IN HER collaborations with the likes of Mary Black, Sharon Shannon and The Fallen Angels, Maire Breatnach has always invested their work with something extra special.

Her wonderful work with Cormac Breatnach and Niall O'Callanain in the group Meristem never reaped its expected or deserved rewards, but having listened several times to her solo debut, it can only be a matter of time before she is much more widely known and appreciated.

Angels Candles, takes its title from a poem by Maire Mhac an tSaoi, one of Ireland's finest contemporary poets, and sweeps through a wide stylistic arc, from slipjigs to waltzes, through clan marches and polkas. Excellence is the unifying thread in all this diversity, be it her strong vocals in 'Eist', shared with Liam and Colm O Maonlai, or the evocative fiddle and keyboard work of 'The Swans at Coole', her interpretation of the Yeatsian legend.

Maire's musical and compositional skill has won her many friends, among them the likes of Sharon Shannon, Stephen Cooney and Trevor Hutchinson who join her on many tracks. It is, though, a measure of her musical strength that they complement but never dominate what she does.

Angels Candles is an album blending the best of traditional and contemporary music, and is chock full of musical ideas, all of which work very well. But good and all as it is I feel it is but the first step along a road which, to mix metaphors, will see her climbing much higher mountains than this.

One of the brightest, shiniest albums of the year, it signals Maire Breatnach's ascent into the major league.

* Oliver P. Sweeney