After selling out two new year concerts at The Point, Christy Moore has announced a further brace of dates, on January 5 and 6.
I have a feeling in my waters though, that this could get epic yet. There has always been a larger-than-life quality to Christy and to his music.
Following that storming run at The Point in 1995, when something magical happened, there’s a sense that lightning might just strike twice.
Meanwhile, TG4 is to screen a new run of its trad series, Geantrai, this autumn. Among the artists appearing are Peader Ó Riada, Marcas Ó Murchú, Conor Keane, Mary Bergin, P.J Hernon, Donnacha Gough, Liz Doherty, Con O’Driscoll, Mary Staunton, Gary Hastings, Paul O’Shaughnessy, Tola Custy and Gerry O’Connor.
This time each broadcast will be presented by a local musician, from pub venues in counties Cork, Clare, Waterford, Roscommon, Dublin, Donegal, Galway, Mayo, Louth and Antrim.
Amazingly, the series has aired since the station first launched, proving there is still a hunger for music played in a real setting, without anyone feeling the need to glitz it up.
In addition to her recent Spirit Store show in Dundalk, Cathie Ryan is playing a slew of dates round the country, including outings at An Chulturlann in Belfast on October 22, Glor in Ennis on October 23rd and Wexford Arts Centre, October 25. Ryan released a pretty tasty album earlier this year. It should be a joy to see these tracks and older favourites given the live treatment.
Flook’s new album, Haven, is finished. Conscious of their upcoming 10th anniversary, the band have been racing against the clock to get it mixed and mastered. After a few late nights they did so, and are, by their own admission, really happy with it.
The official release date is November 7th. They’ll be giving it a rollicking send-off that evening, with a London show at The Purcell Room on the South Bank, (there are rumour of an after-show party to go to the grave for).
If you can’t wait until then, the album will be available on the band’s website with a delivery time of a mere fortnight.
Haven features some great new tunes and some fantastic guests, including Ewen Vernal (bass) and Seckou Keita (percussion), who guested with the band on ‘Rubai’. Also featuring are Leon Hunt on five-string banjo and the brilliant Padraig Rynne on concertina.
Catriona McKay contributes some harp, Andy Davies lays down a little Hammond organ and Mark Tucker went without his cocoa to make sure there was a little e-bow acoustic guitar in the final mix.
Not content with finishing off a Flook album, Brian Finnegan has also been out and about with his own side project ‘Brian Finnegan and Friends'. Featuring amongst his ‘Friends’ for these commando style outings has been Lasairfhiona Ni Chonaola, whose recently released Flame of Wine album has been creating a few ripples.
Finnegan will be able to catch up with former bandmate Shane Power as both Flook and The Guggenheim Grotto feature on the bill for the Imagine festival in Waterford on the October bank holiday weekend.
They’ll also be setting fire to the Green Room in Dublin’s Holiday Inn on Bonfire Night, November 5 and getting jiggy with it in Glor, Ennis on the following night.
Aiken Promotions' adventures in the outer reaches of world music continue apace. Despite the disappointment of a cancelled show from the Spanish Harlem Orchestra, there is a Crawdaddy concert from A Hawk And A Hacksaw to look forward to. This solo project from Neutral Milk Hotel drummer Jeremy Barnes is difficult to describe. He visits Vicar Street on October 25.
Incorporating accordions, harps, ouds, Turkish cumbus, and jew harps, Barnes drops an impassioned bomb on traditional structures, mines feverishly through the wreckage and reassembles pieces with the attentive care given to holy relics. Drawing on influences as diverse as Eastern European folk music to Pierre Schaeffer to Spike Jones and his City Slickers, there’s a healthy disregard for boundaries at play here.
With a critically feted album in the bag there will be high expectations of its stripped back to the bare bones live incarnation.
Everything, though, retains a harmonic balance. A Hawk And A Hacksaw doesn’t break from musical history as much as sing its essential values in wholly new forms. With such a heady mix of styles on display in the music, it is of little surprise that A Hawk And A Hacksaw’s live show is a force to be reckoned with. The show displays Barnes' multi-instrumentalist virtuosity in all it glory, with him playing accordion, vocals and percussion (simultaneously!), accompanied by Heather Trost on violin, glockenspiel and melodica. It’s a musical journey across the most varied of terrain that dips in and out of modern composition and American and Eastern European folk traditions in Barnes’ own inimitable style.
Back on their home territory at Vicar Street, Aiken will be bringing Kate and Anna McGarrigle on a rare enough trip to these shores.
Idiosyncratic and, to use an often misused term, inimitable, there is no excuse for not getting to this gig. The Canadian duo has been recording in French of late but their intense live performances should have you riveted in any language.
On Sunday October 16, the Center for Irish Programs at Boston College celebrated 15 years of irish music, song, and dance by honoring Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin.
As a visiting ethnomusicology professor at Boston College, he conceived and organized the 1990 landmark Irish fiddle festival My Love Is In America on the Chestnut Hill campus.
The festival was an unprecedented gathering of pre-eminent Irish and Irish-American fiddlers residing in the United States. It served as a catalyst for the revival of interest in Irish traditional music in the New England area.
Punters in the US may have a few fresh Irish faces to admire next year as a couple of high profile booking agents and promoters made the 10 thousand mile round trip from California to West Belfast to check out the talent at the ‘Open House’ festival.
If you needed convicing as to the sheer essentialness of Kieran Gilmore’s booking policy for the festival, then surely this was it.
The visitors were a touch jittery beforehand.
Tensions in Belfast were generating international coverage, and concerns over their personal safety were starting to cause a few second thoughts.
By the time they left, however, they were highly impressed. It just remains to be seen whether the buzz words in L.A. next year are ‘bout ye’ and ‘stickin’ out’.