Stories from the Old World - Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh, Mick O'Brien, IMO Quartet, Clíona Doris & Clare McCague
Thursday 28th November 2019 | 8pm – 10:30pm | The Ballroom | Ticket €10
Farmleigh Music and Arts Festival - Concert 1
Stories from the Old World – Ceol Nua for Voice, Pipes, String Quartet and Harps
“We have entered a new era in Irish music, in which a language based on traditional music and song is producing extraordinary work across genres” – Toner Quinn (Journal of Music)
Farmleigh Composer-in-Residence Dave Flynn invites you to enter a new world conjured from ancient Irish sounds, in an unprecedented gathering of leading Irish musicians.
Kerry Slides and Polkas dance with the minimalism of Steve Reich when the luminous voice of Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh and the majestic piping of Mick O’Brien merge magnificently with the Irish Memory Orchestra String Quartet in Flynn’s 'Stories from the Old World'. Flynn redeems the reputation of Kerry story-teller Peig Sayers by setting her unsanitised words of wit, wisdom and poetry to a pulsating, ground-breaking score.
Calmly Awaiting the End is a moving tribute to 1916 revolutionary Éamonn Ceannt, which casts O’Brien as Ceannt the piper, battling the bowed forces of the IMO String Quartet [Maria Ryan, Lucia MacPartlin, Niamh Varian-Barry, Maria O’Connor).
The Cranning is a “tremendously exciting” (Irish Examiner) work praised for its “power and grittiness”. (New York Times).
Virtuoso harpists Cliona Doris and Clare McCague round out the event by performing beautiful modern Irish harp music including works by Brian Boydell and Joan Trimble.