Early last year, Irish contemporary harpist Brídín released Ocean of Stars, an EP that saw her carrying on the tradition of Irish music into the fourth generation of her family.
As well as playing harp, she also plays the flute and piano and dances sean nós. She also studied music at University College Cork, achieving a degree and Masters in music and performance.
She has just released her new single ‘Empty Room’, a song about how she loves ‘the sound of an empty room’. It stems from her being a sociable introvert who could spend hours on end happily in the studio completely alone, writing and playing music but is not lonely or sad in doing so.
It’s not uncommon for people to associate solitude with loneliness; the two are very different. While love and friendship are important, they are not the only sources of happiness in life. The introverts amongst us will have no problem in understanding this and may well find cause to rejoice when listening to Brídín’s ‘Empty Room’…I know I did.
‘Some people feel sorry for you if you’re on your own, I’m just expressing that I’m really happy in my own company’.
Turning to the song on which she layers her soprano countermelodies, she also expresses how she can hear music in her head:
I need to be alone so I can hear the angels sing.
The orchestra inside my head is so entertaining,
Talking about this creative process, she adds: ‘I’ve always been able to hear music in my head, I could arrange a whole song in my head with multiple instruments and vocals and have often done so in bed at night or on long journeys. I never thought it was unusual until I started to study (lightly) neuroscience and how people think so differently.”
Empty Room is out now and is taken from Brídín’s forthcoming self-titled debut album, which we’ll have more on soon.
Bandcamp: https://bridin.bandcamp.com/track/empty-room
Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/EmptyRoomBridin