The Irish Traditional Music Archive (ITMA) is committed to providing free, universal access to the rich cultural tradition of Irish music, song and dance. If you’re able, we’d love for you to consider a donation. Any level of support will help us preserve and grow this tradition for future generations.
This project is co-funded by Ireland’s Department of Culture, Communications & Sport and Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade as part of America 250.
It’s a great honor to be asked to compose new tunes by the Irish Traditional Music Archive. To be honest it’s something I wouldn’t have done without the push and now that I’ve gotten into it, I have to say I’ve really enjoyed the process. Some people have tunes arrive in their head unexpectedly, or occur to them while out for a walk in the woods, but for me I have to formally sit down and say “I will try to write a tune now.” I found that at first the ideas were generally weak but as I got into a habit, things got easier. Needless to say most of the tunes I wrote for this project ended up on the cutting room floor but I selected these five as hopefully the best of the bunch. Whether they are good or bad I will leave up to the listener!
Thanks again to ITMA and all of the staff there, especially Adam Girard for his fantastic audio engineering work, Treasa Harkin for organizing this series and Liam O’Connor for inviting me to participate. It was a pleasure to try something new and I hope you enjoy the tunes.
Dan Gurney, May 2022
