Christmas music on guitar: Tim Edey

Winter season’s closing in brings with it both many things to do, and time to rest. It brings fast paced activities, and it can bring slowing down and time to reflect. Winter brings gathering; it brings solitude.

Each of these is an aspect of Advent, of preparation, of contemplation.

Music is a fine companion to all these things.

The Sleeping Tunes, Vol 2: Christmas and Celtic Music played on Guitar may have a rather long title, but it gets its point across. It comes from Tim Edey, and it is a recording which should certainly join your holiday plans for listening.

Though Tim Edey can play many instruments, guitar is perhaps his favoured one, and, as the album title says, his choice for this recording. In performance, Tim comes across as a gifted and versatile player, a man who holds these talents with humility, and an artist who loves to share his joy in the varied aspects of music.

Those things come across clearly in this recording, as well.

On it, you will find eighteen tracks of Christmas and Celtic music, thoughtfully and engagingly presented. Edey offer a journey which begins with I Saw Three Ships paired with a slide from County Kerry. There’s also Irish tune Coinnle an Linbh Íosa, a title in Irish which translates as The Lights or Candles of the Child Jesus. In the Bleak Midwinter leads into the Scottish tune Annie Laurie, there are stops along the way at O Little Town of Bethlehem, an O’Carolan tune, Silent Night, The First Noel, and several others. before closing with Griogar’s Tune, a song written by Enda McCabe for Tim’s young son.

It’s true that many of these pieces will call up memories of their words; that is part of their charm. It’s fine to hear them as instrumental pieces, though. It makes the depth of melody and the grace of Edey’s playing all the more evident. If you’ve guitar player on your holiday gift list, too, this could be just the thing. In addition to his own solo albums, Edey is in demand to work with other artists. If you’d like to hear a different aspect of Edey’s work, you may find him in collaboration with top Cape Breton fiddle player Natalie MacMaster on her recent release called Sketches. There will be more to come about that recording here along the music road in future, too. If you are attending Celtic Connections in Glasgow, you will find Edey as part of collaborations at two concerts, as well.

Tim Edey is grew up in a musical family in Broadstairs, in Kent, in England. He has lived in Ireland and is now based in Perthshire n Scotland. Those places and experiences find their way way into his understanding of music, and his presentation of them on this recording.

You may also wish to see
First week in Advent: music and quiet
Listening to Winter: Aine Minogue, Cara Dillon, Matt Heaton
Alison Brown Quartet: Evergreen

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Ireland's Music: Altan: The Gap of Dreams

The landscapes of Donegal suggest mystery and legend. There is connection and there is solitude. There is history and there is the moment as immediate as the blooming of a flower or the rise of a wave up on the shore.

The music of the band Altan holds all these as well. Their story as a band began in this far northwestern part of the island of Ireland. Though they have traveled the world with their music, it is to Donegal the band returned to record their album The Gap of Dreams. 

Their selection of song and tune draws in the many strands of life, landscape, and history. Édaín O’Donnell’s album sleeve art work helps set the stage for the music.

There are songs in both Irish and English, some recently written and some handed down in the tradition.

The tunes, too, come from varied sources, recent and traditional, learned from fellow musicians and written by members of the band. There’s as much story in the conversation among fiddle guitar, bouzouki, keyboard, and accordion in the tunes as there is in the word and melody of the songs. I

t is a story of landscape, life, love, and imagination. When she was growing up in Donegal, founding member of Altan Mairéad Ni Mhaonaigh recalled, she’d sometimes ask older players where they got a tune. I heard the fairies sing it, they would tell her. That became part of the idea behind the music choices and the title for The Gap of Dreams. 

Altan is Ni Mhaonaigh on fiddle and voice, Martin Tourish on piano accordion, Ciaran Curran on Bouzouki, Mark Kelly and Daithi Sproule on guitars and vocals, with Tommy McLaughlin sitting in on keyboards. For Gap of Dreams, Mairead’s daughter Nia Byrne and Mark’s son Sam Kelly each contribute an original tune to the recrding. They play on them on the album too, Nia on fiddle and Sam on concertina.  

