Recent Traditional Fiddle Recordings
There has been a number of CDs of fiddle music released recently, each featuring the instrument on its own but in a different manner.
Gerry Harrington
After many years of recording with other musicians such as Peter Horan, Charlie Piggott, Eoghan O’Sullivan and Paul de Grae, Gerry Harrington has released his first solo album, At Home. Harrington is unaccompanied throughout bar a few tunes where a second track of his own playing features. The music chosen pays tribute to the his Sliabh Luchra origins and in particular to Pádraig O’Keeffe in the slow airs ‘The Old Man Rocking the Cradle’ and ‘The Banks of the Danube’, and in the seven part jig, ‘Gallagher’s’ — a version of ‘The Frieze Britches’ and the song ‘Cúnla’.
The sleeve notes are academically detailed on tune origins and on Harrington’s sources, live, notated and recorded, for the tunes, reflecting his ‘conscious and respectful’ attitude to his background, as Nioclás Mac Amhlaoibh writes in the introductory note.
MacDara Ó Raghallaigh
MacDara Ó Raghallaigh’s debut CD, Ego Trip, no doubt ironically titled, was recorded over two nights in front of a live (but well behaved) audience in Newtown, County Kildare. It features many Vincent Broderick tunes, including ‘The Milky Way’, ‘The Ring Around the Moon’, and ‘The Haunted House’, and as Ó Raghallaigh puts it ‘a heap of tunes that do me good!’ including ‘Sporting Nell’, ‘Rolling in the Ryegrass’ and ‘Páidín Ó Raifeartaigh’.
The bi-lingual sleeve notes are not as detailed as Harrington’s, more personal reflections and comments, but give a sense of the man’s humour and fondness for the music. Antóin MacGabhan comments in the notes that ‘the unaccompanied sound of the fiddle makes for clear listening and it will be of particular interest not just to followers of the music but to students of the fiddle everywhere.’
Derek McGinley and Tara Connaghan
Derek McGinley from Glencolmcille and Tara Connaghan from Glenties are shortly launching their debut CD The Far Side of the Glen. Connaghan and McGinley have played together for many years in sessions, on stage and in various projects, including RTE’s The Raw Bar series. Focusing solely on fiddle music from south-west Donegal, they say it features tunes ‘rarely heard outside south west Donegal’. Contrasting their ‘back-to-basics approach’ with the ‘world of over-produced CDs’, this one was recorded over two days in a cottage near Carrick, County Donegal. ‘We wanted to leave the music as natural as possible, just in the way and environment we normally play - which isn’t a perfect sounding recording studio,’ says Connaghan. ‘I love the sound of the foot tapping, it’s like the heart beat of Irish music so we’ve left that in.’
Published on 1 November 2011
