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Rediscover Northern Ireland Programme
Participant Biographies (in order of appearance on the programme)
John Moulden is one of Ireland's leading authorities
on traditional song and also a well-regarded singer. A teacher by
trade, he retired, in 1992, as Principal of one of Northern Ireland's
Integrated Primary Schools which are designed to educate Roman Catholic
and Protestant children together. Since then he has been working on songs
full time - researching, writing, lecturing and publishing. He has recently
received his Ph.D. from the NUI Galway and the dissertation topic is
the cheap printing of songs in Ireland on ballad sheets and in eight page
songbooks. His articles and essays have appeared, among others, in Canadian
Folk Music Journal, Sing Out!, Irish
Folk Music Studies, Folk Song Research
and Folk Music Journal. His publications
include Thousands
are Sailing: A Brief Song History of Irish Emigration (Portrush,
1994) and Songs of Hugh McWilliams, Schoolmaster,
1831 (Portrush, 1992).
His major work has been on the Sam Henry Collection, the largest collection
of Irish songs ever to be published. Aspects of this collection will
be the subject of his talk at the Library. He has lectured widely throughout
Ireland, Britain and the United States of America. As both singer and
scholar, his talks are characterized by his own performances and by his
informed enthusiasm.
Rosie
Stewart, from Belcoo, County Fermanagh, is among
the most distinguished of Irish traditional singers. Chosen as "Traditional
Singer of the Year" for 2004 by the Irish Language Television Station, TG4,
her absolutely distinctive voice and style, the dramatic intensity
of her 'big' song performances and the wicked pleasure she takes
in comic ones, make her one of the most sought after singers in
Ireland. She has performed throughout Ireland, on radio and television,
and in Britain and North America.
She has been singing for as long as she can remember and attributes her love
of songs to her late father, the singer Packie McKeaney,
a major influence and a great encouragement in her
career. Rosie Stewart is noted for her artistry, her forceful,
direct manner, and purity of voice and style. She sings local Fermanagh
songs including "Adieu
to Lovely Garrison," the title song of her highly acclaimed CD on
Spring Records (1998).
Francis McPeake (1885-1971) was born in Belfast,
worked in a factory as a boy, and at the age of nine years played
in the O'Connell Flute Band. He took the initiative of writing
to Ireland's Own for information on Irish pipes and harp
and studied uilleann pipes under the blind Galway piper John Reilly.
His son, Francis McPeake II (1917-1986) began to play the pipes
when he was eighteen years old. He formed the first McPeake
Trio,
which included his father, and they were to win the Llangollen
International Music Eisteddfod three times. He afterwards included
his children, which meant that the group had six members and was
known as The McPeake
Family. Among other places, they played in the Royal Festival
Hall in London. On the suggestion of Pete Seeger, who filmed the
McPeake Family in Belfast in 1964, the family made a two-month tour
of the United States in 1965, including a performance for President
Lyndon Johnson at the White House. Their song, "Will You Go, Lassie,
Go" written by Francis Sr. became an anthem of the folk song revival.
They were noted for close harmonies of uilleann pipes, harps, and
voices. Francis McPeake founded the Clonard Traditional Music School
in 1977, now internationally famous and known as the Francis McPeake
School of Music, and many young people have learned how to play traditional
music at this wonderful Belfast institution. The third and fourth
generation of the McPeake family will be performing at this concert.
Kay Muhr is Senior Research Fellow of the Northern Ireland
Place-Name Project in Irish and Celtic Studies, Queen's University. She is
the author of North West County Down/Iveagh, vol.
6 in the "Place-Names of
Northern Ireland" series, and of the text of the touring exhibition
and booklet called Celebrating Ulster's Townlands.
Kay Muhr grew up in rural Cambridgeshire, read Celtic studies at Edinburgh
from 1966 to 1970, and received her Ph.D., on narrative style in traditional
Gaelic literature, from the University of Edinburgh. She has written and lectured
on early Irish literature, on the use of place-names in the Ulster Cycle tales,
and on the early maps of Ireland. Professor Muhr is Chairman of the Ulster
Place-Name Society, and is a past president of the Society for Name Studies
in Britain and Ireland. Her research interests span Ireland, Scotland, and
the Isle of Man, including language, culture, oral tradition, and place and
family names.
Please visit the following website to view an exhibition of her current research
on Ulster place-names entitled, Celebrating
Ulster's Townlands.
Henry Glassie is the College Professor of Folklore at Indiana
University. In 1972, he settled into a community in County Fermanagh, Northern
Ireland, to learn how country people endure in hard times. He worked with them,
gathering their stories, and five books were the result: All
Silver and No Brass,
Irish Folk History, Passing
the Time in Ballymenone, Irish Folktales, and The
Stars of Ballymenone. Professor Glassie has served as the president of the American
Folklore Society, and he has received many awards for his work, including the
Chicago Folklore Prize and the Cummings Award of the Vernacular Architecture
Forum. Among his other books are Folk Housing
in Middle Virginia, The Spirit
of Folk Art, Turkish Traditional Art Today, Art and Life in Bangladesh, The
Potter's
Art, and Vernacular Architecture.
