Label: Nyahh Records

CD版は版元完売!!素晴らし過ぎるフィドル録音!!アイルランド西部クレア州奥地出身のフィドル奏者兼作曲家にして、アルヴィン・ルシエの詩の引用、また即興演奏、サウンドアート、実験音楽に精通しながら、独自のアプローチとテクニックでトラディショナルソングの演奏を行うUltan O'Brien。初のソロ・アルバムが英Nyahh Recordsより出版。アコーディオン、パーカッション奏者のサポートのもと1800年代のアイルランド伝統音楽に挑んだ、純粋でありながらも先鋭的な激高内容。









Ultan O’Brien is a fiddle player and composer from the wilds of County Clare in the West of Ireland. Ultan is a performer as well as a regular at sessions all of Ireland and can be found by chance in any pub in Dublin, Cork or some remote village on the edge of nowhere, flying jigs and reels around the room. Ultan was reared in the rich tradition of Irish music which is so commonly found and heard in Co Clare, but he also delves deep into sound art and experimental music. He has often been heard in the back of a car after a few pints quoting lines from Alvin Lucier or speaking at length about improvisation and it’s place in modern Irish music. Ulatn O’Brien is a fresh and vital player who has much to offer with his unique approach and technique to a tradition so old and ever ready for a subtle change every 100 years or so.

Ultan has played and recorded with people and bands such as Skipper’s Alley, Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin, John Francis Flynn, Slow Moving Clouds, Cuar, Laura Jurd, Martin Green, Natalia Beylis, Paul Roe and Nic Gareiss.
‘in its [Ultan’s fiddle playing] sincerity of tone it reminds me somewhat of those great caoineadh which were played with such elusive grandeur by Denis Murphy and Pádraig O’Keefe’
Adrian Scahill

‘lets the heart brighten and the feet tap’
Richard Hollingum -KlofMag

ABOUT THIS WONDERFUL ALBUM:
This album, Dancing the Line, is my first solo album of music played on an alternatively-tune alto fiddle. I found that the resonance and growl of this lower tuned instrument sat me perfectly into the sound-world I wanted to be in, giving vibrancy to my own compositions and nestling into the traditional music I grew up with.


NOTES ON THE TUNES:

Game of Love This is a tune I’ve always associated with the fiddle playing of Pádraig Ó Keefe, born i Gleanntán, Kerry in 1887. Although many know it as The Girls of Farranfore, this title stuck with me after combing through David Lyth’s transcriptions in Bowing Styles in Irish Fiddle Playing when I was but a boy.

The Boyne Hunt Heard first from the Alan Lomax recording of Séamus Ennis in 1951, this is a tune that ha followed me around many sessions over the years.

It was in the Year Eighteen Hundred and Four This tune comes from the Forde Collection: a collection of pre-famine traditional Irish music noted by William Forde. This tune is nestled away in a part of the collection where no sources are mentioned, although all the pieces in this section were collected during Forde’s Cork years. I still haven’t gotten to the bottom of what exactly it was in the year 1804; but from the killing of rebel leader James Corcoran to Bonaparte scheming his invasion of England, it was a busy year for many.

Domhnall na Griana / The Butcher’s March Two old jigs. The particular versions played here were sourced from the Forde Collection also.

The Four Courts / Rolling in the Barrel This one’s for Nell Galvin. Mrs. Galvin was born in 1887 near Kilmihil, Clare. There’s a set of twenty-nine fiddle tracks played by Mrs. Galvin made by Ciarán Mac Mathúna and members o her own family which have had an immeasurable influence on my own playing and aesthetic. My first hearing of these recordings coincided with the time I first began pulling the fiddle a searching for tunings that could get closer to her sense of sound and music. The Four Courts features in those recordings. The second reel in this set, Rolling in the Barrel, couldn’t have been the first tune I ever learne by ear, but it is the first one I remember learning.

Packie’s Pandemonium This one comes from the playing of Packie Manus Byrne from Ardara, Donegal (1917-2015). A beautiful video of him playing an arboresque contraption made up of three tin whistles joined together by what looks like a hose pipe in Sidmouth, England in 1981 gives the title to this arrangement.