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, banjos, guitars, loud chattering, singing, tin whistles, flutes, pints pouring and a saxophone. I fell in love with trad and folk music right then.
My family is Irish, though I grew up in the U.K. on the Wirral, so I already knew the music but hadn’t really experienced it. I was at that time a DJ playing house and disco. Now I decided folk music was something I wanted to pursue. The next week I brought my guitar to the session and asked if I could join in. Everyone was really nice and I think I sang Raglan Road or something. I listened to lots of the Dubliners, the Pogues, Margaret Barry, Hamish Imlach and the Fureys around that time.
There was a fella who played in the session called Sandy Cheyne, who I now know is an artist and brilliant banjo picker. He soon showed me it was more useful to play a five-string than a guitar in this environment, because there are so many of the latter to compete with.
He encouraged me to adapt old Scottish tunes to be played on the five-string banjo. Sandy had a huge influence on my musical direction. I started listening to all sorts of country music and learnt about the roots it had in Scottish and Irish.
I listened to lots of on musicians like Bob Dylan, Dock Boggs, Ola Belle Reed, Jean Ritchie, Doc Watson, Clarence Ashley, Nathan Abshire and too many other names to mention. But it was the trad session approach to music which had the biggest influence on me.
I learned how to entertain a crowd, often using humour in the songs. It also showed me how to be vulnerable with my writing. Things I like to talk about in my songs are non-traditional relationships, mental health issues, class politics and the end of the world. Also love. Lots about love.
I moved to Lisbon to study in 2021 and did what I always did when I moved to a new place: looked for the music. Funnily enough the only Irish trad session in town was a five-minute walk from my new home.
By then I had a few songs under my belt and wanted to take them to some open mics. I was then introduced to a musician called the Mighty String at the city’s oldest open mic in a nice venue called Camones. We decided to do some terracing – where you busk to tables at restaurants – and became mates. He sat me down one day and told me I need a new name. Conor Riordan was too difficult to pronounce over there and he’d always noticed I wore short sleeve t-shirts. Shortsleeve Conor was born.
I’m a really lucky person. When things are not meant to work out they usually do. So when I moved to Lisbon I wasn’t expecting there to be a blossoming folk music scene I could jump straight into. But I soon made a great group of friends, who all happened to be excellent musicians.
I’m also really lucky that I didn’t have to pursue the Shortsleeve project too hard. Gigs just seemed to happen and the response was generally encouraging. But there was always one problem question: “Have you got any of your music online?” I didn’t and I didn’t really have a plan to. But I had a friend who had just decided to start a record label to capture this special moment in the city’s cultural history.
Cheap Wine Records was founded by Lee Squires with the ambition of promoting Lisbon’s folk music scene. It also aims to nurture future talent, showcasing their work so they can tour and go on to bigger things. Shortsleeve Conor was one of the first projects, so again I was very lucky.
The album – ‘Whatever that means’ – was put together at Estudio Roma 49 in Lisbon, with my friends and fellow musicians coming together to make it happen. The same goes for the production, marketing and funding. This community-led approach to the music made me feel right at home. It’s the same mindset as being back in the Prince of Wales, sitting in a circle playing tunes over a few pints. Only now I was blessed with a hot Portuguese sun, instead of the freezing North Sea winds.
I’m writing this the day the Doomsday Clock moved 90 seconds closer to midnight, the closest it’s ever been. It doesn’t feel like there’s a lot going on in the world to be happy about. But being from northern England I have to find what’s funny in everything. It takes the edge off. That’s why in my writing I contrast the rise of fascism with not being able to get a parking space in my song Pink Champagne. That’s why my song about being in an abusive relationship is so upbeat.
I like to write about these things, but to add some humour into them. It helps because I also really struggle to express how I feel, which can be really frustrating when I’m in a relationship. I’m only at my most vulnerable when I’m telling an audience how I feel about someone who should have heard it first. I really try to leave nothing to the imagination with lyrics.
Now my album is out I don’t really know what to do. I hope to use it to travel with my music and meet new people. When we started this record project the Mighty String asked me to write down what my long-term goal was for the album. I said I’d like for it to be well appreciated in a small but enthusiastic audience so I could disappear into anonymity without worrying about it too much and become a furniture painter or something. Then in forty years I’d like for it to be rediscovered and for it become a country classic so I can go on tour with it globally in my seventies.
