Frankie Kennedy and Matt Molloy playing styles.

Irish Flute
41

To answer your quistion lesl, as far as I know Robert Cinnamon was a local framer who was a lovley singer and played a bit of the mouth organ. I never met the man, and know that his family do not live in the area now.

Dobbins flowery vale is a song I belive from Co. Armagh, but theres a few flute players round Glenavy now and because Frankie mentioned it on the cd cover we like to think its a sort of anthem for the village…

If i can figure out how to post tunes on here I will stick it on for the crack but my computer skills is as good as my spellingk.

42

I remember reading a Paul McGrattan interview in which he mentioned starting to learn more Donegal tunes (from playing with Paul Ó Shaughnessy?). So, not a Donegal flute-player but another player taking interest in the Donegal music.

As for listening to Conal Ó Gráda and Catherine McEvoy on Slow Downer, I hear the same thing, so many breath and glottal accents… very flutey (whereas the rolls and crans may be more pipery). Conal can be a bit tough to snatch tunes from on the Slow Downer because of his tone. He pushes it so hard that you can’t make out the notes through the all of the harmonics. Catherine’s tone is rich in harmonics too but maybe not quite as “dirty” as Conal.

Cheers,
Aaron

43

Dang, I have GOT to figure out why Slowdowner keeps hanging up my computer.

Hey, Lesl, I was wondering … were those 2 1/2-bar rolls the C-natural ones (or what are C-naturals in the key we play it in, anyway) on the D part of the tune? That’s so cool; I always thought they were some sort of tongued/cut repeated 8th notes or something (no Slowdowner and working from memory long ago, here) – and I always thought they were such an interesting workaround for all the fiddle-y stuff that part has in it. Anyway, if they are rolls, WOW, what a DUDE! That’s just beastly.

Once again, this is fun. Thank you for starting this thread! I’m really appreciating the closer listening to a flute player I’ve hardly studied at all. And I’m very grateful for everyone’s patience (at least your outward patience!) with my blatherings as I try to learn and sort things out.

P.P.S. iTunes does have the Frankie & Mairead duo CD – I downloaded a few tunes from it yesterday. If Frankie knew he was serenading someone who was shoveling horse poop and poulticing hoof abcesses … :laughing: Thanks again, everyone!

44

After all this talk here of Frankie Kennedy I decided to dig out and listen to my Altan CDs, which I haven’t done for a while. I have the first Mairead and Frankie album on CD, but the first two Altan albums (Altan and Horse With A Heart) I have only on vinyl so I haven’t gotten to them. But The Red Crow, Harvest Storm and Island Angel I have on CD, so those I’ve listened to as well, which runs up through Frankie’s untimely death in 1994. Based on this, I have some observations on what’s been discussed so far.

First, as to the flute Frankie is playing: The sleeve notes on Harvest Storm (1992) have him playing Wilkes flutes in D, Bb and F. So, Lesl, you said some of the tracks seemed high-pitched when you tried to play along. Those are probably the ones he played the F flute on. The notes don’t say which flute is played on which tracks, but knowing what the flutes were on the CD would probably be enough to figure it out. (If he’s playing on Humours of Westport - kind of hard to tell on a cursory listen - he’s probably using the F flute there, 'cause that tune is in F. Just call me Sherlock…) By the time of Island Angel (1994), the sleeve notes list only the Wilkes Bb and Patrick Olwell D flutes, so that fits in with my speculation that Frankie hooked up with Patrick at our DC festival in 1992.

As to how and when Frankie got started on the flute, the book Blooming Meadows by Fintan Vallely (cited somewhere up there in this thread, I think) says that Frankie wasn’t playing anything until he started going out with Mairead. She was 15, he was 18 then, which would put it probably in the mid-1970s. They did the first duo album in 1980 or '81 I think, so really he hadn’t been playing all that long at that time. My guess is that rather than learning from some one particular person, he fell into the Belfast session scene with the likes of Tara Bingham and just absorbed it from there. In listening to that first CD now in comaprison with the ones he did nearly a decade later with the band, of course I see growth in his playing over that time, but nothing jumps out at me in terms of “Oh, now he’s doing this or that that he wasn’t doing before.” His playing just grew, as I would hope all of ours would over time. Obviously, though, he had a rare talent for the music, picking it up relatively late as he did yet going so far in really not all that much time.