With the title slip jig The Gap of Dreams composed by Mairéad, the tunes from Nia and Sam -- Nia’s Tune and The Beekeeper -- comprise the lively and engaging set which begins the album. 

Several of the tune sets pair music from the tradition with recently composed pieces. One such is Seán sa Cheo / Tuar / Oíche Fheidhmiúil (A Spirited Night), in which Seán sa Cheo (John in the Mist) comes from the tradition and Tuar and Oíche Fheidhmiúil are tunes accordion player Martin Tourish has written. 

Each of the tunes in The Tullaghan Lasses set -- the others are The Cameronian  and The Pigeon on the Gate-- come from the tradition, albeit in the different ways. The first is one often played by great Donegal fiddler John Doherty, which may be a very old tune he had learned from local sources. The Cameronian came over from Scotland -- trade, family, history, and geography  have made many connections between Donegal and Scotland. The Pigeon on the Gate is a tune which shows up in Celtic lands and has crossed the ocean to North America as well. It is a well known tune to Donegal traditional players. This set, in fact, is a fine example of Donegal style fiddle playing.

The gentle reel Port Alex, which Mark Kelly wrote for his nephew, draws in strands of quiet steadiness in journey, with no words spoken or sung.

Bacach Shíl Andaí is a gentle song, too, with words from a nursery rhyme well known in Donegal. The warmth of Mairéad’s voice in the song well suits that idea.

Several of the other songs Mairéad has chosen are a bit more dramatic. There is a lost and wandering lover pining for his lady through the landscape of Donegal’s northernmost place in Dark Inishowen. An Bealach Seo ‘Tá Romham (This Road Ahead of Me) moves with a sense of journey and hope, perhaps in the physical world and perhaps through that gap of dreams to the otherworld the journey of this album explores. Either way, Mairéad sings it and Altan plays it in service to the ideas of journey and connection. The song was written by Moya Brennan of Clannad along with her father Aodh Ó Dúgáin.

The song Altan have chosen to bring The Gap of Dreams to a close is a collaboration in a different way. Songwriter and scholar Pádraigín Ní Uallacháin who comes from the east coast of Ireland in the Oriel region, heard Shetland fiddler Tom Anderson’s tune Da Slockit Light. It inspired to write Fare Thee Well a Stór. The song is about love and leaving, and, in Altan’s playing with Mairéad’ singing, it suggests the landscapes of Donegal as well as those where the music originated.

That evocation of landscape through voice and instrument is woven through each of the tracks in The Gap of Dreams. Indeed that is one of the gifts Altan always brings to their listeners, a gift that, some thirty years from when they first began, the band members continue to give in creative and thoughtful ways.

You may also wish to see
Ireland’s music:Altan: The Widening Gyre
Scotland’s music: Julie Fowlis: Alterum
Ireland’s music: Aine MinogueIn the Name of Stillness  
Music of Ireland: Pádraigín Ní Uallacháin Songs of the Scribe

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Ireland's Music: Altan: The Widening Gyre

There’s mystery, legend, and magic in the landscapes of Donegal, in Ireland’s far northwest. There you’ll also find deep community, lively humor, and strong connections to the past. Each of these things makes its way into the music of the band Altan.

For their album The Widening Gyre they chose to explore and express another sort of connection, too, the one that reaches across the ocean to the music of Appalachia and the American south. With this in mind, they traveled to Nashville, to the studios of Compass Records, to record.

The result is a clear and sparkling set of song and tune that interweaves these connected yet distinct ways of sharing and thinking about of music. The members of Altan -- Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh on voice and fiddle, Ciaran Curran on bouzouki, Ciaran Tourish onfiddle, vocals, whistles and low whistle, Dáithí Sproule on guitar and voice, Mark Kelly on guitar and voice, and newest member Martin Tourish on accordion and keyboards -- explore these connections and travels of song in collaboration with longtime musical friends from the American folk scene, among them Bruce Molsky, Tim O’Brien, Garry West (who produced the recording), Natalie Haas, and Alison Brown. “We’ve made lifelong friends through music,” Mairéad says. “ The circle has expanded over the years, and our new album celebrates those relationships.”

