Me and my mother wrote this for our dog Pablo who loves to chase everything that moves. Before we wrote it, while the fire was being put on in the range, Pablo was jumping up and down trying to see the fire and chase the sparks.

Our friend Paddy inspired this tune. Paddy is a good man for the music and the craic.

My father Tom Mulligan was my first pipe teacher and taught me on his own set of C# pipes which were made in 1938 by James Mulchrone, originally from Abbeyshrule in County Longford and who was then making pipes in St Peter’s Road in Phibsborough, Dublin.

This hornpipe is a tribute to my father who inspired my love of Irish music, culture, language and the joy of life.

This hornpipe emerged over the lockdown period while myself and fiddler Liz Carroll were in conversation about tunes and life in general. We would correspond often, and at the time I had a nuisance neighbour – who would come out to bang his bins loudly and rattle the front door! After an amusing discussion on this subject one night, Liz wrote an appropriately annoying hornpipe entitled ‘Bang the Bins’ and in response I came up with this tune ‘Rattle the Doors’ to go with it.

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.

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.

I wrote this hornpipe around 15 years ago. My dad used to call me this nick-name when I was younger!

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”.

When I lived Cork Gary Cronin (fiddle), Des McCabe (pipes) and Pádraig McCarthy (guitar) had a session in the Corner House which I would go to. Gary likes tunes in flat keys, especially hornpipes, and after playing one of these rarer tunes he would joke that it was called ‘Chancery of the Armoury/Armery’. So, I thought that it would be a good name for a hornpipe in B flat.

I named this tune after a great night of music in Kinvarra with a friend of mine Ger Chambers from Mayo. This tune is also on my album.

This hornpipe was written to celebrate 50 years of the music class for the Killarney Comhaltas Branch. The first class back in 1971 was held in “Parlour 5” in the Franciscan Friary in Killarney, Co. Kerry.

This tune was inspired by the playing of Jacqueline McCarthy on concertina and Tommy Keane on pipes, in particular when they play in B flat tuning. I really like listening to them and was also hoping to compose a tune that might sound like a piping tune with a particular atmosphere.

Note: The tune was recorded in F. It could be played in G or A, but it was written to be played in a lower key.

Kanturk in north Cork where I grew up is a lovely place with two rivers meeting in the town called The Allow and The Dualloa. A third river near Kanturk Castle is called The Brogeen. So I was spoiled for fishing! There is a fine town park with pedestrian bridge with shady groves nearby

A double play on the word grianán meaning sundial. It is the name of the theatre where this tune was first performed! I also wanted to use this title as it was the home address of my late husband, Frankie Kennedy, in West Belfast.

This hornpipe was composed during the national lockdown of our country as a result of Covid-19. The tune title came to me as I reflected on the impact this pandemic was having on the music of Ireland and it’s musicians.
The title personifies our unique traditional Irish music as gaining some respite from the global music touring circuit where it has become a vocation for so many.
This hornpipe was composed during the national lockdown of our country as a result of Covid-19. The tune title came to me as I reflected on the impact this pandemic was having on the music of Ireland and it’s musicians.

The title personifies our unique traditional Irish music as gaining some respite from the global music touring circuit where it has become a vocation for so many.

‘Into a brighter day’ was written at the beginning of the ‘Lockdown’ 2020.

The tune for me reflects the range of emotions that I, and I’m sure many people around the world felt during this very unsettling time in our history.

The title came about from reading a verse in a memoriam card I found of the late Tom Carey the concertina player from Leitrim in Cree, Co Clare. Tom and I played a lot together when I moved to West Clare in 2003, and we went on to become great friends as well as musical companions.

Note: This tune was written in G minor, and this is the key of the learning resources. The track recorded for broadcast on RTÉ was played in a different key so that Josephine could record it with her son, Andrew.

I picked names by using the first thing that came into my head as soon as a tune was “done.” In this case it was Buck Mulligan’s Pub, where just before we had a great day (and night) of music with Gary Hastings, Conor Healy, Grainne Egan, Iarla O Domhnaill, Natalie Ni Chasaide, Maitiu O Casaide, Leonora Lyne, and of course my wife Christina Dolphin and daughter Saoirse. For some reason this tune, especially the end of the phrases, reminds me of the playing of Tony MacMahon, and an image of a wine glass on a piano comes into my head.