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The Hedge Masters

Peter Browne

Dubliner Peter Browne began playing traditional music at the age of six. He received tuition in the uilleann pipes from three of the great players of modern times, Séamus Ennis, Leo Rowsome and Willie Clancy. By the time he was a teen-ager, he was already acknowledged as a leading player of the instrument. In his youth he attended many of the major traditional music events of the time with his family and frequently visited Miltown Malbay, Co Clare, home of Willie Clancy, and Lisheen, Gneeveguilla, Co Kerry, staying in the home of Denis Murphy, the famous Sliabh Luachra fiddle player, who was a family friend.

In the early 1970s he played with the group, 1691, which was a forerunner of The Bothy Band. He later spent two periods playing pipes and flute with The Bothy Band.

Peter has played music in North America and in many countries in Europe at concerts, lectures and recitals. He made two groundbreaking albums of music and song in the 1980s with Philip King on the Gael-Linn label, Rince Gréagach and Seacht Nóiméad Déag chun a Seacht.

He has played as a session musician on recordings by Paul Brady, Maura O' Connell, Mary Black, Mick Hanley, The Dubliners, Scullion and Cór Chúil Aodha. He has also been part of various ventures in modern experimental music and has played the works of Bill Whelan, Michael Holahan, Roger Doyle and Paddy Meegan.

He has featured as soloist with the National Symphony Orchestra and with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra on their 1998 tour of North America and in the series Music in the Classroom. He was the soloist with the Ulster Orchestra in a performance in the Waterfront Hall in Belfast on St Patrick’s Day 2001 of The Brendan Voyage by Shaun Davey, and played the same work with the National Youth Orchestra of Ireland. He performed on the Millennium stage in 2000 in the Kennedy Centre, Washington DC. He frequently attends gatherings of uilleann pipers and summer schools as guest teacher, lecturer and performer. In May 2003, he was a guest musician with the Chieftains in two memorial concerts for harper Derek Bell, held in Dublin and Belfast.

He has twice been the winner of the Oireachtas uilleann-piping competition (The Breandán Breathnach Trophy in 1994 and 1998). He also won the prize for slow-air playing in both years.

He currently works in RTÉ Radio One. His most recent projects have included researching, presenting and producing a series of documentary programmes on the lives and music of famous traditional players such as Séamus Ennis, Willie Clancy, Pádraig O' Keeffe, Denis Murphy, Elizabeth Crotty and 19th century traditional music collector Canon James Goodman. He produces a number of programmes for RTÉ Radio including Ceili House and The Rolling Wave and in the past has produced series of programmes presented by various people, including Dublin singer Frank Harte.

He has produced a series of commercial CDs for RTÉ which feature rare recordings of traditional music from the RTÉ Sound Archives. The latest of these are The Return from Fingal, which features old recordings of the piper, Séamus Ennis, made over a 40-year period, including extensive biographical and musical notes; Elizabeth Crotty - Concertina Music from West Clare, a compilation of rare recordings by a famous musician from the West of Ireland, and Labhrás Ó Cadhla, Amhráin ó Shliabh gCua, a collection of songs by a famous Waterford sean-nós singer.

He also teaches uilleann pipes, flute and tin-whistle at the DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama.

Karen McDermott

Karen McDermott is a singer and musician who combines a range of influences including folk, traditional and blues. A graduate of the Ballyfermot Rock School, she was awarded a scholarship to study with Fonties Pop Academie in the Netherlands and toured with the Muzone European project. Karen has recently attained a Masters degree in Songwriting and Education from the University of Sussex and her band is promoted by Primal Jelly Social Club and On the Verge.

Last summer she toured Ireland with Cathy Davey, and supported Fionn Regan and Mark Geary playing Knockanstockan and the Shake Festival. She runs regular children’s workshops on creative music for children, and is booked this year to play at Electric Picnic and Bestival.

Johnny Morrissey

Dance master Johnny Morrisey, who is also a well-known concertina player, is one of the featured instructors on the DVD, Irish Set Dancing Made Easy.

He dates his interest in the dance form – which is said to have descended from the French quadrille – to his childhood in Tipperary, where he learned the steps first by watching his parents, relatives and neighbours stepping it out.

He has taught many calsses in the Dublin area in recent years, and has a long association with the Cumann Merriman Summer School, where he teaches classes and organises the nightly ceilí.

Gerry O’Connor

Gerry O'Connor

A founding member of Skylark, Gerry O’Connor is from Dundalk and comes from a long line of fiddle players in the northeast from whom he has inherited a rich tradition. He is also influenced by John Joe Gardiner, the great Sligo fiddle player, who lived in Dundalk for many years.

His unique personal style and splendidly fluid bow-hand, combined with technical virtuosity, have brought him to concert stages throughout the world and have earned him international renown. He recorded four albums with Skylark and toured Europe with the band for 10 years. He has also produced a number of solo, live and collaborative albums.