When it comes to veteran rock journalists, few could lay more genuine claim to the title than Allan Jones. After joining Melody Maker as cub reporter in 1974, with no previous writing experience, but an application letter which concluded: ‘Melody Maker needs a bullet up its arse. I’m the gun – pull the trigger’, he rose to editing the magazine ten year later. On leaving the fabled inky at the height of the excesses of Brit Pop – about which he was less than enthusiastic – he founded and edited Uncut, providing a British-based forum for the emerging Americana/New Country scene. Now in semi-retirement, he has produced two volumes of rock’n’roll anecdotage – 2017’s Can’t Stand Up for Falling Down, and the recently published Too Late To Stop Now. Des Traynor caught up with him to discuss these and sundry other matters at last year’s Kilkenny Rhythm’n’Roots Festival(a.k.a. ‘the best little weekend music festival in Ireland – and the known universe’), now celebrating its 25th anniversary.
It seems like there are more lengthy pieces in this book than the last one?
Yeah, partly due to the circumstances in which it was written. The first book they were interested more in a compilation of the stories as they were already written, and I didn’t really think of elaborating on them. I just packed the book with as many stories as possible, which meant that a lot of them had to be shorter than they could have been. I started writing stories for the second one just at the beginning of the first lockdown. As I explained in the book, I thought people would be using their time productively – you know, learning the harpsichord or how to juggle or a foreign language, whatever.
You didn’t want to emerge empty-handed?
Yes, I mean, I could quite happily have spent lockdown getting stoned and watching Netflix, there’s loads of movies. I’ve got a link to the BFI player. So, endless hours of viewing available, and a vast record collection I could reacquaint myself with – but when I started writing the stories there was no inhibition in terms of words, so I tended to let the stories dictate the length they would be.
Were you always confident about your own abilities as a writer and critic, or did you feel like maybe you were a bit out of your depth when you started?
I had loads of opinions. I wouldn’t call them well-informed in a lot of instances, but they were opinions and I wasn’t shy about sharing them. That came out of an Art School background. If there was one thing that Art School taught me, it was that you had to stand up for your work and your opinions, and be unfazed by criticism. So I hadn’t realised that at the time, but it did give me a lot of confidence, more bravado and bluff really.
But you could do the work?
It was very simple. I wasn’t stupid. I’d read Melody Maker for years. I’d recognised the basic template of writing a 2000 word feature on somebody who’d just had a chart hit. You went in, you established the fact that they had a new single, let them tell you how it was different from the last single, how it was a step forward, how it was a new vision for the band or whatever. That usually took about five minutes. To liven things up, you’d hope that one of the band’s chart rivals had a new single out. So you’d ask them for an opinion on that, hopefully it would be a bit controversial, they’d slag it, which would give Ray Coleman the chance to put a big headline on the cover: ‘Sweet slam Rubettes’, or ‘Shawaddywaddy slam Glitter’. And all they would say, basically, was ‘I’m not really keen on it’, or ‘It’s not very good’. But that was enough: that stirred up a bit of controversy.
The other thing I learned to get a band talking was to tell them that you’d heard a rumour that one of them was leaving, or doing a solo album. And sometimes they’d go: ‘How did you know that?’ ‘Oh, just a wild guess.’ But it would get them talking about band dynamics. But I found that, a band like Mud for instance, who were really sweet guys, they were used to churning out these interviews, very pat answers. They weren’t really engaged with the interview process. But if you stopped for a drink with them, after they got this contractual obligation out of the way, I’d start asking them about their early days: anecdotes galore! Fucking brilliant stuff! Les Gray: really a very funny man. So I started to introduce some of those anecdotes to change the shape of the copy that was expected. At first they’d just get cut out, ‘Stick to the news story that you’ve been sent to do.’ So I just started to fracture that as much as I could. And although I hadn’t read Lester Bangs or people like that, I had read Tom Wolfe, and I’d read Hunter S. Thompson. I had an idea of what the new journalism was: contravening traditional journalistic rules about not involving yourself in the story. So I started introducing myself as a character. At first, they were the bits that would be cut. But as I became more successful at that kind of integration, the opportunities opened up. I mean, at that time, I would accept anything they asked me to do. I’d never written before, and I had to learn how to write well and quickly. So ‘I’ll do anybody, just send me out, I’ll do it. I’ll come back and I’ll write it up and see where we go from there.’ And once as the readers’ responses started to come in…
Lou Reed in 1977.
