The Tipperary fiddler Eileen O’Brien has released a solo fiddle album entitled Aon le h’Aon dedicated to tunes composed by her late father Paddy O’Brien. Recorded in Middlewalk Studios in Cloughjordon by Peter Maher, the album also includes three traditional airs, namely ‘De Bharr na gCnoc’, ‘Bruach na Carraige Bána’, and ‘Easter Snow’.

In 2009 O’Brien published notation for her father’s music in The Definitive Collection of the Music of Paddy O’Brien 1922-1991, and afterwards received a lot of requests for a recording of the tunes.

O’Brien decided to record the album ‘to further the promotion of my father’s music’. She hopes it will also serve as a record of her own style of fiddle playing, which reflects that of her father (who is credited with developing the B/C style of accordion playing in traditional music) and grandfather, Dinny.

As O’Brien explains, her father composed over one hundred tunes during his lifetime. The first stage was in the late 1940s and early 1950s when he composed ‘Cooley’s Hornpipe’ and ‘Dinny O’Brien’s Reel’. The next period was on his return to Ireland from New York during the mid to late sixties when he composed the jigs ‘The Boys of Lough Gowna’ and ‘The New House’. O’Brien tells the story of how Paddy Ryan of Coolbawn in Co. Tipperary visited her father in 1965 and got these two tunes from him, only to go on to win the All-Ireland Fleadh in playing these tunes.

In the early 1970’s he composed the tunes that were included in the recording with Seamus Connolly and Charlie Lennon, The Banks of the Shannon. His most prolific period of composition occurred between the late 1970s until his death in 1991.

O’Brien will play tunes from the album this Sunday, 9 September at 6.30pm in Minogue’s of Tulla as part of the Tulla Trad Festival.  

paddyobrienbook.com/aon-le-haon.html