Saturday Níos Deanna @ Masters of Tradition
Neil Ó Loclainn’s Cuar
Neil Ó Loclainn [double bass, flute]
Aoife Ní Bhríain [fiddle]
Matthew Berrill [clarinets]
‘Three young musicians – rooted in the Irish tradition but with open minds and generous frames of reference …it’s a long-awaited, ear-craningly beautiful missive from the new post-genre frontier.’Cormac Larkin, The Irish Times
Cuar is an Irish chamber music ensemble led by Neil Ó Loclainn, the founder of Ensemble Ériu. The project explores chamber composition and improvisation within the framework of Irish traditional music. Citing influences as varied as Tommy Potts, Tony MacMahon, sean-nós singing and uilleann pipe music, on the one hand; and the Karnatic (South Indian) music tradition, composers like Morton Feldman, Bela Bartok and downtown jazz on the other, the music disavows the idea of genre to create a boundary less style rich in melodic detail. In April 2017 Cuar released their debut album Roscanna.