Dáithí Sproule is a guitarist and singer of traditional
songs in English and Irish. He was born and raised in Derry City in the
north of Ireland and moved to Dublin in 1968 to attend university. In the
late sixties and early seventies, through his work with the group Skara
Brae, he was one of first guitarists to develop DADGAD tuning for Irish
music. From 1974 to 1978 Dáithí played most nights of the week in sessions
and clubs in Dublin, frequenting the Four Seasons in Capel Street and performing
with many great musicians, such as John and James Kelly, Sean Casey, Pádraig
Mac Mathúna, Dáithí Connaughton, Paddy O'Brien and Catherine McEvoy.
In 1978 Dáithí left his editing job in Dublin to play and record in the U.S.
with Paddy O'Brien and James Kelly. A second album followed a year or two later,
by which time Dáithí had settled in Minneapolis/Saint Paul. Here there was a
thriving music and dance scene, and Dáithí played with the Northern
Star Céilí Band,
Miltown na nGael and Peat Moss and the Turf Briquettes. The 1980s also brought
recordings with Tommy Peoples, Séamus and Mánus McGuire, Peter Ostroushko and
Sean O'Driscoll. It was at this time that two longer-term partnerships also originated.
One was the group Trian, with Liz Carroll and Billy McComiskey. The
other was a friendship with Frankie Kennedy and Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh, which led
to a long involvement with the band Altan.
Dáithí has toured all over the world with Altan, including appearances at the
Albert Hall, the Hollywood Bowl and the Sydney Opera House. In addition to his
performing life Dáithí is a composer of tunes, many of which have been recorded,
and a writer of academic articles on early Irish poetry, legend and history and
of short stories in the Irish language. He has taught courses on Old Irish, Celtic
culture and Irish traditional music at University College, Dublin, the University
of Saint Thomas in Saint Paul and the University of Minnesota. In recent years
Dáithí has toured and recorded with Randal Bays and with the trio, Fingal, which
includes Randal and James Keane.
Born in 1978, Robert Watt was brought up in the
small town of Maghera, Co. Derry at the foot of the Sperrin Mountains.
With a keen ear for pipes from a very young age, he was first introduced
to the instrument in the winter of 1985 in his local pipe band,
Tamlaght O'Crilly. It was here
that he took his first instruction from Pipe Major David Taylor and former
Pipe Major of the band, John Crockett. Both of them were strict and disciplined
instructors. It is no doubt this discipline that accounts for
the precision and finger dexterity in Robert's playing.
In 1998 he took an interest in solo piping and had the good fortune of
meeting current mentor, Pipe Major Norman Dodds, another highly respected teacher
and prolific prize winner from the 1960s through the 1980s. This was Robert's
first introduction to Piobaireachd (the classical music of the bagpipe),
and in a short time his name was appearing regularly in prize lists at home
and in Scotland. In 2000 he competed for the Silver Medal prize
at the Argyllshire Gathering in Oban and at the Northern Meeting
in Inverness. He surprised many by winning this prestigious medal on his first
attempt at Inverness and subsequently took the runner-up spot at Oban, again
making history as the first person in Ireland to win the Silver Medal. On the
strength of these triumphs he gained access to compete for
the much coveted Highland Society of London's
Gold Medal. The contest, limited to thirty competitors, is both
recognized by the piping world as being the top prize and also every piper's
dream. Robert achieved a very creditable third place in the Gold Medal competition
at Oban in 2003.
Over the last few years, Robert has given up much of his own time to help
others and serve his local community in another very important role: In
1997 he joined the Northern Ireland Fire Brigade and completed the training
to take up the position as a retained firefighter in his local fire station.
His music, however, remains his main priority. Robert is a much sought-after
musician and performs regularly at home and abroad. He also has an increasing
number of pupils attending his classes and private lessons. A popular solo
recitalist, he is often asked to perform at public recitals and instruct
at workshops across the world, as well as having adjudicated at piping
competitions in Scotland and Denmark.
Reverend Canon Gary Hastings is one of several well-known
Irish men of the cloth who take their traditional music seriously. An
excellent flute player himself, he was featured on the CD Slan
le Loch Eirne (Stories to Tell), (Clo Iar-Chonnachta,
2002) with Father Seamus Quinn who plays fiddle and piano. Gary holds
a B.A. in Irish Studies, an M.A. in Adult and Continuing Education, and a
Theology degree. Although not a fifer nor a drummer, he recently wrote With
Fife and Drum -- Music, Memories and Customs of an Irish Tradition (Blackstaff
Press Ltd., 2003), which
explores the musical tradition of the Lambeg drum, primarily associated
with the Orange Order in Northern Ireland. Although the manuscript doesn't
shy away from the political associations, Hastings concentrates on the
more purely musical aspects of the tradition, the instruments and performance
practice. The publication also includes a tunebook of 70 fife tunes which
is complemented with a 17-track CD containing recordings of performances
and conversations with practitioners. Born in Belfast, he is now the
Church of Ireland Rector of Westport, Co. Mayo, where he lives with his
wife, Catríona,
and their two children.
The highly
respected Brian
Mullen is a native of Derry city and has been
singing traditional songs for more than thirty years. Like many others in the
1960s he fell under the spell of Bob Dylan and the American folk revival
and made his way from there back to his Irish roots. He met, became friends
with and learned from some of the great singers of Ulster like Eddie Butcher,
Joe Holmes, Geordie Hanna and Nellie Ní Dhomhnaill. Brian has been involved
in broadcasting since 1984 and has worked for many years with the BBC where
he was Northern Ireland's first full-time Irish language radio producer.
He helped to set up Radio Ulster's Irish Language Unit in 1987 and currently
presents the weekly radio program, Caschlár, which
features an eclectic selection of music from around the world.
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