As for playing differently with the band than he did solo, I think your detailed listening is proving that he didn’t - he played pretty much the same all the time. (Again, that’s something I think any of us would do, so it’s not all that surprising to me.) I think if his playing seems different with the full band, it’s probably because a lot of the lovely little bits are getting lost in the mix (so to speak) with all the fiddles and accompanists playing full tilt. If anything, he probably adjusted his playing techniques to fit particular tunes, since as I’ve said before lots of those tunes aren’t great flute tunes. The Gravel Walks that you cite is definitely one that isn’t, especially at speed, so playing a really long roll over several bars might be the flute player’s best choice at times in that tune - and doing so works in a band setting, but obviously not solo. So sure, he did stuff like that.

Robert Cinnamond was a singer who came often to Frankie’s house when he was growing up (again according to either the sleeve notes or the Blooming Meadows book, I forget which) and it’s from his singing that Frankie got the air Dobbin’s Flowery Vale that he played on the Bb flute at the end of the Harvest Storm CD.

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Paul McGrattan, another powerful flute player who I’ve been privileged to spend a week with at a summer school, is an interesting case stylistically. He grew up in Dublin, and one of his teachers in school was the great Kerry accordion player Brendan Begley, who he now plays with in Beginish. So Paul has the Kerry repertoire of polkas and slides, and does a great job of them on the flute - which really is not the instrument for tunes like that when it comes down to it. But Paul also has the Donegal tunes from Paul O Shaughnessy, another Dublin man who of course got them from Frankie and Mairead, who both came to live in Dublin as National School teachers in the late 1970s. When it comes down to it, you could do a six-degrees-of-Kevin Bacon kind of thing on non-Donegal musicians who play the Donegal tunes, and it would all trace back to Frankie and Mairead at some point. (Or maybe the Glackins or Tommy Peoples…)

46

In the interview with Hammy Hamilton that I have on my site, he has this to say about the influences on Belfast flute players at the time:

“There were a group of us who were learning our trade as flute players in the Belfast of the early to mid 1970s. Apart from me, this included Desi Wilkinson, Frankie Kennedy, Gerry O’Donnell, and Gary Hastings among others. I used to hang around with Desi and a fiddle player called Ben Gunn, whose people were from Fermanagh. (His father, Tommy, was a founder member of The Boys of the Lough) It was in their kitchen that I first met Cathal McConnell who was a major influence on all the young Belfast fluteplayers at the time. Apart from Cathal, a major influence would have been fluteplayers from the Sligo/Lietrim/Roscommon area, such as Seamus Tansey and Patsy Hanley, to name two.”

47

More details from Brad’s lost / stolen page:

Olwell Flute. Lost in Paris: 6-key block-mounted blackwood and silver Patrick Olwell flute (name “Olwell” is stamped on it). This was the flute owned by the late Frankie Kennedy.

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Paul O’Shaughnessy is also a fine flute player who played one of Frankie’s old Eb flutes at the recent Winter School. I think it was a Hawkes flute that Frankie sold to him in the late 1980’s.

49

Yes, but the flute was lost by or stolen from the person Frankie left the flute to after he died. Brad mentioned this earlier up in this very thread, but diplomatically chose not to name names to avoid embarassing anyone. I know who it was too, but I agree with Brad’s position. It’s been quite a few years now since the flute went missing, so it may never turn up. Also, Patrick wasn’t marking his flutes with the serial number back then, so if it does show up it might be difficult to establish that it really is Frankie’s old flute at this point.

50

Just a small correction to that based on what I’d heard at the time: I don’t think the flute was left to a particular person, but rather made the rounds among several “deserving” flute players over the years after Frankie’s death.

51

I saw the comment; it’s just that the lost listing is the closest thing I’ve found to a detailed description of the instrument. There is, unfortunately, not a lot of material on Frankie online. [And at least some of what is online, e.g., the dates in the AllMusicGuide, are wrong.]

52

Well this thread has been just a treat to read. I now have a great list of flute players to listen to as well as a better understanding of what and how to listen. Thanks to you all.

Take care

Tom

53

I have a copy of a Live German CD. I don’t have the notes any longer, so I can’t give the year, but Altan’s material appears to be similar to their early career. Not Horse with a heart, but near that time.

http://www.ceolas.org/pub/Claddagh/1996/April

IRELAND. Altan, De Danann, Frankie Gavin, Desi Wilkinson & Liam O’Flynn.
BEST-NR 55.833. Live German recordings. Gavin, Wilkinson & O’Flynn play
together.

