Quiet Lights festival announces Myles O'Reilly as the featured artist

Quiet Lights has announced the lineup for its second year celebrating the new wave of Irish and International folk, traditional, and experimental talent. Previously announced names on the line-up include Rozi Plain, Peter Broderick, Ye Vagabonds with Brìghde Chaimbeul, Anna Mieke, Cormac Begley with Liam O’Connor, Lankum, Junior Brother, and there’s so much more.

Now, the Islander festival are announcing the Featured Artist for 2019, filmmaker and director Myles O’Reilly.

“The decision to choose Myles as Quiet Lights' Featured Artist 2019 was a very easy one," explained Jonathan Pearson, the Director of Quiet Lights. "The festival exists to showcase the very best in the new wave of Irish folk and traditional music, and it could be argued that Myles has been the most important person in bringing this movement forward, with his talent and films giving these young artists a platform they wouldn't have had without him.”

Music video and documentary filmmaker Myles O’Reilly unintentionally began his career by combining three previous vocations to form a new hobby while unemployed in the global recession. A gofer with RTE, a photographer and photographic printer, and a recording artist signed to Sony Music Publishing and V2 records UK, in 2009 Myles borrowed a video camera to document local musicians performances and upload the footage to Youtube.

“There's a culture still alive in Ireland of people who seek out, enjoy, and promote Irish traditional and folk music," said O'Reilly. "Whether as music fans sharing their discoveries with friends, or promoters like Jon and Islander, that do better still and facilitate events for new, exciting and progressive trad and folk musicians to meet, perform, be seen and heard by many.

"I'd like to think I do the same with film as a method to promote emerging Irish music. Having worked with Islander on the film Backwards To Go Forwards, it was evident we complement each other. There's a community forming of like-minded Irish music enthusiasts, ready to put all their energies into nurturing and cultivating the right soil for emerging Irish music to grow, and I'm honoured to have a role.”

O’Reilly has filmed, directed, and edited, over 100 music video promos and more than 20 music documentaries of Irish musicians at home and abroad, including Glen Hansard, Villagers, Imelda May, The Script, James Vincent McMorrow, Sinead O’Connor, Lisa Hannigan and Mick Flannery. He's also worked with international artists such as Janelle Monae, Hollywood soundtrack virtuoso Ernst Reijseger, Icelandic artists Soléy, Múm and Amiina, and a long list of many rising and emerging artists.

Officially launching the Quiet Lights weekender, Myles O’Reilly will host the public premiere of his 25 minute piece Tenore Cuncordu Orosei in collaboration with Ernst Reijseger at The Kino, Washington Street, 6pm, Thursday 22nd November.

A programme of further screenings of Myles’ work will take place over the course of the weekend, and Myles will appear as a guest speaker on various panel discussions at the festival. The full details will be announced soon when the festival release their conversations strand, which will feature thought-provoking commentaries and discussions covering a number of topics. More information can be found on the Quiet Lights website.

Watch Backwards to Go Forwards here: