Maurice Lennon's First Solo Fiddle Album

Maurice Lennon

Maurice Lennon's First Solo Fiddle Album

The 2011 iBAM Musician of the Year at the Irish American Heritage Centre, Maurice Lennon has recently released his first solo fiddle album, The Little Ones, on the Cló Iar-Chonnacht label.

It includes the compositions by Lennon ‘The Road to Garrison’ reel (which he puts with ‘The Blackberry Blossom’); ‘The Belltable Waltz’ which he composed with Mick Hanrahan in Brogan’s Bar in Ennis in the early 1980s, and which he plays here in a set with ‘The Humours of Tulla’ featuring the playing of both his father, Ben, and his uncle, Charlie on fiddle; the title track, an air, which was part of the original material that he composed for his Brian Boru music; and three other airs,  ‘A Letter Home’, ‘When Hope Dies’, and ‘If Ever You Were Mine’ (first recorded by Cherish the Ladies, and later by Natalie MacMaster and the Nova Scotia Symphony Orchestra).

There is one live track, a version of ‘The Gold Ring’ played at a concert in Ballagh Hall in the Lennon home village of Rossinver, County Leitrim, and featuring his brother Brian on flute and Garry Ó Briain on guitar. Other notable tracks include the reel ‘The Killarney Boys of Pleasure’ which Lennon gives its northern title, ‘Gweebarra Bridge’; the reel ‘Colonel Frazier’s’; the jig sets of ‘Carraroe’ with ‘The Frost is All Over’ and ‘The Road to Ballinakill’ with ‘Bill Collins’s’ (which Lennon explains has been part of his repertoire ‘for so long that I can’t recall where I learned them, although I do know that the second tune is named after the father of Dan Collins, of Shanachie Records fame’.

Here is the set with ‘The Belltable’ and ‘The Humours of Tulla’. 

cic.ie

Published on 18 June 2013

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