscapes, which McClennan carries out skillfully through twelve sets of original music. Most of the time he’s the fiddler, but The Sun Trap set finds him on whistle in an intriguing two whistle intro with former New Zealand band mate and current member of the Irish band Grada Alan Doherty. McClennan’s ideas as a composer are are rooted in Scotland, and he reaches into jazz, American folk, a bit of blues, and more than a bit of bluegrass, as well. There are faced paced numbers, such as the Emergency Flapjack set and the Rainbow Sheep set, played with energetic spice on whistle, guitars, double bass and all sorts of percussion by Doherty, Gerry Paul, Duncan Lyall, and Fraser Stone respectively. Emily Smith joins in on piano on one track and Adelaide Carlow adds cello to another. There are several fine slower tunes as well, notably Road to Bennan, which is McClennan alone, interweaving his own playing on guitar, mandolin, and fiddle. Side note: McLennan both engineered the album and designed the packaging, both very well done.

Strong solo albums both, showing that while Ni Charra and McClennan both have the skills to do excellent work supporting musicians, they each have more than enough musical ideas and creativity to hold centre stage as well.


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