Cassandra Voices Music

Musician of the Month: Cedar Dobson

I am a California native Irish traditional musician based in Ireland. I started playing music when I was around seven years old, beginning on piano and the Native American flute, which was my first wind instrument. My dad bought three of these flutes before I was born, and I am still playing them to this … Read more

How Bono Nearly Ruined My Life

Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.’ James Joyce, ‘Araby’, from Dubliners (1914) Nineteen Seventy-Nine was a big year for me. I turned eighteen, which meant I could vote, had I felt so inclined. I had my first … Read more

Musician of the Month: Squalloscope (Anna Kohlweis)

There is a poem by Mary Ruefle called „Provenance“. It ends with with the following words: „So I have gone up to the little room in my face, I am making something out of a jar of freckles and a jar of glue I hated childhood I hate adulthood And I love being alive. This … Read more

Musician of the Month: Aoife Ní Bhriain

My formative years were spent growing up on a pretty amazing cul-de-sac called Verbena Grove in the north Dublin suburb of Bayside, a 1960s/1970s sprawl of low-rise semis that borders the coast road between the city centre and Howth Head. My Dad, Mick O’Brien was a schoolteacher and is one of Ireland’s leading uilleann pipers. … Read more

The Empire Windrush

The Empire Windrush sails tonight, she’s got a one-way ticket, and she’s half way home In June 1948, The Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury docks in England to the sound of a brass band and hundreds of cheering residents. On board were 802 people, the majority of whom were returning from the Caribbean. Returning, because … Read more

Musician of the Month: Barry O’Halpin

Wingform is an hour-long piece of music I composed for Crash Ensemble between 2017 and 2020. Scored for twelve musicians, it has four ensemble movements connected by my own solo electric guitar passages, which act as a kind of connective tissue for the whole body of the work.  Wingform – Barry O’Halpin & Crash Ensemble Bandcamp … Read more

Musician of the Month: Niamh McKinney

For a lot of my life I felt a fervent need to be doing something creative but I didn’t know what. Eventually I started to feel the unsated creative urge turn to intense frustration within me; a physical tension through my body, like important growth held back or suspended indefinitely. I pictured bunched vines in … Read more

Musician of the Month: Ian Fisher

Foreword Sometime in early 2022, in the middle of the fourth or fortieth wave of the corona virus, I got a message from my old friend, Stefano Schiavocampo.  He told me that he was editing for a magazine in Dublin and he’d like me to contribute. “Me?” I thought, “What would anyone need to hear … Read more

Cassandra Voices Music Podcast II

Welcome to the second Cassandra Voices podcast introduced and written by Nicola Bigatti, and produced by Massimiliano Galli. This podcast was recorded in the heart of Dublin 8 in what used to be the studios of the 2014 indipendent project Radio Liberties. This podcast continues a journey through Italian ‘Library Music,’ a vast catalogue of … Read more