The Limerick-based photographer, Stephen Power, has of late turned his lens on traditional Irish musicians, their instruments and instrument makers, and has assembled the resulting images into a book, Traditional Notes, soon to be published by the Liffey Press.

Instead of the more commonly encountered single portraits, this book features, in many cases, multiple images of the subjects in different poses and situations. Headline names include Martin Hayes, Dennis Cahill, Alec Finn, Noel Hill, Joe Burke, Frankie Gavin, Iarla Ó Lionáird, John Spillane, Paul Brady, Dónal Lunny, John Carty and Micheál Ó Súilleabháin, and bands De Dannan and Lúnasa. Instrument makers featured include Paddy Clancy (accordian), Malachy Kearns (bodhrán), Kuros Torkzadeh (violin) and Michael Vignoles (uilleann pipes).

Unusually, the book is structured in fifteen chapters, thirteen in alphabetical order by instrument, with the main content of each being portraits of, anecdotes about and notes on the musicians who play those instruments, and to a lesser extent the makers. There are two further chapters, one on live performance and one on Stephen himself.

Speaking to The Journal of Music, Power suggested that the multiple portraits and behind-the-scenes shots of the makers will hopefully enable people to get a fuller sense of where the music comes from.

Ellen Cranitch, of RTÉ Lyric FM, who writes the foreword, suggests, ‘The meeting of craft and art, the joy and intensity of playing music, the spell cast by fingers deft as a conjurer, are here in close-up.’

Traditional Notes will be published in November.

www.theliffeypress.com

Pictured: The violin maker Kuros Torkzadeh.