I’ve often wondered whether I came to music later than it came to me. Music was always around me growing up. My mother was a wonderfully talented musician with a beautiful singing voice and spent many years teaching music to primary school children. She probably doesn’t realise how much she influenced me, but I do … Read more
Rosa Feodora tendency to overthink is also one of her greatest strengths. Beyond its darker sides, if you learn how to ride it, overthinking can become a powerful tool
Jenny Ní Ruiséil is a musician and Yoga teacher, based in the west of Ireland. She creates music inspired by her roots finding her voice through singing in the Irish language, as well as taking inspiration from medicine music around the world and devotional chanting tradition of bhakti yoga and other spiritual traditions. Jenny is … Read more
My first memory of music is of being very young, maybe three years old, held in my father’s arms while we danced in our living room. There was a large sound system filling the space, and I remember being completely absorbed by it. I didn’t have words for what I was feeling then, but I … Read more
Ciara O’Donnell is an artist performing under the name of Domhan. She creates music inspired by her love of the Irish Celtic spirit, shamanism and Eastern spirituality. She is also a member of Irish band Bog Bodies a heavy folk rock outfit unearthing ancient Irish tribal tones and rich melody through an archaeological lens. Ciara … Read more
It’s always been a challenge to compress my life into tidy, coherent narratives full of hidden meanings and uniting threads with distinguishable identity signposts that give audiences an obvious sense of who this person is. My artistic identity has, in many ways, been an attempt to seek some form of ‘personal style,’ by tossing together … Read more
Since before I can remember, music has been my world, and a path that I had to follow. I feel so grateful to be able to channel my feelings, emotions, heart, and experiences into music that can touch others. To be a bridge in the dark between strangers that illuminates our shared human experiences. My … Read more
Loose Notes with a Cup of Coffee “The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world.” — Hermann Hesse, Demian 1. The first time I ever touched a piano must have been when I was 10 or 12 years old. It … Read more
I am a self-taught musician, playing fiddle, viola, hammer dulcimer, bodhran and tunes percussion. I am mainly known as a composer, arranger and fiddle player with Kila for the last thirty-four years. I also play with Freespeakingmonkey and The Armagh Rhymers. Several generations of my family were and are musicians. My grandmother Maggie Armstrong was … Read more
On November 14th I am releasing my debut album Sea Salt & Turpentine on the Ergodos label with a launch concert at the National Concert Hall. The album is a collection of chamber and vocal works I composed over the past two and a half years for Ficino Ensemble and Michelle O’Rourke in rotating subsets. … Read more
Early Influences I tend to cite the same small handful of artists as my early influences, but I always find myself defining the difference between ‘influence’ and ‘inspiration.’ As a kid, I was really inspired by bands like Green Day, and I loved Arctic Monkeys, but that doesn’t necessarily reflect the music I make now. … Read more
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
Shortsleeve Conor was born in Lisbon, but started playing in Aberdeen when I was a 21-year-old pizza chef. One Sunday, after finishing the close, the team headed over to a pub nearby called the Prince of Wales. We walked through the double doors to be met by the most joyous music I’d ever experienced. Fiddles, … Read more
The music I am performing at the moment mostly came from three different sets of songs that I began writing in 2018. The first batch I wrote when I was living in a small cabin my dad built near my family home in Donegal. At the time, I felt the songs come to me and … Read more
What do you pay attention to when you listen to music? The lyrics and melody? The instrumentation and timbre? I hear the bass and rhythm. It’s challenging for me to remember lyrics. A beautiful bass enchants me, and the queen of the bass, of course, is the double bass. Still, it took me more than … Read more
My musical journey started with a lot of Church organ and Bohemian brass music in a tiny village in Bavaria – and when I say village I really mean it. At the age of five I developed a desperate desire to learn the guitar, because my mum had one (for her kindergarten group and she … Read more
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
I grew up in a rambling country house with damp bubbling from the walls and ghosts lurking in the locked rooms. It was big enough for a family of five to lose themselves, each in their own space, occasionally coming together for meals, but not needing to live in each others’ pockets. Just beyond the … Read more
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
In my studio here, I have a clavichord, built by my parents in 1971, with a somewhat rococo and amusing backdrop painted by my mother (who otherwise has left us with a stunning body of mostly modernist artwork). I grew up with this painfully quiet clavichord, along with a gorgeous harpsichord (also built by my … Read more