The fourteen track disc opens with a set which sets the path for that, taking a journey through a lively tune from Scotland, a reel from the Irish tradition, and an original reel composed by Mairéad. Molsky and Ní Mhaonaigh turn Walt Aldrige’s old timey Americana song No Ash Will Burn into a vocal and instrumental collaboration that unlocks the Celtic nuances of the piece, and although it is a rather sad love song, also calls to mind the partings and stories of those who moved from one place to another in earlier times. Tune For Mairéad and Anna Ní Mhaonaigh is a slow air which was composed some years back by Dáithí Sproule for the birthdays of Mairéad and her sister Anna, and is done here in lovely spare fashion.

White Birds is a quiet piece too, one which evokes travels across land and sea in reality and imagination, with Mary Chapin Carpenter adding in her to voice to Mairéad’s for lyrics written by poet WB Yeats set to music by Fiona Black. Only right to have words by Yeats here; a different Yeats poem is the source the band turned to for the album’s title. “The title The Widening Gyre appeals to us and depicts the spiral of life, widening and embracing the new. It has an innate energy. We think that idea is reflected in the album’s music,” says Mairéad.

That energy is readily apparent in the Buffalo Gals/Leather Britches/Leslie’s Reel set, which evolved from the musicians siting around in the studio swapping tunes. It’s a fast paced event which holds the energy of Appalachian bluegrass along with fiery Donegal style music and creates its own place between. That also holds true of The Triple T, a tune which Ciaran Tourish wrote for his son Thomas and which invited in the talents of musical guests Jerry Douglas on Dobro, Sam Bush on mandolin, Darol Anger on fiddle, Bryan Sutton on guitar, Jim Higgins on bodhran, Stuart Duncan on fiddle, Bryan Sutton on guitar, and Alison Brown on banjo -- an all star jam in deed, and all these fine talents in collaboration in service to the tune.

Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh’s distinctive soprano is as much a hallmark of Altan’s music as are her fiery fiddling and thoughtful compositions. All are in fine evidence here. She sourced the song Má Théann Tú ‘un Aonaigh, which offers advice (in irish) to a young man setting out in the world, from a field recording from the Arranmore Islands in northwest Donegal, while Cuirt Robin Finley/Moladh Shliabh Maoineach has as its substance a love song to a mountain in Donegal. She trades voices and stories with bluegrass/Americana master Tim O’Brien on The House Carpenter/ Gypsy Davy and her slow reel Samhradh and Aniar Aduaidh Jig pair naturally in a set with Martin Tourish’s The Donegal Jig. Far Beyond Carrickfinn is a song composed by Ian Smith and Enda Cullen to help give Mairéad perspective after the death of her father Francie, a himself a fine musician. It is a lasting piece that’s beautifully sung and presented here by Mairéad and Scotland’s Eddi Reader and could indeed apply to journeys of many sorts. “Stars lead the way, as your journey begins...”

There is much more to explore and enjoy. The mountains of Ireland’s northwest and the Americna south, seacoasts and hollows, journeys through them and stories told across time: all these come into play in Altan’s The Widening Gyre.

...and while you are at it, note the fine cover artwork by Édaín O’Donnell.

photographs courtesy of the band, Compass Records, and Colin Park and Joseph Mischyshyn. thank you for respecting copyright

You may also wish to see
The Wild Atlantic Way: Music of Donegal and Derry part of a 4 part series I’ve done for Wandering Educators
Music of Donegal: Altan: The Poison Glen/Gleann Nimhe
Music for the first week in Advent: candle in the window
Alison Brown: The Company You Keep
Tim O'Brien: The Crossing

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Listening to Ireland: Patrick season

Ireland: it is a twenty first century country, to be sure, and yet... the music and the stories, the legends and the landscapes, reach back across time to connect, to share to create, to reassure, to inspire. The music and the stories reach across the world, too, to new landscapes where Ireland’s far flung sons and daughters have made their homes, and to places where the sound of the music is the only connection.

During the spring of the year, Patrick season, folk often turn thoughts and hearts especially to those connections and to the music of Ireland. Here along the Music Road Irish music and the people who make it are a subject of conversation and reflection often, as are those Irish landscapes; you’ll find upwards of three hundred stories on these ideas in our archives.