You hit it off with Lou Reed?
How extraordinary was that? I could have wept. I was such a huge, huge Velvets’ fan.
Why do you think he took a shine to you?
When I walked in, with some presence of mind, I pressed record on my tape recorder. And for twenty minutes there was just this torrent of abuse. His first words to me were, ‘Do you know your head is too big for your body?’ And ‘What toilet did Melody Maker find you in, faggot?’ It was effortless on his part. It just went off. But I was just laughing. This was the Lou Reed I wanted. I could feel the piece writing itself. And I thought even if he tells me to fuck off when he’s finished this tirade, I’m gonna have enough to write something.
I then took a breath. And I just said something like, ‘Are you doing this because this is what you think I expected Lou Reed to be like? Or is this you being Lou Reed? Or are you just turning it on because, you know, you think this is how the public want to see you?’ And he thought about that, and he said, ‘Sit down’. So I sat down, and he said, ‘Drink?’, and pulled out a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red, the first of two that we got through that day. I think, because I had a sense of humour, and I wasn’t intimidated by him, he just liked it. And I wasn’t deferential to him, and I think he liked that as well.
And at the end of the interview, when the chief of press came in, Lou said, ‘By the way, book Allan into the hotel I’m staying in in Sweden. You’re coming on the road with me.’ And I thought he’d forget about it, but come the next Tuesday, there was a fucking limo outside my flat, drove me to the airport, got on a flight to Stockholm, there was a car waiting at Stockholm airport, took me straight to the hotel, and Lou is waiting in the lobby, saying, ‘Where have you been?’
What about Van Morrison, whose music you obviously love, but all your encounters with him were ‘difficult’.
Well, the first one especially, it was backstage at Knebworth, not ideal. He’d just come off stage, in a sulky mood. In the end, I just said, ‘Fuck it, man. If you’re not gonna chat, you know, we’re wasting time. I’ve got things to do, you’ve got things to do, I’m gonna leave.’ I was fuming, absolutely fuming. But I must say it never dented my admiration or love for his work. His work transcends any personal faults that he has, and to this day it does.
He is a paranoid fucker.
He’s always been like that. People who know him better than I would will trace it back to the way he was treated in the early part of his career. So comprehensively ripped off that he just hates the music business, which has offered him such success. So I can understand that level of bitterness. But five minutes in the presence of virtually anything that Van’s recorded, and any kind of negative thoughts that I have about him as a person immediately evaporate. I saw four gigs over three months, that they played just after COVID, at the Palladium, Hampton Court, a small Dingwall’s gig he did, and then at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane. And he was just incredible each time, absolutely astonishing.
Do you think that there’s a lot of compromise in reviewing now, that rock journalism has become an extension of PR?
Well, I think that is true to a certain extent: it’s certainly not the kind of confrontational journalism that I became attached to. Also, the idea that the writer as a character becomes involved in the story isn’t much encouraged, it seems to me, from current reading of Mojo or Uncut. There seems to be a greater deference to artists these days.
Are there any younger writers now that you particularly like?
I don’t read so much that I could say. But here’s a point that addresses your thinking about the PR nature of it, and the way the writing has changed since my days. I can read a whole issue of Uncut, and if it didn’t have byline names on the page, I wouldn’t really know who had written it. They really are quite interchangeable. There is a template that everybody adheres to. It’s not compromising the features, which are good in themselves. But what I miss is an individual, indeed, an idiosyncratic, voice. It’s just not there. However, there’s a writer in Uncut called Damian Love, who I really, really like – probably because his taste and mine are really similar. And another writer who doesn’t appear as much as he should in Uncut, because he’s got a separate career as a political commentator and broadcaster is Andrew Mueller, who has written a couple of very, very good books – one about his life as a political foreign correspondent, and the other a memoir of his career as a music journalist, including coming over from Australia.