There’s plenty of excellent fluting throughout, and a Wilkinson/O’Flynn/Gavin whistle menage.

8 tracks Altan,
5 De Dannan,
& 7 tracks are Gavin/O’Flynn/Wilkinson

54

Hello

There are a couple of things that i think should be said. Both Paul O’Shaughnessy and Paul McGrattan were steeped in music as children (Paul O learning all his Donegal music from his mother Pearl). Paul McGrattan learned the tin whistle from Sean Potts (along with Brian O’Connor, Fiachra and Sean O’Broin and Sean Og Potts) and played the silver Boehm flute for years. They were both accomplished traditional musicians at age seventeen.
At the end of the seventies there was a huge interest in Donegal music with Donegal musicians being courted and feted by other musicians. (a lot of good musicians at the time suddenly expanded thier repertoires with Donegal tunes; peple like Gay McKeown). This could probably be traced to the fiddle playing of Tommy Peoples or the influence of the O’Domhnaill family.
Like most people on this board Frankie started later than his contemporaries and there is footage of him playing on a TV progarmme with Mairéad after only two years playing (he was playing an old German flute at the time).
I still believe that natural talent, motivation and a strong perfectionist streak is what made him a great player. Oh and tons of practice as well.
I am interested in how we learn music (as adults compared to how children learn).
By the way Brendan Begley was a Physical Education teacher in Colaiste Mhuire and wasn’t that good on the box back then (he couldn’t play jigs very well, he learned in a comhaltas session in Lucan from the likes of Hughie Grogan and Paddy Allen). He is another who came to music late in life and who did tons of practice.

Regards

John Moran

55

John, it’s good to learn that Paul O Shaughnessy has a family Donegal connection. I hadn’t realized that. I did play once in his mother’s session on the Tuesday night in Hughes’s a few years ago and didn’t notice any Donegal strains in her playing. But then again that was in a session situation and I suppose she’s been in Dublin a long time now so the accent may have faded. So, I’m gathering from what you’ve said that there was a bit of a Dublin confluence when Frankie and Mairead moved there, i.e. that they connected with other Donegal folks already there to establish a Donegal music scene. This is a bit different from what I’ve heard and read over the years, which has implied basically that Frankie and Mairead brought the Donegal music to the big city where it caught on. But this interpretation of events may have come about as a result of Altan’s great success and popularity, I suppose. Would you agree with that?

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Agree with Tom. Great thread. Thanks to all

57

catching up -

Brad you didn’t monopolize the responses.. :wink: and its always great to hear what you have to say as its often rather sensible!

Cat sent me New Ships Sailing and she’s totally right. He played that tune so smoothly it is totally unlike all the others. Almost like MM. It was also pretty fast, I wonder if that was why it was so smoothed out or just a choice for the melody.

Brendan: Thanks for that lovely information. I even went looking for Glenavy on the map. Its great to have a special meaning for a tune and now I’ll always think of this when I hear Dobbin’s.

Also thanks John about the flute keys. F and Bb whistles, handy those, Sherlock.. :slight_smile:

Cat also asked about the long bars of rolls that I heard on the Gravel Walks. The location of it was in the first few measures of the first part when on the repeat. Instead of say
A2 eA BAeA|A2eA BAGB| he was playing something like
~a2 ea ~a2 ~a2|~a2 ~a2
I haven’t done any transcribing, but it just sounded way cool.

Simon mentioned about the German cd. Interestingly though not surprising, this is stuck in the back of the Green Linnet “best of Altan” - a cd not on the Altan website, mind you - it is a 2 cd set, but the liner notes only cover the first cd which seems to be of course one of the GL compilations. Flipping behind this however is a 2nd cd, the 8 tracks recorded live in Bochum, Germany, Jan 1989, which is very similar to the 1989 Snug Harbour concert tape I listened to (the promotion of the “new album Horse with a Heart”). Track 8 is “Johnny’s Wedding/Rogue’s Reel/The Gravel Walk” - that’s it.

There is a kind of roll I’ve learned from Mike Raff which only every so often can I do, which is like a super fast roll. I expected to hear this but didn’t yet. Its timing is didd-ly-dee in the space of 2 beats. For example in the phrase cA~A2 it would fit in just the “A2” bit. But it would be a full roll. I think that may be the same timing as a bowed triplet. It could be just hard to hear when in unison with the fiddle but that’s what I thought would be there.