For your Patrick season enjoyment, here are several to explore

Tommy Sands is from Rostrevor in County Down, just along the border with the Republic. He knows both dark and light sides, both the political side of recent Irish history and how it plays out in day to day life. To hear ways these make part of his music, take a listen to his albums Let the Circle Be Wide and Arising from the Troubles.

Cathie Ryan is first generation Irish American, and has lived long in both countries. Landscape, legend, and story all play their parts in the music she writes herself and what she sources from traditional and contemporary song. Hear this in her recordings Through Wind and Rain and The Farthest Wave.

The four members of T With the Maggies each have careers as members of other ensembles and collaborations. When the four women, who knew each other growing up in Donegal before their music took them along differing paths, got together to create an album, they made a project through which you may hear the wind and water, rugged mountains and hidden glens and crashing waves and tales and history that form Ireland’s far northwest. Learn more about this recording from T With the Maggies.

One of the Maggies on that album is Mairéad Ni Mhaonaigh, singer, fiddle player, and songwriter who is also founding member of the band Altan. They have traveled the world with their music and collaborated with symphony orchestras and American country superstars. Home in Donegal is where they made their album Poison Glen, which they chose to name after an especially lovely spot in their native county. Take a listen to fiery fiddling, graceful singing, and class act ensemble work on Poison Glen.

Mary Black does not always -- or even often -- choose music from Irish tradition. The native Dubliner is brilliant and hearing the stories and poetry, the threads that connect and pull through, in the work of contemporary songwriters, though. Many of her choices are songwriters from Ireland, but whatever she chooses, Black puts her own graceful and very Irish stamp upon it, and adds to the ongoing tradition of class act songs and singers in Ireland. Hear this in Twenty Five Years Twenty Five Songs.

There is more, of course, much more, to the music of Ireland, and I’ve more recordings and conversations with artists waiting in the wings to share with you -- and a book or two in the works as well. Keep in touch here along the Music Road to know more about all that.

Photograph of hillside in Louth, Republic of Ireland, is by Kerry Dexter and is copyrighted. Thank you for respecting this.

You may also wish to see
Women of Ireland: Music
Learning about Irish Music: a bouquet of albums
Julie Fowlis and Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh: Dual

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From Tree to Tree Ó Chrann go Crann

This is not, exactly, a story about a Christmas tree -- though it could be. It is a story about trust, hope, resilience, friendship, and kindness, told in the journey of a child, a few trees, and some birds. Good listening as Advent unfolds, I’m thinking, and in any season.

The narrator is Mairéad Ni Mhaonaigh. You’ve met her here before with her fiddle and her singing and her songwriting, with Altan, T with the Maggies, and through a song on Cathie Ryan’s album Through Wind and Rain.

Ó Chrann go Crann the story is called, From Tree to Tree, and you may hear it as Gaeilge, in Irish, and in English.

You may also wish to see

holiday gift list: music of Ireland

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Music of Donegal: Altan: The Poison Glen -Gleann Nimhe

Land, sea, mountain, legend, history, solitude and community: Donegal, in Ireland's far northwest, is filled with these things. Altan, whose latest album is named after an area in Donegal called The Poison Glen, distill the essence of this land, both spirit and landscape, into their music.


As they have taken the music of Donegal across the globe for three decades now, Altan have collaborated with the artists ranging from Nashville’s country stars to Dublin’s classically trained musicians. Thinking about their latest project, they decided to focus on the energy and clarity that they bring to their live shows, just the six band members themselves, sparkling collaborations among fiddles, accordion, guitar, and bouzouki, deep energy of shared musical creativity, and Mairéad Ni Mhaonaigh’s thoughtful and thought provoking singing of songs in both English and Irish. These are what the band chose as the focus of how to present their music on The Poison Glen. “This is the core of our sound, what we do in our live shows, “ Ni Mhaonaigh says.