I really enjoyed the books, not just in terms of subject matter, but because they are so funny, especially the way you often describe things in exaggerated terms.
Well, I think that came out of not having any musical training and not knowing anything about musical theory. So I can’t break down a piece of music into something well informed about the actual musical content like, you know, Richard Williams was able to do, in the old Melody Maker.
Did you ever try learning an instrument, or playing?
No. At school – first year, comprehensive – we had to do music as a subject, and apparently to get good grades in that exam you had to play an instrument. And it wasn’t the kind of school where you wanted to be seen carrying a violin. So I thought: what comes in something square that looks like it’s a suitcase? So I ended up supposedly learning the trumpet. But when I went to the first lesson and I just couldn’t a noise out of the fucking thing. I was just blowing and blowing, I believe so hard that I burst a blood vessel in my nose and had to be taken to hospital. So I never went back for the second lesson.
The end of your musical career.
Indeed.
And with that ripping yarn, so characteristic of the man, he’s off for a fun-filled afternoon with his old mucker, B.P. Fallon.
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 I just wrote them down. I never experienced songwriting like that before. I did write in my early twenties, but It felt different with these songs.
Since then, another batch of songs came to me in 2020 just after Covid hit. I realised that each set of songs felt that they had their own colours. The early batch felt black with bits of white. So I refer to them as the black and white songs. The songs that arrived in May of 2020 are mostly orange and my most recent songs have mostly been pink. I’ve got lots of pink songs.
Sharing Music
I never meant to share my music with others in the way that I am now. I was quite wary of doing so for a long time. If I shared them it was just for the fun of playing and experimenting with friends.
There are two acts that currently inspire me to write and perform my music to others – Rónán Ó Snodaigh and Shakalak.
At the moment I feel particularly moved by live music and feel very lucky that my favourite acts are Irish. When I go and see Rónán or Shakalak perform I want to go straight home afterwards and make something new to share. They make me feel like strengthening my inner voice and using it more.
Their example shows how transformative live music can be and each time I’ve heard them perform I feel that I have learnt something new about myself or about the world we’re in. They remind me that music can bring us closer together. That we are all going through similar things in different ways, and we can relate to each other through our art. They continuously inspire me to bring what I have inside of me out into the world.
Returning to Dublin
When I came to Dublin in 2018 – having spent two years in Donegal – I began playing my music at open mic nights in the city. This helped me to integrate back into city life. I didn’t realise it would take a while for Dublin to feel like a home again.
Playing in venues helped me connect with others and so began the feeling of community. One of the most valuable rewards of playing music has been witnessing the community that comes with it and watching that community grow. I have got to meet so many beautiful people and feel genuinely supported and encouraged by them.
During Covid – whenever it was possible to do so – I began to play my orange tunes with a talented and intuitive drummer, Jason McNamara. Last year I was granted an Agility Award and with it I wrote more pink tunes.
It was strange for me to sit down and say “ok, I need to write some songs” because prior to this the songs came about very naturally. It worked out though, and I’m currently enjoying hearing these songs grow legs and arms and gain a life of their own on the stage.
Self-Expression
Rather than pursuing music as a career, I have always just been interested in music as a way to express myself. It’s an art form for me. I feel I get to see myself grow through making art in ways that I might not find the space for in day-to-day life.
Performing live is what I enjoy most. I did a small bit of work in theatre in the past and loved that a play would be this live, living and breathing thing for a little while.
It existed just for the people who showed up to see it and then it would be gone. I often feel that my music was written as if it were made for the theatre stage.
For years I have played music on the street for fun, and for experience. There, I learned how to project my voice; perform with confidence; receive a compliment; to be rejected; experiment with other artists; and connect with all kinds of people. A lot of my own music would have debuted on the streets of Dublin.
Image: Daniele Idini
On the Liffey
Once Covid ended I started to make changes that meant I was playing my music to others quite frequently. In 2022 I was offered a beautiful gig that runs in the summer called ‘Music under the bridges’ by a company called City Kayaking.
