This release, published by The John McKenna Society in Leitrim, is the definitive work on McKenna and includes his complete corpus of 44 commercial recordings, some of them extremely rare, as well as a substantial accompanying book containing an extensive biography, as well as an analysis of his music style and legacy together with music transcriptions of his tunes. Contributors to the book include many top performers of today on the Irish flute – Matt Molloy, Mick Woods, Harry Bradley, Patsy Hanly, Lorraine Sweeney, Mick Mulvey, Gregory Daly and Conal Ó Gráda, as well as commentators like Jackie Small of the Irish Traditional Music Archive.
Pretty cool. McKenna made wonderful music altogether and it’ll be great to have all of it top-to-bottom and with audio restored as fully as possible. As a bit of addenda, here are two unique items of McKenna I transcribed: the reel The Lady Of The House, and the slip jig Fire Away, You Devil You.
For the fella looking for how to breathe, this is a perfect place to start. Required listening.
Drink from the same well as all the players mentioned in this thread:
Not a piccolo on Fire Away You Devil You I would think but as you say a sped up track.
Great name for a tune from a fireman. I wonder if that was a consideration in giving it the title.
Harry Bradley has been, on his piping blog, devoting some time towards some McKenna tunes. He seems to be going into more detail than normal in the commantaries, and he’s been playing the tune slowly first. Really nice stuff.
Having been involved to a minor extent in this John McKenna project, can I just reiterate that every one who aspires to an interest in Irish traditional music, not just flute music, should have this book and CD set.
Great praise is due to Sean Gilrane who has been exhaustive in researching this whole area, and who now knows more about McKenna than he did himself!
If you’re wondering how to get hold of a copy just go to www.johnmckenna.ie
All the Best
Hammy Hamilton
I agree wholeheartedly with Hammy. My copy of these CDs arrived this morning and I had to spend 4 hours driving today which gave me a chance to hear all the material. I’ll hopefully get a read at the beautifully produced book this evening. I’d heard most of the recordings before but the cleaning and remastering job done on them has brought out great detail in the sound of the flute and other instruments. Music which was great enough to shine through a fog of fuzz and hiss is now fit to dazzle in the absence of these obstructions. Sean Gilrane’s talk about McKenna at Cruinniú na bhFliúit this year was a great combination of knowledge and passion. My only very minor quibble with Hammy’s assertion that Sean knows more about McKenna than McKenna did would be that he was unable to confirm what size shoes McKenna took. Hammy might still be right though; there’s no being sure that McKenna knew his shoe size either.