As they often do in performance, they open with a lively instrumental set, in this case pairing the traditional slip jig A Fig for a Kiss with the recently composed tune The Turf Cutter. This leads into the gentle song Seolta Geala,which invites you to seek the freedom of the ocean and forget the cares of with world,. Ni Mhaonaigh sings this in Irish. A set of reels which begins with The New Rigged Ship, a tune which traveled to Donegal from Shetland, well calls to mind that tunes in Irish music are most often made for dancers. “There’s a lot of emotion, a lot of life experience in these tunes. They're tunes for dances, but people pick up on the emotion in them,” Ni Mhaonaigh points out.

There is life experience in the songs, too, in both words and melody. Lily of the West is a tale involving love, jealousy, confrontation, murder, exile, and all sorts of other things, which has traveled back and forth across the ocean between the Americas and Ireland more than once. Ni Mhaonaigh and the band put their own stamp on the song, which Ni Mhaonaigh learned from a singer from Aranmore, who had a large store of songs in Irish -- this was one of the few songs in in English that she sang. There are thirteen tracks in all on the album, well balances between song and tune, between music from traditional sources and newly composed material.

A deep gift for finding and creating songs and tunes which honor and share the rugged landscape,strong community, and long legends of Donegal is what has marked Altan, since the early days in the 1980s when Ni Mhaonaigh and her late husband Frankie Kennedy began playing as the duo which evolved into the current band of six musicians. As they worked together on The Poison Glen, not only did they enjoy putting this project together, but “we saw there is a lot of creativity in the band, a lot of places for us to go. We all write, we all compose...an album of all original music might be something we’d look to do in future. We saw, too, how we could use the studio almost as another instrument in the band,” Ni Mhaonaigh says. “We’re very proud of this album, and we see there are more possibilities ahead for us to explore.”

Altan is:
Daithi Sproule, whose own compositions have been recorded by Liz Carroll, Aoife Clancy and others, on guitar, Ciaran Curran, whose subtle and original touch on bouzouki have brought him many chances to work with great traditional players, and Mark Kelly, who adds a rock and jazz as well as classical music knowledge to his work with the band on on guitar and backing vocals, Ciaran Tourish has added his talent on fiddle and whistles to the music of Paul Brady, Mary Black, Maura O'Connell, Dé Danann and Tim O'Brien among others, while Dermot Byrne, who plays accordion, has worked with Manus McGuire, Sharon Shannon, Frankie Gavin, and the late jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli. Mairéad Ni Mhaonaigh, on fiddle and vocals, has recorded with Enya, the Chieftains, Dolly Parton, T With the Maggies and others, and she is also in demand as a teacher and as a presenter of programs for broadcast . On Poison Glen, they are joined by Jim Higgins on percussion and Harry Bradley on flute.

About the title:
“The Poison Glen is a very beautiful part of Donegal,” Ni Mhaonaigh says. There are many stories about how it got its name, from it being a map maker’s mistaken writing of the name to an event in a battle fought there to a legend involving a one eyed giant called Balor, his daughter who he locked in a tower, a man who came to free the daughter, and what happened next. “I like the story about Balor the best!” says Ni Mhaonaigh. “We had Poison Glen it as a working title for the album, and we thought it had bit of an edge to it, so we decided to keep it.”

photograph of members of Altan at the Celtic Connections Festival in Glasgow, made with permission of the artists and the festival, and is copyrighted. thank you for respecting this.

you may also wish to see

Music Road: Altan: 25th Anniversary Collection
Music Road: from Donegal: T with the Maggies
for another equally interesting version of Lily of the West, check out Lovers' Well: Matt & Shannon Heaton

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Music for the first week in Advent: candle in the window

There is a tradition in Irish households, in Ireland and through the Irish diaspora across the world, to leave a light in the window on Christmas eve, and at times during other nights in December as well. This is meant to show that the holy family, on their journey seeking shelter that Christmas eve in Bethlehem, would be welcome. It’s also meant to show that Christ is welcome here, and that strangers weary on the road this Christmas season find welcome at this home. The Christ candle, we always called it when I was growing up.

Moya Brennan and Mairéad Ni Mhaonaigh grew up in Donegal, in the north west of Ireland. They went their separate ways into top level careers in music, Brennan playing the harp and singing with the group Clannad and Ni Mhaonaigh singing and playing the fiddle with the band Altan. Each has had success as a solo artist, as well. In this video, they are taking a walk on a winter day in Donegal, and they sing a song Mairéad wrote, called Soilse na Nollaig, which you might translate to English as Christmas lights or December lights. It’s a fine song to hear during this first week in Advent.