The gig usually starts under Capel Street Bridge where a group of people on kayaks gather to listen to a musician sitting on a little dingy under the bridge. The setting is just beautiful and different every time. Nature dictates the stage. Sometimes bringing sunlight that hits off the water and projects on to the arches. Sometimes you might catch a seal listening in. It’s magic no matter what the weather is like.
The very kind and lovely thing about this company is that they hire artists to play their original music, which meant that I was suddenly playing my music to an audience on a weekly basis.
From playing on the Liffey, things seemed to progress like a rolling stone. Next, I found myself playing at mini festivals and events in the city and beyond.
I started to meet more artists and felt inspired to continue to create and find more ways to spend my time playing music in my days.
At the beginning of this year I was introduced to the opportunity of playing music in nursing homes which I still do now on a regular basis. I was delighted to stumble into this area. It’s really grounding and the exchange with the people there can be very rewarding.
At the moment I am considering some projects for 2024. I have a little studio in the city centre that I work away in. I haven’t recorded a lot of music yet since I’ve been more interested in performing live, but It seems it might be a next step for me.
There’s talk of collaborating with an artist to make a music video for my song ‘Paper Thin Woman’ which would be magic! I’m starting to play with a wonderful bass player now as well as Jason on drums. This is new and exciting territory for me. I look forward to the adventure ahead!
I grew up in Walthamstow, London listening to my Dad play finger-picking folk covers on the guitar and banjo and to my Mum’s very small record collection which we would play on repeat and dance around to in the lounge. I especially remember The Seven Drunken Nights by the Dubliners which me and my sister found an absolute gas to sing along to. I didn’t learn to play instruments as a child, I wasn’t allowed to play my Dad’s and he never taught me per se, but hearing him sing and play and look so happy put the music in my bones.
In 2002 I went to drama school and went on to sing in plenty of theatre shows during my acting career. One of the highlights was a cute children’s show for which Kerry Andrew wrote the music. She has been a dear friend and collaborator ever since.
In 2013 I went on a world tour of 1927’s production of The Animals and Children Took To The Streets. It was an amazing show, a fabulous experience as we toured twenty-one countries in eleven months. But I was bored creatively. I felt like a puppet performing someone else’s work and my soul was calling for more. So I decided to write a song in every country with no expectation of the outcome. At the end of that tour I decided to leave acting and focus on music. I took a three month songwriting sabbatical, picked up a guitar and taught myself how to play and went to release my first EP “Catch Me” in 2015 which contains five songs written on the world tour. This is the title track written in midsummer in St Petersburg.
I then went on to learn piano and built a band around the music and released my first album ‘Glenaphuca”, which spoke of my call to Ireland to embrace the Irish part of my heritage. This is the first song on that album.
Right now, on the first day of November 2023, I sit on the cusp of the launch of my sophomore album “HOME”, which is out in two weeks. It has been a deep dive into healing the legacy of pain and shame that I inherited from my female ancestors here in Cork. The album sheds light on a dark past of institutional incarceration, delicately transformed into a collection of beautiful songs. It is my intention that “HOME” holds the power to heal the wounds of the past and inspire future generations to live without fear.
The songs are a mixture of ethereal folk ballads, rousing anthemic tunes, traditional folk song from Ireland and the UK, a touch of blues and a stirring a-Capella choral finale called Ancestors. I was so lucky to have my pals Kerry Andrew, Ben See, Sarah Dacey, Essa Flett, Justin Ground, Brén Ó Rúaidh, Ellis Kerkhoven and MaJiKer sing this song with me.
I’m about to go on tour in Ireland with the album starting at Whelan’s in Dublin, which I am super excited about, then onto Cill Rialiagin Kerry, before returning home to Cork for two fabulous dates at Sirius Arts Centre and The Oar.
In the new year I will head back to my studio to start birthing the third album. I love winter. I find the stillness and darkness supportive of creative work. In my songwriting phases I like to section my day into little bursts of activity, something like; thirty minutes of songwriting, thirty minutes of classical guitar, fifteen minutes of piano scales, dance for three songs, fifteen minutes of clearing out old audio, then another thirty minutes of songwriting, play five songs, go for a walk, thirty minutes of songwriting and repeat.
