Most of my tunes just come to me when I play the fiddle and this was another that felt like it wrote itself. I feel like it must be influenced by Carolan’s music or perhaps something Baroque-like.
I wrote this hornpipe around 15 years ago. My dad used to call me this nick-name when I was younger!
This reel was the 3rd of a set of 50 new tunes I composed during lockdown in March 2020. I wrote this one on St. Patrick’s Day and its name comes from the story of St. Patrick lighting a fire on the Hill of Tara in the year 433.
Another of my Lockdown tunes named after a walk in a local woods where the trees tangled around eachother.
This was another tune written during Lockdown in 2020. The name leans towards the negative side of people’s isolation – with the glass feeling “half empty”.
I have had the honour of playing at many weddings over the years and often, if I’m playing for a friend of family member’s wedding, I will compose a tune or a song for the day. This piece was written for Catriona and Éamonn Kelly for their wedding Day in July 2005.
This tune features in the tune book “101 Original Compositions of Irish Traditional Music by Sandie Purcell”. The tune got its name after a white owl flew across our path as a group of us walked back to our holiday house in Spanish Point at the Willie Clancy Festival in 2005.
Another Lockdown 2020 tune. I wanted to write a lively 3 part jig, and this one just wrote itself!
I live in a lovely village in Co. Kildare called Kill (An Chill). The village has a Tidy Towns committee who work so hard all year round to make the village beautiful with plants and flowers. Cornflower Meadow was written during Lockdown 2020 and named after one of their wild flower spaces where the Cornflower Meadow was growing.
This reel was my 2nd composition in the “Lockdown set”. When travel was restricted, we rediscovered a lot of places in the area. This tune is named after Glending Forest on the Kildare/Wicklow border.
Sandie Purcell is a composer, fiddle player and primary school teacher from Kill in Co. Kildare.. Sandie began learning the fiddle with Mary Greevy at the age of seven and composing followed just a couple of years later. In 1996, at the age of thirteen, Sandie won the IMRO Composition Award with the jig “The Crooked Picture” which she performed at the Hawk’s Well Theatre in Sligo.
Sandie holds a BMUS from DIT Conservatory of Music where she was taught the fiddle by Kevin Glackin and whistle by Paul McGettrick and Peter Browne. Sandie took Composition as a specialist subject and was supervised by Dr. Grainne Mulvey. Sandie also holds an MA in Composition from DCU.
During her time working at Na Píobairí Uilleann from 2008 to 2013, Sandie began playing the uilleann pipes under the tutelage of Gay McKeon. Her interest in piping music was ignited and in 2014 Sandie was commissioned by Dublin City Council to compose a piping work to commemorate The Battle of Clontarf. It was performed by the renowned piper Mark Redmond and a short film of the piece was made by Warrior Films Ireland. Sandie then completed a HDIP in Primary Education in Marino Institute of Education and has been teaching in Scoil Mhuire Junior School, Newbridge, Co. Kildare since 2015. She also teaches the fiddle and performs and composes regularly.
Sandie’s publications include the tune-book 101 Original Compositions of Irish Traditional Music by Sandie Purcell (2007), which was supported by the Arts Council and a CD of original tunes and songs by the band Reelan, who formed for the making of the album The Crooked Picture in 2008. Sandie’s tunes have also appeared in Na Píobairí Uilleann’s publication An Píobaire which is distributed to over 70 countries worldwide and “The Indignant Muse, Poetry and Songs of the Irish Revolution 1887-1926”, edited by Terry Moylan.
Sandie has been composing and publishing tunes for many years, and this is reflected in her selection below. Quite a few of the tunes come from her ‘Lockdown Project’ – regularly composing and publishing tunes to Facebook and YouTube during the Covid-19 pandemic.
