Described as a Tuscan composer and pianist extraordinaire, Antonio Breschi is all that and so much more as the video below testifies. Dublin is now his home where he is known as Antoni O’Breskey and on his latest single and live video (recorded at Hellfire Studios) for ‘The Wee Weaver’ he is joined by his daughter Consuelo Nerea Breschi (Varo) on vocals, Ultan O’Brien (Slow Moving Clouds) on fiddle, Aongus Mac Amhlaigh on cello, Tom Mulrooney on bass and Leonora Lyne on flute. It doesn’t get much better than this…
Speaking about The Wee Weaver, Antoni says:
“My daughter Consuelo has been singing this song from the home weaving tradition for a few years now. She had listened to many versions of it, sung by Dolores Keane, Paddy Tunney, and more, and always loved the melody.
This song has always appeared to us to be quite dreamlike. It is not clear if it is a rare happy love song, or if the love story only happens in the man’s imagination: he is dreaming about Mary, but in reality, he still remains ‘confined to his loom’, far away from his love.”
The Wee Weaver is also our Song of the Day.
The man is clearly a gifted and inspiring collaborator, having gathered together musicians from all over the world and from different traditions and cultures, creating an extraordinary variety of music and recording the thirty-five CDs which form the Nomadic Piano Collection.
“Samara” is the latest album in that growing collection from which the above single is taken which features, his above-mentioned daughter Consuelo Nerea Breschi, Máirtín O’Connor (De Dannan), Davide Viterbo (Distant City), Tony Byrne (Danu, Julie Fowlis), Paddy Cummins (Skipper’s Alley), Leonora Lyne, Ciara O’Connor, Sinead O’Connor, and many more. Twenty musicians are listed in the credits in addition to Antoni including Massimo Giuntini, a name some of our early listeners may recall – he is a very talented uilleann pipes/bouzouki player from Italy who we featured regularly in our radio playlist in the old days when Folk Radio UK first began internet broadcasting (back in 2004!)
‘Samara’ the album by Antoni O’Breskey & Band is out now.
To stream/buy, visit Nomadic Piano Project on Bandcamp:
https://nomadicpiano.bandcamp.com/album/samara