He currently teaches music in the Dundalk Institute of Technology.

See: www.gerryoconnor.net

Mick O'Connor

Mick O’Connor is originally from the Liberties area of Dublin where many of Dublin’s piping families lived. Mick is a well-known flute player, archivist, researcher and music historian. As a musician, he has broadcast and recorded with Seán Keane of Chieftains’ fame and Charlie Lennon. In the 1960s, he was leader of the famed Castle Céilí Band.

A former Assistant Secretary and President of the Association of Irish Traditional Musicians, he is a popular lecturer and teacher at the Willie Clancy Summer School and Scoil Éigse at Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann. Since the 1980s, Mick has conducted interviews with many prominent traditional musicians, and has saved for posterity one of the largest collections of archival photographs of older traditional musicians.

A founder member of An Coiste Ceoil, an advisory committee on matters relating to Irish music for CCÉ, he was closely involved in the production of two seminal recordings in a joint CCÉ/Gael-Linn venture titled "Seoda Ceoil" featuring among others, Seán Keane, Willie Clancy, Séamus Ennis, John Kelly and John Joe Gannon. He was invited to join the steering committee of the Irish Traditional Music Archive sponsored by the Arts Council.

For many years, Mick was involved in the design and production of LPs, CDs, videos and books relating to Irish music. Among the books and tutors he was involved with were: The Golden Eagle, a whistle tutor celebrating the life of Denis O'Brien; Harry Bradshaw's Michael Coleman, Charlie Lennon's Musical Memories, John Cullinane's series of six books on Irish Dancing, Kathleen Nesbitt's Fiddle Tutor, and more recently, Marie Garvey's trilogy of books relating to Connaught.

In 2008, he was honoured for his work in Irish music in Corofin, Co Clare as a recipient of a 'Hall of Fame' award. He was also the subject of a 'Sé mo Laoch' programme with tributes from Seán Keane, Michael Tubridy, Charlie Lennon, Des Geraghty and Tony Mac Mahon.

Kathleen Smyth

Kathleen Smyth, from Co Antrim, was taught the fiddle as a child by Madam May Nesbitt, from Belfast.She frequently cameto Dublin forweekends in the early 1970s and as soon as she arrived in the city she would go straight over to O’Donoghue’s Pub in Merrion Rowto play music with the two great Clare fiddlers, Joe Ryan and John Kelly.

Kathleen finally moved toDublin in 1971, and continued to play regularly with Joe Ryan and John Kelly, initially in O’Donohues but later in The Four Seasons.

In Dublin Kathleen shared a flat with Peg McGrath, a great flute player from Boyle, Co Roscommon. With Mary Mulholland, also from Co Antrim, Kathleen and Peg made a CD entitled Cherish the Ladies.

Kathleen later married and moved to Ashbourne, Co Meath where she played regularly with Joe Ryan in Becks pub outside Ashbourne before his death in March 2008. She has taught fiddle at the Willie Clancy Summer School for a number of years and teaches in the Seamus Ennis Centre in the Naul every Saturday morning.

She often visits her home county, Antrim, where she plays with local musicians in Ballycastle.

Nicholas O’Carolan

Nicholas O’Carolan is co-founder and director of the Irish Traditional Music Archive; lecturer and writer on Irish traditional music; presenter of The Irish Phonograph radio series and Come West Along the Road, RTÉ television series; secretary of the Folk Music Society of Ireland; lecturer at Trinity College, Dublin; and author of A Harvest Saved, the definitive work on Francis O’Neill and his crucial role in the preservation of Irish traditional music.

Manus O’Riordan

Manus O’Riordan is head of research at SIPTU. He has written extensively on the history of Ireland’s War of Independence and the Spanish Civil War, as well as on Irish and Irish-American labour history. A member of the National Economic and Social Council, he also serves on the Economic and Employment Committee of the European Trade Union Confederation.

Manus is a frequent participant at the Clé Club and is known for his original and entertaining background research and songs, often in several languages, with which he illustrates his given themes.

Francis Devine

Francis Devine is a distinguished labour historian and was a tutor in SIPTU’s Education and Training Department. He is a former editor of Saothar, the journal of the Irish Labour History Society, of which he is a past President.

Francis is a poet and singer who performs often at the Clé Club.

Nuala Hayes

Nuala Hayes began her theatrical career in the Abbey Theatre, where she was a company member for five years. Actor, storyteller and broadcaster, Nuala relates and performs stories from legends, myths and folk tales. She was founder/director of Scéalta Shamhna, Dublin’s Storytelling Festival, which she ran for ten years, and has performed at festivals throughout Ireland, in the UK, Denmark, Sweden, the USA and Canada. In 2003 she was artist in residence in County Laois and subsequently produced the RTÉ Radio One Series “Tales from the Crossroads” celebrating the oral tradition of the midlands. More redently she has also played leading roles in New Theatre’s adaptation of The Tailor and Anstry and The Well of the Saints and End of the Beginning by by Séan O’Casey with the Big Telly Theatre Company.