Moya and Mairéad recently joined forces with two other childhood friends to form the group T with the Maggies, and they’ve so far released one album. They have done several Christmas concerts in Ireland, so perhaps a holiday album may in future. Music Road: from Donegal: T with the Maggies

you may also wish to see
Music Road: Dual: Julie Fowlis & Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh
Music Road: Cathie Ryan: teaching tradition

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From Donegal: T with the Maggies

Donegal is in the far northwest of Ireland, a land of sea and mountain, much of it a place where Irish is spoken as often as English, all of it a place where music is respected and loved. Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh, Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill, Maighread Ní Dhomhnaill, and Moya Brennan all spent time growing up in Donegal, and knew each other in those days. Each has made a top notch career in music, through work with bands, groups, and as solo artists. Over the years they have crossed paths at family gatherings and at festivals, and have thought that they really ought to do something together. Now they have.

From the first notes of the first song at the City Halls Grand Hall in Glasgow, the four women wove a tapestry that included intricate harmonies, soulful lead singing, fine playing, and more than that, connections of deep and long lasting friendship among the artists, and deep and long lasting love for the land, as well. The landscape, the people, and the history of Donegal were all present in the music they shared.

It was a sharing, too, rather like friends telling tales around the fireside. Notwithstanding the slightly formal setting at City Halls, listeners were immediately drawn in to become a part of things as well, enjoying the stories, both serious and funny, that the women told, and enjoying the gentle humor as during the course of the evening they joked with each other, as longtime friends do. Appreciating too not only the connection of voices but also the connection through fine playing. Tríona was on keyboards, Moya on harp and on djembe, Mairéad on fiddles, and in the background, Jim Higgins on percussion and Manus Lunny on guitar.

Calling themselves T with the Maggies, Mairéad, Tríona, Maighread, and Moya have made an album, also called T With the Maggies. Music they recorded for that, much of it music from the tradition sung in Irish, formed most of the program for the Glasgow evening. Ceol an Phíobaire, A Stór A Stór A Ghrá, and in English the lively song Wedding Dress were among the songs they offered.

Especially engaging were two songs the women wrote. Mother Song, inspired by the present situation which sees young people emigrating from Ireland again as they have in past days, showed passion in restraint in taking a mother’s view of those things. Domhnach na Fola, the most haunting song of the evening, is a response to the recent release of the findings of the Bloody Sunday enquiry in Derry.

Audience members were on their feet at the end of the concert, calling the artists back for three songs in encore. It was a lovely and lively evening, honoring tradition and carrying it forward, honoring friendship and carrying that forward as well. Chances are, once you’ve heard the album, you’ll want to be putting it on for encore spins, too.



This concert was part of Celtic Connections 2011. Photographs were made with permission of the artists, and are copyrighted. Thank you for respecting this.

you may also wish to see

Music Road: music and hope: Derry
Music Road: Altan: 25th Anniversary Collection
Music Road: Scott-Land at Celtic Connections
Music Road: Cathie Ryan: Songwriter

-->Your support for the work,here at Music Road is welcome and needed.
Here is one way to offer that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this. Thank you.

Mary Black & Emmylou Harris on a hillside journey

The Appalachian mountains have always reminded me of the mountains in Donegal, and Derry, and Cooley, and those Irish hills have reminded me of Appalachian landscapes as well. Mary Black, from Ireland, and Emmylou Harris, from the United States, sing The Green Rolling Hills of West Virginia. Take a listen.






In a few weeks, the Great American Road Trip will get to West Virginia, where there will be more powerful music of the hills to share with you.