If I have a song coming through, I could easily spend the whole day working on it and do nothing else, but a regular practice keeps me steady and in flow. And when a song is coming through I just have to honour that or else I may miss it. It is like catching a wave. So I could literally be swimming in the sea and a song lands in me, so I’d have to jump out and get it down on my voice memos.
Next year I hope to get a bit more independent and capable at recording my own material at home. I’m looking forward to that a lot. And I’ve just bought a lush Stratocaster which I’m gonna throw my fingers into next year.
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 earlier in the year John ‘Johnny’ Smythe – the father of Dubwiser’s Eddy and John – was charged with accompanying troops from the Caribbean back home after their fight in World War II.
When, on the outward journey, The Windrush arrived at Jamaica, due to severe unemployment and a struggling economy, hundreds of young men could not be given the jobs they richly deserved. The Jamaican Labour officer appealed to Britain for assistance and the Colonial Office contacted Johnny, the senior officer in charge, and asked for him to assess the situation, come up with recommendations and report back. He interviewed the men, categorised them according to their qualifications and abilities and recommend to the Colonial Office that they return to the UK and seek employment.
Anchored off Jamaica, it’s hard to know if Johnny had any awareness of being at the fulcrum of history. He probably just wanted to help the men under his charge out of a dilemma and seized the opportunity.
Two of our fathers sailed on this ship, at different times and in different directions, and they both agreed on two things. First, that it was a beaten-up old rust bucket. The engine regularly conked out and the anchor would have to be dropped for repairs. Secondly that the camaraderie on board was second to none.
The old German boat now acted as a colonial bus service, stopping at every port to take on and put off people, supplies and anything else that could be crammed in. Every corner of Britain’s crumbling empire was represented, every culture, food, language and philosophy. After the misery of the war, it was a chance for ordinary people from all over the world to meet, rejoice, and plan for a better future.
From the lion mountain he came like a storm, Johnny came from Sierra Leone, an African in uniform
Some years before becoming the unwitting catalyst of the Windrush generation. Johnny answered the call from the ‘motherland’ who, after taking a beating from the Luftwaffe, swallowed their pride and sent a call out to the colonies for help. As a ‘Krio’ (descendant of freed slaves) in Sierra Leone Johnny knew what it was like to be an outsider in his own country, so he coped better than some with a sudden immersion into Scotland in winter and RAF training.
Shot to the right, shot to the left from ‘Johnny’ by Dubwiser.
He ended up as a navigator on Stirling bombers. The only black man in his squadron, he became a talisman for the others. Life expectancy was very short and during the latter part of 1943. On average planes were shot down every five to seven missions.
In November 1943, Johnny was shot down, badly wounded, captured, brutally interrogated by his captors, hospitalised and further interrogated in Frankfurt before being sent to a POW camp.
There, he joined the escape committee, but never tried to escape, as he pointed out that a six foot four inch black man wouldn’t get very far in North Eastern Germany. After eighteen months in the camp, on a morning in 1945 he and the other inmates awoke to find the guards gone and the gates wide open. Russians appeared two days later and they were liberated.
340 years ago, Colston was a slaver-oh, they covered it up, but still we know, now the truth is rolling down the road
Like it or not, statues have power. They point in a direction, usually the one which the commissioners wanted to point in. Bristol was littered for hundreds of years with the name of it’s ‘greatest son’ Edward Colston. Known still in our lifetimes as ‘a great philanthropist’ who, childless, left a lot of his colossal wealth to the city of Bristol.
We aren’t interested in the argument that that was ‘a great gesture’, worthy, indeed of place names and a statue in the city centre. The money was not his to give. The wealth that he created came from the slavery of 80,000 souls. He made the people smugglers who ply their bloody trade across the Mediterranean and the English Channel, look like amateurs. This man was a mass murderer. He gained a fortune and a statue, and in return he reaped genocide.
On the June 7, 2020 Jonas’s son Josh received a message on his phone: There was a big protest happening down at Bristol city centre. He hurried down there in time to see a huge crowd dragging the statue of Colston down towards the cut. He sent his father a photo, who had the sense of a long loud cheer going up across the country. As in so many things, young people were leading the way. Resistance to everything Colston stood for had been building in Bristol over a long period. His time had come and now he lies, battered and bruised, in a museum where he belongs.
