Illustration | Libby McCrohan
Tommy Peoples is amongst the most important and influential musicians of his time. This project is a snapshot of his musical life. Born in St Johnston in 1948, he spent parts of his life in Dublin, Co. Clare and Boston, returning to his childhood home in 2004. Tommy’s unique fiddle style and significant compositional output mark him as one of the most important figures in the history of Irish Traditional Music. He died in August 2018.
The research, published here as a collection on ITMA’s website, presents information, context and analysis of Tommy’s music. This collection will be of use to musicians, learners and those with a general interest in Tommy, or Irish traditional music more generally. Commissioned by the Irish Traditional Music Archive, and funded by An Chomhairle Ealaíon, ‘Tommy Peoples – A Portrait of an Artist’ has been compiled by Siobhán Peoples, Ciarán Ó Maonaigh and Conor Caldwell. All three lead researchers are well-known fiddle players and have worked extensively in research and performance of Irish traditional music throughout their careers.
The project contains extensive interview material from six renowned fiddle players who encountered Tommy in various ways through the years. These interviews, as well as further written discussion and transcriptions, provide substantial insight and analysis into Tommy Peoples’ personality, style and compositions. What emerges is that Peoples the man was inseparable from Peoples the musician.
Furthermore, the project makes a selected number of previously unreleased recordings available to the public. Tommy was recorded as extensively as any Irish traditional musician in history, with hundreds of hours of archival recordings in existence.
The first of these was made by Ciarán Mac Mathúna when Tommy was just thirteen years of age and his last recorded public performance was at the 2013 Gradam Ceoil. The material on this website comes only from unpublished recordings in the holdings of the Irish Traditional Music Archive, although reference is made to many of his commercial releases.
Published for this first time here are recordings made by Tommy for Breandán Breathnach in 1968, capturing Tommy’s emerging talent in his teenage years. Also revealed are spoken letters sent by Tommy to his friend Cathal McConnell in the 1970s and solo performances from later decades.
These selections are shared in the hope that they will highlight the innovation and technical mastery that underlined Tommy’s style as a fiddle player. We hope that the examples selected will serve as signposts to the interested reader/listener to investigate the ITMA collections further.
In building this project we have extensively referenced Tommy’s self-published book Ó Am Go hAm, which gives a revelatory insight into his approach to fiddle teaching, composing and the philosophy that defined him. The book is currently out of print but can be read in the ITMA library.
