The fiddle player and composer Sandie Purcell has launched a new website with 180 of her compositions. The website includes notation for all tunes as well as recordings by uilleann piper Mark Redmond, fiddle player Zoë Conway, flute player and piper Louise Mulcahy, accordionist Derek Hickey, concertina player Caitlín Nic Gabhann and many more musical colleagues.

The new website at www.sandiepurcell.com contains a range of tune types including slow airs, hornpipes, jigs, slides, reels, and two extended descriptive pieces for solo pipes.

Launched by writer and musician Terry Moylan on 7 June at Na Píobairí Uilleann in Dublin, he noted that the collection ‘will enrich our music in many ways – contributing new material and setting an example of what Irish composers and Irish music are capable of.’

Purcell commented that the recordings on the site are ‘to give people an idea of the tune, but it’s a dream come true to have other musicians play them. This is my aim in creating this website. If even one tune makes it into the tradition, I’ll be over the moon! I hope that anyone who visits the website can find something that they wish to learn, play and pass on.’

Composition award
Purcell, from Kill in Co. Kildare, began learning the fiddle with Mary Greevy at age seven. She started composing at a young age and at thirteen won the IMRO Composition Award with the jig ‘The Crooked Picture’. She subsequently studied music at DIT Conservatory of Music and completed an MA in Composition at DCU as well as a HDip in Primary Education.

Between 2008 and 2013 she worked at Na Píobairí Uilleann and began playing uilleann pipes under the tutelage of Gay McKeon. She was subsequently commissioned by Dublin City Council to write ’The Battle of Clontarf’ for solo pipes that was performed by Mark Redmond. A short film of the piece was also made by Warrior Films Ireland.

Purcell was commissioned to write a tribute piece to the late Liam O’Flynn for the inaugural Féile Liam O’Flynn and was the Irish Traditional Music Archive’s ‘Composer of the Month’ in the Saothar series in 2022. She also recently published New Songs from Old Stories: New Piping Pieces & Ballad Airs, a collection of poetry selected by Terry Moylan and set to music by the composer.

In 2007, she published 101 Original Compositions of Irish Traditional Music by Sandie Purcell followed by the album The Crooked Picture in 2008 with the band Reelan. Purcell’s tunes have also appeared in Na Píobairí Uilleann’s periodical An Píobaire and in The Indignant Muse, Poetry and Songs of the Irish Revolution 1887–1926, edited by Terry Moylan.

To view the full tune collection, visit https://sandiepurcell.com.

Subscribe to our newsletter.