Dónall Ó Braonáin

Dónall Ó Braonáin is a journalist and critic, with a particular interest in the writings of Breandán Ó hEithir and Máirtín Ó Cadhain.
He lives in Conamara and is on the editorial staff of Raidió na Gaeltachta.

Vincent Woods

Vincent Woods is a poet and playwright from Co Leitrim. His plays include John Hughdy/Tom John (Galway, Druid Theatre Company, 1991); At the Black Pig’s **** (Druid Theatre Company, 1992); Song of the Yellow Bittern (Druid Theatre Company, 1994); Fontamara (adaptation from the novel by Ignazio Silone, Collins Barracks, Dublin, Vesuvius Theatre Company, 1998); and A Cry From Heaven (Dublin, The Abbey Theatre, 2005, published London, Methuen, 2005); and for radio, The Leitrim Hotel.

He has staged Winter (Dublin, Projects Arts Centre, 2005), a version of an original play by Jon Fosse; and an adaptation of King Ubu by Alfred Jarry (Galway, 2006).

His poetry is collected as The Colour of Language (Dublin, The Dedalus Press, 1994): and Lives and Miracles, with drawings by Charles Cullen (Galway, Arlen House, 2006/Syracuse University, 2006).

He has won several awards, including The Stewart Parker Award for Drama, 1993; the PJ O’Connor Award for Radio Drama, and the M.J. McManus Award for Poetry.

A member of Aosdána, he until recently hosted the RTÉ programme The Arts Show

Neilidh Mulligan

Néillidh Mulligan has won All-Ireland titles throughout his lifetime, has toured extensively and has represented Ireland at various festivals throughout Europe. He is a founding member, patron and former chairman of Na Píobairí Uilleann – The Society of Uilleann Pipers.

In 1991 he released his debut solo album Barr Na Cúille – described as “one of the definitive recordings of uilleann piping” – to great critical acclaim, both at home and abroad, and includes some of Néillidh’s own compositions.

His second solo album, The Leitrim Thrush, which includes a track of the unique fiddle-playing of his father, Tom, was voted the Best Traditional Album and the Best Solo Album of 1997 by the readers of Irish Music Magazine.

He was selected to perform in the musical stage production The Well during the Dublin Theatre Festival in October 2000. More recently, he collaborated with the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra for the music of the film When Harry Became a Tree.

Groups

Máirín Johnston and the “Liberty Belles”

Liberty Belles’ is an informal name for a group of women from the south inner city who first came together in an adult education class called Fun With Words in the Aungier Street community centre. Máirín Johnston, author of Around the Banks of Pimlico and Dublin Belles, was an early guest speaker asked to talk about Dublin’s Liberties.

She found several former classmates in the class, and suggested that as well as improving their English, they might as well go on to improve their Irish. Since then members of the group have gone on together to explore song, music, arts, history, and literature.

All singers and performers, they have established themselves as an annual feature on Bloomsday, when they dress in period costume and take over the back room in Davy Byrne’s pub with Joycean songs and readings from Ulysses.

An Góilín

The Góilín Traditional Singer's Club celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2009. The Club was founded by Tim Dennehy and his brother-in-law Donal de Barra to give a platform for people who like to sing and listen to traditional Irish songs.

The Góilín’s motto is: “there is no standard set”, not in the singing anyway. We set a very high standard in listening. The rule of the club is: if someone is singing, reciting or performing in any way, total attention is given to the performance. Experience over the years has taught us that it doesn’t work any other way.

Anyone who has an interest in listening to, or performing songs will find that they are “as welcome as the flowers in May”.

The club meets every Friday night (with some exceptions) and breaks for the summer. The current schedule can be found on www.goilin.com. Everyone who attends is expected to contribute to the box when it goes around. A minimum contribution of €3 is expected.

BAPAM

BAPAM (the British Association for Performing Arts Medicine) is a unique charity delivering specialist health support to performing artists. Based in Britain where it has run specialist clinics since 1984 the organistation has recently been extending its services to Ireland where Dr Juliet Bressan, who is also a classical musician and writer, offers free, confidential health assessments for professional, semi-professional and student performing artists.

All BAPAM’s doctors are trained to high specifications in the specialised area of performing arts medicine. BAPAM has initiated a programme of health and safety talks for schools and colleges of the performing arts where students are advised on important, but often overlooked, aspects of performance relating to posture, ergonomics and safe practice.

Most BAPAM patients are musicians, but actors, dancers and variety artists can also get help with conditions ranging through muscle strain, voice loss, hearing impairment, anxiety, stress and addiction.

BAPAM ran an advice stall and short exercise classes at LHS 2009 and we hope to expand on this theme in 2010 and future Hedge Schools.

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