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

and you may also wish to see

Niamh NI Charra’s first solo album Ón Dá Thaobh / From Both Sides
Niamh’s sister Deidre is also a talented musician
Scotland's music: Katie McNally: Flourish
cathie ryan: the farthest wave
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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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.


you may also want to see
Emily Smith, Jamie McClennan, and Robert Burns

Three Fiddle CDs for Fall

Green Fields of America

-->If you'd like to support my creative work at Music Road and elsewhere,
here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this.Thank you.