In a live broadcast from the Oireachtas festival in Co. Donegal last year, following a brief, jocular interview with the television host, fiddle-player Ciarán Ó Maonaigh seemed to step into a different personality. Standing four-square on front of the camera, eyes wide open and fixed on his fingers, bow pressing unconventionally hard against the strings, he presented a robust, almost aggressive treatment of a selection of reels. The performance Continue reading
Category Archives: The Journal of Music
The Songs We Don’t Sing
I have been watching, in amazement, the cartoon Wonder Pets on the Nickelodeon children’s television channel.
Demonstrating the benefits of teamwork, Linny the guinea pig, Tuck the turtle, and Ming-Ming the duckling (Ming-Ming is everyone’s favorite, and mine, too) save an animal in trouble—sometimes a dolphin, sometimes a monkey, sometimes a bee—in every episode, and feats of great collaboration are always required.
Our Technological Land of Oz
For nine years, I have been poised as a magazine publisher, ready to leap into the virtual world entirely. From about 2006, I was expecting it every month. It has yet to happen. Earlier this year I witnessed another magazine, not unlike ours – one that I regularly flicked through – go online and I stopped reading it entirely. No one will find Continue reading
The Most Mod Con
At a certain point in the 1980s, in the BBC Four television programme Electric Dreams, the piano in the front room disappeared. No explanation. No comment. Some people may find that hard to accept. I know I do.
The series, broadcast in autumn, explored how technological developments transformed British homes in the Continue reading
Chain of Envy
In the New Music Connoisseur in May, the centenarian US composer Elliott Carter, commenting on why his music is better known in England than his homeland, said: ‘…contemporary music is very much more accepted in England than it is here, in general for many different reasons, but one of them is that it’s just been played more and Continue reading
When Parents Stop Singing to Their Kids
I have been watching, in amazement, the cartoon Wonder Pets on the children’s television channel, Nickelodeon. Demonstrating the benefits of teamwork, Linny the guinea pig, Tuck the turtle and Ming-Ming the duckling (Ming-Ming is everyone’s favourite, and mine too) save a pet in trouble in every episode; sometimes a dolphin, Continue reading
Traditional-music criticism
There are many issues involved in writing about music, some of which are addressed in this issue in articles by John McLachlan and Bob Gilmore, but traditional-music criticism has problems all of its own.
Dermy Diamond, Tara Diamond and Dáithí Sproule
The fiddle-playing of Dermy Diamond is the revelation on this trio recording. Although a familiar figure on the Irish traditional music scene, this is the first recording that carries his name. Spontaneous, inventive, sometimes almost carefree, his busyness in the corners of tunes brings the fiddle to the surface of the music again and again.
The Art of Money
How are arts organisations and artists going to get through this recession? This is hardly an ideal time to ask this; the right time was a couple of years before it happened. Nonetheless, as budgets continue to disintegrate, we have to start seriously discussing the funding of artists and arts organisations, and how we are going protect it – what’s Continue reading
The Long Note Tour: Tony MacMahon/Angelina Carberry/Allan MacDonald
Names of tunes are repeatedly forgotten by traditional musicians. There are just so many. Yet a small number of titles manage to affix themselves permanently, are always easily recalled, and for no obvious reason. ‘The Long Note’, a three-part single-jig of unknown authorship, which gives this unique Music Network tour its name, is one Continue reading
Toner Quinn 