Anyone notice this? Have I got the comparison correct here?

I think that’s interesting but find it difficult to categorize. On The Flow http://www.theflow.org.uk/styles/styles_piping.html, Gordon has grouped both MM and FK under “piping style”, but it seems this grouping of the 2 of them is primarily regarding the use of the blue note from the singing tradition. What makes the most sense in terms of understanding where his fluting came from is the session scene in the 70’s in Belfast, something I’d previously had no idea of. Thanks to John, Brad and Hammy for that.

Learning about the Northern fluters and this Belfast session scene is fascinating. It brings to light the statement on the Winter School page “Frankie, a naturally gifted teacher and communicator, was part of a robust wave of young Northern flute players who came to the fore in the '70s & 80s. Like his contemporaries, Frankie drew inspiration from the older generation of Ulster musicians and singers.”

Which leads me to An Gaoth Aduaidh/The North Wind (2004) - is this is the cd of this?

Many thanks for a brilliant show of hands on this. Wouldn’t it be great to do this for other musicians too. (though exhausting!)

ps edited to get the Flow url to show up properly..

58

Fascinating and really informative thread–thanks all!

There is a kind of roll I’ve learned from Mike Raff which only every so often can I do, which is like a super fast roll. I expected to hear this but didn’t yet. Its timing is didd-ly-dee in the space of 2 beats. For example in the phrase cA~A2 it would fit in just the “A2” bit. But it would be a full roll. I think that may be the same timing as a bowed triplet. It could be just hard to hear when in unison with the fiddle but that’s what I thought would be there.

I use this kind of roll in some places, and it does seem to match the feel of a fiddle’s bowed triplet. I think Matt Molloy often uses this kind of roll, in place of a short roll. Short rolls tend to give a leaner sound, while a two-beat long roll adds some density to the tune, to my ear.

59

Hello

There certainly was some synchronicity going on. Dermot Mclaughlin was around as well as Kevin and Seamus Glackin. John and James Kelly recorded some Donegal tunes on their LP. Pipers like Joe Mclaughlin, Gay McKeown, Robbie Hannon, Sean Potts all started to play and record Donegal tunes. Ceol Aduaidh certainly influenced the younger musicians but whether Frankie and Mairéad actually caused the proliferation of Donegal music is debatable. In the Comhaltas headquarters in Monkstown the fiddle teachers were Paul O’Shaughnessy and Tom Glackin.
Actually I don’t remember Frankie and Mairéad playing out much in Dublin.
Perhaps the fleadhanna ceoil and the likes of the Wiilie Clancy summer school had more to do with the upsurge of interest in Donegal music.
Apart from Pearl O’Shaughnessy (her maiden name was McBride and her father, who didn’t play, came from Donegal. She was born in Crumlin in Dublin and spent a lot of her summers in Donegal) I cannot name any older Donegal style musician that was living in Dublin in the seventies.

Regards

John Moran

60

I would characterize this technique as a fast roll or short roll - although I think others may think of a short roll as something a little different than what you describe, Lesl, but nevertheless still it’s a roll-like ornament on a quarter note rather than the usual dotted quarter. So, in the sense that it breaks the quarter note into three equal bits, separated by a cut and tap, it would be analogous to the fiddler’s bowed triplet. But a better analogy would be a tongued or glottal-stop triplet, which not many flute players do much of (okay, Kevin Crawford does), especially at Donegal speed levels. Mike Rafferty doesn’t play at those speed levels, and I’d think his fast roll would be tough to do well at that speed. The fiddler’s bowed triplet however is a wrist-based ornament that goes quite well at speed. That’s why I said there’s no real flute equivalent for it.

An Gaoth Aduaidh/The North Wind was released on the tenth anniversary of the Frankie Kennedy Winter School as a tribute to Frankie. There are some players on it who were influences on or contemporaries of Frankie (e.g. Gary Hastings, Tara Diamond, Paul O’Shaugnessy), and others who never met Frankie but who still think of him as an influence or an inspiration (e.g. Harry Bradley). And not all of them are Northern players, either - Matt Molloy is on there. It’s a great CD to have if you don’t already. Lots of different styles, lots of great players, with maybe a bit of a Northern flavor.