TURAS – the live concert and CD album

Under its initial title (Compánach) Turas had an inaugural performance at the major French summer school of Irish music in Tocane, summer 2012. It was staged in its present form at Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris, and at The Leuven Institute for Ireland, Leuven, Belgium in December, 2013, and at Ranelagh Arts Festival, Dublin, September 2014. It was performed at Aras Chronáin, Clondalkin, and at the From the Mountains to the Sea literary festival at Dún Laoghiare, Co. Dublin in March, 2015. Subsequent fully developed erformances have been given at the William Kennedy Piping Festival in Armagh, the Ennis Tradfest, Cork Folk Festival, Australia National Folk Festival at Canberra, London Irish Centre Hammersmith and the last pre-Covid Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann at Drogheda. In 2021, as a response to the Covid shut-down of music, the Compánach concert was put on documentary-style video and DVD, now using the  title Turas – Virtual Ireland in Music (see below).

The CD is titled Compánach, the DVD is titled Turas

Short live show extract on Youtube.

Sample tracks from the Companach album

Background

The Companion to Irish Traditional Music is an encyclopedia first published in 1999 to alphabetically document the nature and performance of indigenous Irish music. It was re-issued in 2011, doubled in size with c. 900 pages, and also as an e-book. The Compánach concert is based on its content, taking its A-Z format to illustrate tunes and song drawn from each Irish county, émigré region and ancient to modern eras. Over its two hours it uses the voices of solo, and unison duet and trio instruments, step dance, song in Irish and English, and large-scale photos to creatively document Irish Traditional music.

The visual motif for the concert is the Companion’s cover image – a profound painting by the Irish artist Daniel Maclise of an 1832 Halloween party in Co. Cork. In vivid colour, this depicts all the elements of Irish music traditions – the piper, fiddler and flute player, the boy with the tambourine, the young learners, the dancers – all performing in an animated community celebration. Present in this image too are symbolically-important figures: one of the earliest folklorists – Thomas Crofton Croker – and an early antiquarian – Fr. Matthew Horgan – both of them contributors to the philosophy which energised the 20th-century revival of Irish Traditional music. Compánach indeed takes all its aesthetic cues from this painting by using pipes, fiddle and flute, by opening with music collected by Rev. Goodman which is likely to have been played on that night in 1832, and by using the power of a visual narrative rather than commentary to tell the music’s story.

The artistes

Gerry O’Connor is a Dundalk fiddler, a versatile figure in Irish music who is solidly ‘of his place’ in the music’s traditions. He has toured Europe solo and with the band Skylark, and has many recordings, among them the seminal albums of Lá Lugh with the haunting singer Eithne Ní Uallacháin; he has also taught fiddle internationally over several decades.

Tiarnán Ó Duinnchinn is an uilleann piper from Monaghan who has achieved all major Irish awards for his playing, most recently the Seán Ó Riada gold medal.

Roisín Chambers is a Connemara-style sean-nós singer and a fiddle-player from Dublin who has won the highest honours in Oireachtas, Fleadh Cheoil and Siansa competitions and has performed solo, with Salsa Celtica and The Bonnymen.

Sibéal Davitt comes from a background of Irish language and music and is an accomplished student of dance as well as being a superb sean-nós (old-style, free-form) step dancer.

Fintan Vallely, editor of the Companion and director of the show, plays the wooden concert flute. He has been one of the major public voices in Irish music since the early 1990s, the editor of many books and articles on it; like the others, he has performed throughout the world and has recorded and broadcast.

Jacques Piraprez Nutan is an award-winning Belgian photographer who was a neighbour and protégé of surrealist painter Renée Magritte. He has made the west of Ireland his home, and Irish topography, people and music his life’s work since the 1960s. A member of the Paris agency RAPHO, he has published in Time, Stern, National Geographic, and Geo, and has contributed music images to many music books and albums in Ireland.

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Covid response

In 2021, in response to the Covid shut-down of music, the Compánach concert was put on documentary-style video and DVD, now using the  title Turas – Virtual Ireland in Music

Sample of Turas