A gal from the Caribbean… What an amazing woman!
After the great and ignominious, it’s useful to return to the small. Alexandrine (Spider’s mum) was a small woman, but like so many of the Windrush generation, she was strong. Eight years after the Empire Windrush sank in the Mediterranean, she was invited to come to England after passing a test demonstrating her skills in sewing, cooking and auxiliary nursing.
She left everything, her whole life in Dominica and came half-way across the globe to a country that was becoming less and less welcoming to ‘her kind’. But she knew what she had to do and she saw something in London, a glimpse of a larger potential world, if not for her, then perhaps for her children?
So, she worked, raised her children, worked some more and she kept going, kept doing, through thick and thin. In Dominica her skills as a calligrapher were noticed by Catholic nuns and in England she also learned to type.
In time Alexandrine managed to get a post as a pastry chef at The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. As the years went by she ensured many others in her circle of family and friends could also get work there, each according to their abilities. She made it her mission to help those who were in turn helping others.
After a generation of work, play, child and grandchild rearing and making what was agreed to be the best curry goat and black pudding in East London, Alexandrine returned to Dominica at the age of forty-four.
From there she sent pictures of herself smiling broadly under a coconut or banana palm and returned to the U.K. every year in the Autumn (to avoid hurricane season) with bags of produce and stories from back home. The beauty of a life well lived is unparalleled. Across Britain, this story is being retold by mother after aunty after grandma. This is our small and unsung legacy, inspiring us to live our best life.
She did, she did, she did and she keep on doing From ‘Amazing’ by Dubwiser.
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 thirty years of making and listening to music until I finally played it myself.
At the age of seven, I began to play the flute, and a year later, the clarinet in the local brass band in a southern German village right next to the River Rhine.
With my first notes, I became a clarinetist in the youth brass band, in preparation for joining the adult brass band from the village a year later. Until the age of thirteen, I spent my Friday nights playing Volksmusik and marching music, as well as soundtracks from famous American movies.
On weekends, we performed marches in other villages in the district, played music for birthdays, weddings, and funerals — all while wearing uniforms with badges on our chests. These events often involved a lot of alcohol, a repertoire of over one hundred pieces, and plenty of bonding time. I enjoyed it immensely; it felt like home!
I believe this is where my love for the bass began. In a way, I’ve remained attached to this genre. Twenty years later in Berlin, I played the bass clarinet in a brass band.
Sometimes More is Possible
When I was thirteen, my family moved to a small town in northern Germany, which marked a significant cultural shift for me.
It was also where my classical education began. I joined the youth symphony orchestra of the music school., and there I met Judith Retzlik, with whom I now play alongside Myriam Kammerlander in our band gerda vejle.
My new clarinet teacher supported and encouraged me at every available opportunity, while a conductor showed me that sometimes more is possible than I initially thought. I began to professionalize myself, and the dream of playing the double bass started to take shape.
However, another fifteen years passed by before the double bass finally entered my life: Driven by heartbreak, I bought a big and strong double bass with a heart in the bridge (thank you, Judith, for your encouragement), and since then, I’ve been the double bass player and sometimes a singer at gerda vejle.
Together with Myriam and Judith, we are gerda vejle: a space for creativity, a creative home, and friendship. If you want to learn more about gerda vejle, you should read Myriam‘s text; I couldn’t have said it better.
My role at gerda vejle is likely to provide a solid foundation for vocals, harp, and violin to rest upon. It’s wonderful to play multiple instruments that allow you to express different facets of yourself. The clarinet is my voice, and the bass is my body.
In the early years of gerda vejle, I listened to a lot of music, mainly because I was responsible for music booking at a new large venue called silent green in Berlin. This time was intense, and there was little time for my own creativity, besides the band.
Today I work as a systemic coach; and support individuals and groups usually from the creative industry in decision-making, change and search processes.
Music and Motherhood
Finding enough time for my own music-making has always been a challenge. It became even more demanding when I became a mother.
