The adventure began with the self-titled album that Ensemble Ériu released last year.
An initial alliance between Co Clare school friends Jack Talty and Neil O’Loghlen took off as more players walked into the room to join the ensemble.
The duo may be steeped in traditional music,
but they also have open ears for other sounds, and the album elegantly
sways and sashays between jazz, trad, classical, rock and ambient. It is
rich, evocative and powerful, music to stir and stimulate.
Talty is a talented concertina player who has had a hand in fine, sturdy releases such as
Na Fir Bolg
with west Kerry wizard Cormac Begley.
O’Loghlen, meanwhile, was schooled in the
whistle and flute before double bass and jazz came calling via the Banff
Centre in Canada and the SIM workshop in Brooklyn.
The pair had no idea what would come out of it
when they started to work together, says Talty. “We had been friends and
playing music together since we were 15 and met in St Flannan’s in
Ennis. Around 2011, we got together and said we’d try to write some
music and some new arrangements around traditional music with a group . .
. We spent some time in [the Tyrone Guthrie Centre] in Annaghmakerrig,
[Co Monaghan], writing music but not with any musicians in mind. It
evolved from there.”
The sound came into its own when other musicians such as Jeremy Spencer, Paddy Groenland, Matthew Jacobson, Matt Berrill and Saileog Ní Cheannabháin came along.
“One of the nice things about this project is
that it has organically developed over time because of the calibre of
musicians playing with us. They have very much shaped what it is now.
While myself and Neil wrote the parts before we went into studio and did
allow for improvisation, it has really changed so much.”
The pair’s initial ideas were broad. “We were
trying to work out how to combine our insights and personal tastes in
Irish traditional with our other interests beyond traditional,” says
Talty. “That was the thought process – how to be ourselves, how to use
our knowledge of traditional music, how to bring the other influences to
bear on that and how to do all that in a way which was artistically
engaging. It’s a very difficult task to turn those thoughts into
reality.”
They’re not the only ones bringing traditional
music into new scenarios right now. Be it The Gloaming or This Is How We
Fly, there has been an interesting slew of releases and projects in the
past year with traditional music as an important part of the
foundation.
Talty points out that such innovation has
happened before. “If you go back to the 1980s, trad music was very
experimental then, but the 1990s marked a change, and bands went back to
their own localities for inspiration.
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