In recent years, we’ve been enjoying a prolific new wave of traditional music, one that looks to the future and the past simultaneously, as highlighted in Thomas Blake’s recent Shovel Dance Collective review. Irish fiddle player Martin Hayes is no stranger to reimagining Irish traditional music, something that he champions through the annual Masters of Tradition festival in Bantry, Cork, which celebrated its 21st Anniversary last year. Martin, who is the Artistic Director for the festival, said:
“All of the performers at this festival have reimagined, added to and taken ownership of the music in their own particular ways. This year’s festival will take us to the core of the music. We will also encounter many emerging ideas within the tradition, new ways of reimagining the past and also ways in which this music can relate with other music forms.“
Among those performing at last year’s festival were concertina, bouzouki, and multi-instrumentalist Brian Donnellan and Cellist, and Artistic Director of Crash Ensemble, Kate Ellis. They are also both members of Martin’s Common Ground Ensemble and they will join him for a very special concert at Union Chapel on 22nd October 2024.
When I sit down to play with Brian on the concertina, it’s like putting on a glove
Martin hayes on brian donnellan
During Dave McNally’s interview with Martin last year, he spoke at length about the Common Ground Ensemble and what Brian Donnellan and Kate Ellis brought to the ensemble when it was suggested that Brian’s concertina made for what sounded like an even stronger East Clare connection, and Kate Ellis’s ranging cello offered quite different sound palette possibilities.
“I played with Brian in the Tulla Ceili Band, but I’d never really heard him play. I heard him at the other side of the band stage, so I hadn’t known exactly how he played the concertina. I knew he played bouzouki, and he played keyboards, so I knew he was somebody who could do a few different things in the band, but his concertina playing completely caught me by surprise. I rarely sit down and play tunes with somebody where it feels so sympathetic, so connected. What I didn’t know was the extent to which he had internalised the whole repertoire of East Clare music, which he plays in the most beautiful, flowing kind of way. When I sit down to play with Brian on the concertina, it’s like putting on a glove. It’s a perfect fit, and I love it. I could play with him all night. It was a pure thrill to find that level of empathic playing.
She’s on that precipice of worlds…a musician of the moment.
Martin hayes on Kate Ellis
“Kate is a remarkable musician. She’s the Artistic Director of the Crash Ensemble who do contemporary classical music, which means that everything and anything goes, out there and maybe not so out there kinds of things. She’s on that precipice of worlds, in contemporary modern music and off touring with Bono as well; she’s a musician of the moment. I had got to play with her a little over the years at the Kilkenny Arts Festival, where she’s been a regular. Some years ago, when Denis and myself were touring, we had Kate sit in with us on a few occasions, and we also worked with her at the Irish Arts Centre in New York. So, I got to know Kate over the years, but it would be intermittent, and we never got a chance to develop anything. This was an opportunity to get more connected with Kate musically and see what evolved from that. On the one hand, she’s a classical cellist, but in other respects, she’s a very avant-garde player, always pushing boundaries, fearless and a good improviser. Every time you sit with Kate, you can expect new things to happen”.
Union Chapel, London on Tuesday 22nd October 2024
Tickets and details: https://unionchapel.org.uk/whats-on/martin-hayes