I tend to take pictures quickly at concerts – I’m concerned that I may miss something, and I also feel a little self-conscious – so they generally don’t turn out well. Such was the case at the Session with the Pipers concert in the Cobblestone at the beginning of March. The concertina player Noel Hill’s performance was exceptional; I knew I wanted to capture it; I took a hurried snap. Such dark, grainy, blurred mobile phone pictures are becoming my personal diary of the music I hear.
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The Journey of Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh
In the summer of 2007, fiddle-player Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh didn’t bring his new album to the Willie Clancy Summer School:
I haven’t put Where the One-Eyed Man is King in shops. I didn’t bring it down to the Willie Clancy week. I don’t think people in traditional music here would be interested in it. It’s only for sale at certain gigs and on the internet. I wouldn’t even sell it at certain gigs because I know if you sell it to somebody from a really traditional background they are not going to be interested. They are going to say, what the hell is this?
All to Play For: A Challenge for Music and Musicians
It’s light, tentative and short, but I listen closely to every word. I’m talking about the moment at the end of a concert, when a member of the audience approaches you. The conversation is about making a connection beyond the stage rather than discussing anything in detail, but that immediate period post-concert is a raw moment for a performer; even a few words can stay with you.
‘You know, my daughter used to play violin, I wish she had kept it up. It’s a wonderful thing to be able to do. I sent her because I Continue reading
Music and the Betrayal of Ireland
On BBC Radio 3’s CD Review, it seems that the greatest compliment a reviewer can give a conductor is that a passage is ‘beautifully understated’. I was reminded of this a couple of months ago when the conductor David Brophy appeared on RTÉ Radio 1. He was leaving his role with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra after seven years and was asked to pick out three highlights. Alongside concerts with Lang Lang and Jon Lord, he picked the premiere of Dave Flynn’s Concerto for Traditional Irish Musician, Aontacht, performed by Martin Hayes.
‘It had more of a punch to it…. Only a few days before… the IMF arrived into Dublin… as a nation we were all feeling quite low.’
Beautifully understated.
The concert took place on 24 November 2010. Six days before, the International Monetary Fund had arrived to negotiate the country’s bailout. Two winters before, Continue reading
A Connection Like a Full Moon
Is increased audience participation the great musical trend of our time?
In Backnang, southern Germany, a concert reaches for the finish line. We settle on a simple, short hornpipe as an encore, something unrehearsed. The audience perceives a shift. Convention slips away. They feel for the pulse in the piece and start to clap along, their stamping travels under us. It feels like a release. The room is one, a connection like a full moon. They shift from being spectator to creator, the music carrying the expression of over one hundred rather than two. ‘They’ve been waiting to do that all night,’ another musician says afterwards.
Three months on, it is a memorable moment – audience participation doesn’t always work, but when music manages to balance itself on a wave of communal energy, it is a powerful thing.
For much of human history, we were all participators in music. With no recordings or easy access to professional performances, music was more Continue reading
How Can We Connect to the Musical Life Around Us?
For a little more than a year, my colleagues and I in The Journal of Music have been involved in an online experiment. In November of 2012, we launched a listings service, but not a standard music listings service with just concerts. We aspired to create a system that was flexible enough to accommodate a broader range of musical activity, that would, for example, attract every type of musical format and all sizes too, from the informal community workshop to the big annual festival.
My personal motivation was an interest in the diversity of the musical life around us, how the digital world can make us more aware of it, and what will happen once we, as musicians and audiences, become more fully aware of the range of musical opportunities that are all around us all the time.
This interest goes back to the original print magazine, JMI: The Journal of Music in Ireland, which I founded in 2000. It combined writing on traditional, folk, classical, jazz, contemporary classical music and more, partly because I was trying to challenge the traditional hierarchy of genres – with classical music at the top and folk at the bottom – but also because I was trying to present a more accurate picture of the musical life around us.
It was an idea that connected well with the emerging digital world. Very soon, iTunes, MySpace and YouTube had all but demolished the notion of a hierarchy of genres – in the digital world anyway. Similarly, The Journal of Music listings service took an open approach, in that all events would be on an equal level, without categorisation by genre or scale.
An island of plenty
To date, there have been almost 3,000 listings uploaded. What was striking from the start was the number of events taking place. Ireland is known for having a lively and intense musical life (perhaps because of its size and the fact that it is an island), but we could not conceive of just how busy it is.
From Polka to Polska: Olov Johansson, Tom Morrow, Gerry O’Beirne and Conor Byrne
I am looking at another wretched economic chart in the newspaper, a numerical history of the Celtic Tiger, full of nine-zero figures, rises and falls, if onlys, told you sos and excuses, when my eye reaches the summer of 2006. What an intense period that was, the graph line almost hitting the top of the chart. After that, things aren’t so spectacular. Never mind. Here’s something more interesting than economics: did you know that around 2006 there Continue reading
Crossing the Shannon: Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh, John Wynne, John McEvoy and John Blake
How often do we consider the significance of crossing Ireland’s longest river? For centuries, the Shannon was a divider in this country, separating Connacht from the rest of Ireland, and often key to its defence. Now the water’s impact is concealed, a ten-second flash of blue expanse as you travel across it on the motorway. The Shannon’s Continue reading
The Living Stream: Matt Cranitch, Jackie Daly and John Faulkner
It is the spring of 1996, mid-morning. Standing in the kitchen of my apartment, the kettle is boiling. As it gradually quietens and slows to its ‘click’, a track of violin and piano comes into aural focus. I had put on Matt Cranitch’s 1984 LP, Éistigh Seal,as I left the sitting room, and overwhelmed by the sound of boiling water, it was half-way through the opening air, ‘An raibh tú ag an gcarraig?’ (‘Were you at the rock?’), before I could hear it. I’d listened to it before of course, but some of the most magical recordings are often like new neighbours. You see them often, but never really connect. Then one day, for whatever reason, you engage with them, and you wonder why you never did Continue reading
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Entrepreneur
Funding for the arts is essential, but without the right approach it can blunt artists’ entrepreneurial skills.
Mary is an artist and she has an idea. Something big. An arts venture that could make a real splash, nationally, internationally, the lot. It could also earn her money. Serious money. She would be her own boss. She would employ and inspire artists, connect them with new audiences, and really make a difference. She won’t let anyone stop her. Her heart is beating with excitement. She is going to do it before anyone else does. Just you wait.
Toner Quinn 