There's also more music ahead here along the music road, from Ireland, and from America, and from places where they intersect. Stay with us.

you may also wish to see

Music Road: Reflections with Mary Black
Music Road: now playing: Emmylou Harris: Songbird: disc three
Music Road: Altan: 25th Anniversary Collection
Music Road's Irish music store at Amazon

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Altan: 25th Anniversary Collection

Altan: 25th Anniversary Celebration


Lough Altan is what some would call a mysterious lake, near Mount Errigal in Donegal in the far northwest of Ireland. For twenty five years the members of the band Altan, who decided to take their name from the lake, have done their fair share of taking the mystery, joy, and individuality of the music of Donegal to the rest of the world. Fiddles. bouzouki, guitar, whistles, accordion, and the outstanding voice of Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh are elements of the band’s sound, elements which they turn and tumble and weave and twine through songs of the Donegal tradition, original compositions, music from other parts of Ireland, American folk music, and on occasion the music of Bob Dylan.

To mark their two and a half decade celebration, the group decided to pursue a project they’d been considering for some time: making a recording with an orchestra. Though they’d played live in orchestra settings before, they’d not recorded that way.

The result, a collaboration with the RTE Concert Orchestra, conducted by David Brophy, proves to be an engaging way to add new colors to the band’s work. The arrangements by Fiachra Trench respect both the orchestral side and the hills of Donegal side of things, so the musicians and encouraged and challenged each to do what they do best. It really works.

The fifteen tracks are favorites with the band (and listeners over the years). Cití na gCuman, A Tune for Frankie, Is The Big Man Within? / Tilly Finn's Reel, and Dún Do Shúil are especially worth noting, and the whole program works very well together from start to finish, too. It proves a fine celebration to start Altan into, perhaps, their next twenty five years.

Side note: I had the chance to see Altan play with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra while they were putting together this recording. The recording itself was not done before a live audience, but every bit of the beauty and excitement of live performance comes through. It was clear that night that conductor Brophy, the band members, and the orchestra players were all having fine time challenging themselves together with this collaboration, and that must have been true of these recording sessions also.


you may also want to see

Music Road: music of Donegal: Altan

Music Road: now playing: Athena Tergis

Music Road: Three Fiddle CDs for Fall

Music of Donegal: Altan

Local Ground


Donegal is in the far northwest of Ireland, a land of mountain and water, and one which shares more of its borders with Northern Ireland than with the Republic. Going back in history, it has been a place with many close connections with Scotland, and an area where Irish is often the first language. All those influences have come into play with through the music of the area, producing varied and distinctive styles of melody and song, and musicians who are not afraid to mix up genres and styles to get their points across.

The band Altan is one of the best known and most highly regarded groups of musicians from Ireland’s northwest, attacking tunes with fire and vigor at one moment and turning in haunting ballads the next. That is, in fact, reflective of of both the landscape on the history of their native place. Local Ground is a recent recording, which includes songs in both English and Irish, a crossing the waters American folk song Adieu My Lovely Nancy, a jig from early 20th century Donegal fiddle master John Doherty, one learned from modern Donegal born fiddle giant Tommy Peoples, several original tunes, and a close with a lullabye gently sung in Irish, Dun Do Shuil, Close Your Eyes.


As you are thinking about St. Patrick and lreland, here ia video to go along. celeberating Ireland's far northwest, a place where Irish and Scottish music, landscape, and isolation have united over the years to form a music with its own voice.

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now playing: texas honky tonks and donegal fiddles

not on the same record, actually -- though I can hear how that might work:

Jason Arnold and the Stepsiders offer very tasty Texas dance hall country on their twelve track debut CD, With Friends Like These. The lyrics are mostly of a man trying to come to terms with a woman who leaves, but in the spirit and in the moment enough to make you believe and dance along. Not quite the barn burning intensity of Jack Ingram or the laid back poetry of Bruce Robison -- at least not yet -- but worth the listen. Think Chris Wall with maybe a touch of George Strait.


From the western part of Ireland comes Traditional Fiddle Music of Donegal, an extensive collection of the work of master fiddle player Con Cassidy. The liner notes will help you set Cassidy in historical context; the music needs only that you listen. Not some stuffy bit of history, this, but vibrant fiddling which would, under certain circumstances, be right at home in Gruene Hall or Scholtz Bier Garten in the Texas hill country.

Keep your eye out for more on Con Cassidy’s disc, along with lots of other great musical stuff, in a forthcoming issue of the folk music magazine Dirty Linen..

now playing: Athena Tergis

A Letter Home

Fiddler Athena Tergis has lived in San Francisco, New York, and points between, in Belfast, Galway, London, and points between, and she’s now based in the Tuscan region of northwest Italy. When she decided to call her first solo recording A Letter Home, she was considering all that. Her background also includes playing in Riverdance on Broadway, touring with Sharon Shannon, and backing up many world renown musicians while at TG4, the national Irish language television channel in Ireland. A Letter Home is a collection of Celtic based tunes which are true to the traditions from which they arise but which also allow the listener to hear Tergis’ own instrumental flair and line of thought quite clearly. The music includes a lively set of barn dances and a Scottish tinged strathspey, after opening at a fiery pace with a set of Irish reels. In all there are fourteen tracks : jigs, reels, highlands, set dance tunes, flings, and slow airs, tunes with origins in Galway, Cork, Antrim, and Donegal as well as in the Scottish Highlands, the Irish community of Chicago, and the heart of Cape Breton in Nova Scotia.


John Doyle, whose music you’ve encountered before on this site, produced the collection, and there’s really collaborative ensemble work from Sharon Shannon and Billy McComiskey on accordions, cellist Natalie Haas, Ben Wittman on percussion, and fiddler Liz Carroll.

Irish music, Irish landscape

There are times, and places, when Irish music seems to be reduced to songs about fighting, drinking and dying, and tributes to the old Irish mother, with songs such Seven Drunken Nights, Danny Boy, Whiskey in the Jar, Four and Nine, When Irish Eyes Are Smiling, and the like. But the subject matter of Irish music is endless, it’s just endless. And the substance of it is timeless.

In Ireland, the pub is a place of community and connection, sharing and talking and sorting out life, as much and more as it is a place for drinking. The music arises from and becomes part of that conversation. That’s true going back in time. There are songs of husbands, wives, single folk, lovers parted, reunited, betrayed, left lonely, and found again; children, elders, travelers, heroes, pirate queens, saints; songs of magic, songs of faith, songs of stones, cottages, castles, lakes, rivers, and the sea, and always, songs of emigration, immigration, leaving, returning, longing for and remembering home.

That music goes back centuries, and is still sung, and is still vital. Music about the substance of life is a tradition which continues with today’s musicians as well, people like John Spillane, who writes of resilience and independence framed in the face of wildflowers growing along the road, of Liz Carroll, who without a word, through the voice of her fiddle, evokes the Irish landscape; John Doyle, who dances with his guitar through tunes centuries old made new, and Cathie Ryan, who honors both her Irish and her American heritage, what’s remembered and what’s changing, in her songs. It is no accident, either, that those songs and tunes are rooted and grounded in the land: the light and shadow of landscape in Ireland, and in Irish America, is rooted and grounded in mystery, magic, faith, and deeper than all, in music.

While Danny Boy and the lament of his mother have their place, as does The Whiskey in the Jar and those smiling Irish eyes, they are the part, not the whole. The substance of Irish music is about life. Love and sorrow, grief and hope, faith, despair, laughter and joy. It is just endless.


photographs from Galway, Louth, Donegal, Clare, Derry, Down

History, faith, and the sea: three things which are always present. And the music which arises from all that.

photographs taken by and copyright Kerry Dexter. thank you for respecting this

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now playing: oisin mcauley

Far From the Hills of Donegal

Quebec Reels might indeed seem to have their origin far from the hills of Donegal. The set makes a fine opening track for Oisin McAuley’s first solo album. Best known for his inventive fiddle work with the top Irish band Danu, McAuley was raised in Donegal, took a degree in classical music in Belfast, and lived for a time in Brittany. Now he is based in New England and travels the world playing music with Danu. It’s good to see how he gets these experiences going in a set of tunes which is based in the west of Ireland ideas and adds these perspectives to that style. There's traditional music, including a medley John Doherty’s Highland, Nell Gow’s Wife, and Frank Cassidy’s. Doherty is a particular influence on McAuley, for, the fiddler says. “the way he mixed things up. I thought if he did it could do the same.” Reels, swing, hornpipes and great stash of original tunes play out that idea here. Other notable cuts include Tune for Gillian and Lover’s Ghost.

by Kerry Dexter