I composed this tune for Dublin fiddler, Aoife Ní Bhriain, as part of the work completed for the Liam O’Flynn Award. Aoife is a good friend and I am always amazed at her ability to inhabit two very different artistic identities as a traditional fiddle player and violinist in the Western classical tradition. I have observed Aoife’s masterful syntheses of styles and interpretations through projects such as Partitas & Potts, and this hornpipe attempts to integrate many perspectives and influences within one tune. The melody of the third part is loosely influenced by elements of Bach’s Mass in B Minor, BWV 232.
Any Day Now is a jig that I composed for my son Conn as we waited in anticipation for his arrival in August 2019. I was preparing for a nationwide Music Network tour with Dónal O’Connor, Jim Murray, and Anxo Lorenzo at the time, and Music Network commissioned each of us to compose a tune to perform on tour. The version of that tune that appears here differs slightly from the original composition. My initial intent was to compose a very straightforward tune but I found that the melody became unnecessarily convoluted. Here I present a simpler version of the tune. I have opted to play each part (each 16 bars long) only once but they can be doubled if desired.
I am a keen fan of hop jigs and I have composed a few secretly over the years. On the Hop is a hop jig that came together relatively quickly as I was finalising music for a concert at the National Concert Hall to showcase music I had composed for the aforementioned Liam O’Flynn Award. It was composed specifically for the fiddle and flute duet of Aoife Ní Bhriain and Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin, who performed the tune on the night.
I wrote this reel directly after the birth of our daughter Nell, in September 2021. I had been attempting to compose a reel in E Dorian around that time as part of my work for the Arts Council / National Concert Hall Liam O’Flynn Award, but I wasn’t producing any satisfactory results. Ríl Nell arrived less than half an hour after Nell herself and I can only imagine the strange looks I got in the hospital as I whistled intensely at a new-born baby.
I composed this slip jig for my good friend, Saileog Ní Cheannabháin. The title comes from a nickname given to Saileog by her brother Eoghan. I wrote the tune to accompany, Racha Do Dheaide Go Sydeney, a song melody learned from Saileog that I subsequently recorded on In Flow, in 2016. The tune is presented here in the key of A major but I frequently play it in the key of F major.
Jack Talty is a multi-award-winning traditional musician, composer, producer, academic, and educator from Lissycasey in county Clare. In 2021, he was appointed to the post of Lecturer in Irish Traditional Music at the School of Film, Music and Theatre at University College Cork. As a performer Jack has toured extensively throughout Europe, the United States, Australia, and Asia, and he has contributed to over 100 albums to date as a musician, producer, composer, arranger, and engineer. A regular contributor to traditional music programming on various media, Jack is also the founder of Raelach Records, a traditional music label that he established in 2011.
An experienced and regular external assessor with bodies such as Culture Ireland, Music Network, and the Arts Council of Ireland, Jack published Navigating the Traditional Arts Sector in Ireland: A Report on Resources, Challenges, and Opportunities. This pioneering report was commissioned by Trad Ireland / Traid Éireann, with the support of the Arts Council. In April 2023, Jack joined the steering committee of the National Campaign for the Arts.
I was trying to think what gave me the inspiration to write this hornpipe “The Two Metre Hornpipe”. My mind goes back to when the Covid first started in Ireland and there were guidelines put in place about social distancing. Everywhere I went there were signs on the ground, on walls, doors, etc reading “Keep Two Metres Apart”. So to mark this unusual period of our life I composed this tune in the key of G major.
