There’s a hint of summer, the cuckoo arrived last week. Time to shake off the dark of winter and go out: the early summer festivals are on the go, people are launching CDs, a few things to enjoy, places to go to before the diesel supplies run out.
So I drove up to Kilfenora for the launch of Michael Hynes and Kirsten Allstaff’s recording An tUrlar Leice.
The launch was in Nagle’s, a good turn out for it too.
They played a bunch of selections from the recording, a mix of old tunes and newly composed ones in the old style. The recording is just two flutes but for the launch Martin Breen was on the keyboards. Lovely stuff. Neansaí Ni Choisdealbha did the official launch and after that it was a big flute session with Neansai, Seamus Hynes, Noel O’Donoghue and a few other fluteplayers I know to see but can’t straight off name joined the duo to get a few tunes in before the Kilfenora was starting up on the stage outside. Mighty.
Thanks for the write up and photos. Looks like a good time.
Interesting that there are 4 righties and 3 southpaws in the photo… that’s statistically anomalous as only 12% (+or-.5%) of Ireland is left handed. I realize there could be more flute players out of frame, but surely not that many.
So now I’m curious Peter, do you notice an unusual number of leftie instrument players in your travels? I confess, I suppose I tend to only notice handedness with flute and string instrument players, since it’s glaringly obvious.
I am not sure I’d call it unusual but I do see a good few. At some point I had four girls coming to me for piping lessons, three played left handed.And long ago I posted a photo here of a group of Bríd O’Donohue’s students playing at a concert More than half of them playing left handed.
Now, a lot of children are learning the whistle but are not told which hand goes on top, they do as they please or mimic their teacher (Bríd O’Donohue, Mary Bergin etc play left handed,for example and both produce more than average numbers of leftty players). That may go some way towards explaining what you see, perhaps.
Ah very interesting, makes sense that kids would mimic their teachers and/or famous players they see/hear.
I’m a little surprised that playing left hand up, right hand down isn’t emphasized as it would make switching to flute much easier since righty flutes are far more common, but then you’ve got plenty of flute makers there to accommodate the need, so perhaps not really an issue. Or one could take the Seamus Egan approach and play whistle lefty and then learn flute righty, do you see that much?
Does lefty whistle playing cause any issues for those moving to pipes? I know pretty much zero about UPs.
I had one girl coming to me who wasn’t a true lefty but played left handed. My thought was it would make playing the regulators more awkward but she refused to swap hands. Perhaps I should have held firm but she gave up in favour of the concertina before it became an issue.
As I said above the CD has old and new tunes, many of the new ones in memory of local people now gone. `There’s some Scottish material as well, Kirsten is originally from Dundee and Michael has great interest in composers like Scott Skinner.
Between tunes there was great talk at the launch, stories about the people the tunes were named for etc.
One set of tunes was recorded for Cathal McConnell and Michael recalled sitting outside one of the pubs up the street 53 years ago, listening to Cathal and Tommy Peoples, ‘the greatest flute and fiddle duet ever’.
The CD was recorded in one afternoon in Michael’s kitchen, over tea and scones, just the two flutes. In my opinion that really is the way to do it, living music straight from the heart. And at this point I have to admit I have found some recordings of brilliant players I have come across in the past few years utterly boring, not a hair out of place, perfectly produced digital recordings don’t seem to work for me. YMMV, ofcourse. Tempted to quote the ‘thing itself’ line here but you know what I mean, I hope.
Thanks, Mr. Gumby. Well done.
As a side note, I met Michael in the 90’s while visiting Ballyvaughan. He was playing at the hotel there. I asked him if I could record him with my cassette recorder. He agreed, took the recorder, and placed it on the table directly in front of him. I sat off to the side of the room with my girlfriend, enjoying the music and dance. Every time he started a set he would turn the recorder “on”. Every time he ended a set he turned it “off”. When side 1 of the tape ended, he opened the cassette and turned the tape over to the 2nd side. He filled both sides of the tape. As many of us know, when recording ‘live’, often times there’s some extra non musical stuff that get’s recorded that needs to be edited out. But not in this case. I got a perfect recording of a solid 60 minutes of Michael’s perfect playing.
Years later, I found him on FB, and we became friends. He has sent several recordings of his playing and his own tunes to me via Whatsapp.
Not only is he talented, I found him to be a gentleman and very very generous. I love the new CD. Kristen did a wonderful thing in coaxing the music out of Michael and adding her own talent to the mix. A great recording IMO. A slice of heaven right there….
Does lefty whistle playing cause any issues for those moving to pipes?
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