Event Details
Dates
29/05/2022 – 29/05/2022
Time
12:00pm
Location
Galway Arts Centre / Nuns Island Theatre
Event Type
Performance,
The prize-winning Donegal singer, Doimnic Mac Giolla Bhríde, and Ireland’s foremost scholar-performer of historical Irish music, Siobhán Armstrong, recently began a collaboration to explore the vocal music of the old Irish harpers. In this Discovery Day concert they will perform treasures they have reconstructed from manuscript sources of the 1700s, including neglected versions of well-known 18th-century compositions by Turlough Carolan, with Siobhán accompanying Doimnic’s raw and powerful singing on a beautiful copy of an early 18th-century Irish harp.
Performers: Siobhán Armstrong, Doimnic Mac Giolla Bhríde
Artist Biography
Siobhán Armstrong is one of Europe’s foremost historical harpists, playing copies of single and multi-row harps from the Middle Ages to the baroque era. Alongside her solo work, Siobhán performs and records 15th- to 18th-century music with many of Europe’s most prestigious historical musicians. She particularly enjoys accompanying vocal music: from plainchant to polyphony to early opera and chamber music. Siobhan also collaborates with some of the foremost singers and instrumentalists in Irish and Scottish Gaelic traditions.
Siobhán is particularly interested in encouraging the revival of the early Irish harp—the wire-strung high art instrument of the Gaelic nobility—which died out around 1800 after a 1000 year history. To this end, she founded and chairs The Historical Harp Society of Ireland and directs its international summer school, Scoil na gCláirseach—Festival of Early Irish Harp. One of her own early Irish harps is a copy of the late medieval Trinity College or Brian Boru harp—the national emblem of Ireland—strung in brass and 18-carat gold.
Siobhán was born in Dublin and, from an early age, studied modern harps, piano and voice. While reading Music at Trinity College Dublin, she directed Trinity College Singers, the university’s chamber choir. She also worked professionally as a choral singer, singing with Ireland’s only professional choir, the RTE Chamber Choir, before she specialized in historical harps.
Siobhán has embarked on an ambitious recording project, with her group, The Irish Consort, to present a ground-breaking series of recordings of music in Ireland 1500-1800. The first of these recordings, Music, Ireland and the Sixteenth Century was released in February 2019. This project was kindly funded by the Arts Council Music Recording Scheme, managed by Music Network, and by generous private supporters. Siobhán would also like to acknowledge the kind help of Music Network in acquiring suitable harps for her work.
In 2014, Middlesex University, London, awarded her a post-graduate research bursary to pursue PhD studies in early Irish harp performance practice. Siobhán lectures at universities and conservatories in Ireland, the UK and the USA as well as at early music events and harp festivals internationally. She particularly enjoys teaching and coaching harpists (beginners to professionals), singers and instrumentalists, in both early Gaelic and European music.
Artist Biography
Doimnic is a well known sean-nós singer from Gaoth Dobhair, Co. Donegal who was the winner of Corn Uí Riada, the Oireachtas sean-nós singing competition, in 2009.
He has been immersed in the culture of his native home from a young age and has taken guidance from well known local sean-nós singers like Caitlín Ní Dhomhnaill and Lillis Ó Laoire.
He has performed in many festivals and concerts in Ireland and thoughout Europe in the past few years.
In 2002, Doimnic founded Cór Thaobh a Leithid, a four part choir, in the Donegal Gaeltacht made up of the finest sean-nós singers in the area. The choir has had many successes: in 2008 they performed in a special concert of newly composed pieces by Dónal Lunny, commissioned for the Errigal Arts festival which was televised on TG4. In 2009 the choir performed a set of songs newly arranged for choir and string quintet by Doimnic as part of the Errigal Art’s Festival. Last year the choir sang in the National Concert Hall as part of Dónal Lunny’s St Patrick’s Festival Concert for 2010.
In 2004 Doimnic released his first album, Saol na Suáilce, of which was said:
‘in the musicality of his singing and his innate understanding of the Donegal sean-nós idiom, he is a breath of fresh air.’
‘the album marks the debut of a great new traditional talent.’
Claddagh Records