Time became the most valuable resource. Unfortunately, it’s still the case that women, in particular, struggle to balance family and music. Creative processes and working conditions are not often child-friendly: concerts and rehearsals frequently occur in the evenings and on weekends when childcare services have already closed.
Moreover, creative work demands full concentration and commitment, which can be challenging to maintain with children. This needs to change.
Gerda Vejle at Vico, Dublin.
The Oceanic Feeling and Baths in the Ocean!
Just a few years ago, I learned from a friend about the concept that describes the feeling I had always been searching for. When I discovered it, it made me the happiest person, not only in life but especially in music: the oceanic feeling. I yearn to lose myself, vibrate, connect, and resonate—a physical experience that I find when I play and listen to music.
In September, 2023, gerda vejle travelled to Ireland, and I became both an ocean swimmer and a resonating double bass player. The oceanic feeling was very close. Hopefully, there’s more of that to come in the future.
Looking ahead, I hope that we, gerda vejle, will finally manage to record our music. Do any of you know a talented female producer? If so, please get in touch with us.
The underlying theme of Canary is that of missed warnings and overcoming trauma. My mother lost her battle with cancer in 2016 and my son Noah was born asleep in 2020.
I’ve always been interested in the experience of extreme states of mind and body and even though these experiences were so painful, they were also deeply fascinating and have deepened my interest in the Big Questions, particularly what happens after this life ends; what is beyond the physical world that we experience through the senses.
Tracks such as Cascade evoke the terror and drama when the worst thing happens, and the trippy video that my friend Simon Blake gave me footage for – and Tom Schumann and I edited together – really convey something of the sense of being overwhelmed:
In a similar vein, How To Move Forward evokes a sense of the unfolding of a cataclysm, also with an undercurrent of war and conflict. The vocal samples are from ex-Navy Seal Jocko Willink and the video was cut together from authentic combat footage captured by Funker530 in Afghanistan:
In contrast, the album offers plenty of space for meditation and contemplation to explore the possibility of transcendence of the suffering of the world, with tracks such as Temple Gong drawing influence from my time spent in temples in Bangkok:
Similarly, Viññāṇa is inspired by meditation retreats in Sri Lanka and Wales, with hours spent ruminating on the fabric of reality as experienced through deep meditation and reflection; “what it means to be human” as podcaster and scientist Lex Fridman intones on the track.
Neuroscience has come a long way over the last hundred years, with the advent of brain scanning technologies such as fMRI and EEG etc, but the deepest questions still evade answering. The use of the combination of Thai traditional instruments alongside modern electronic production values is intended to musically capture a sense of the old and the new, Viññāṇa being the Pali Buddhist word typically translated as ‘consciousness’.
Album opener Sleeping Meadow sets the scene for a series of dreams with some echoing, sea like sounds and a quote from the Swiss godfather of psychoanalysis Carl Jung, “my relationship to reality was not particularly brilliant“. I’ve always been a dreamer and a bit away with the faeries, and Sleeping Meadow hints at a youthful, pastoral naivety.
Shortest Day is based on samples from an improvisation that I did back at the family home in 2013 when I was seeking to capture something of the strange ambience of our home. My mother was a computer engineer in the 1980s, so our house was full of strange computers that ran games on cassettes. It’s a paean to childhood and the dawn of the era of computing.
Vimutti and When I Leave My Body are collaborations with my dear friend, the German violinist and producer Alex Stolze.
The rest of the Canary tracks I self-produced in collaboration with Mike Bannard at Safehouse studios in Oxford and percussionist and producer Greig Stewart. I really value having their input, I think it can get very insular producing at home and I definitely have my weaknesses in terms of production, especially with drums and percussion.
So, having Greig and Mike to feed into the final refinement process was essential. Alex’s violin parts were taken from some recording that he did for a film project that I’m working on. I took the parts and cut them over a beat that I had in progress, Alex helped with the production and I’m really proud of the result.
Some of the wonky synth parts are taken from my Yamaha DX21 that I’ve had for around twenty years. I’m finally living somewhere where I can have my synths and toys set up and it’s a joy to reacquaint myself with these old friends. Thematically, When I Leave My Body is inspired by the notion of Out of Body Experiences and Robert Monroe was a pioneering researcher in the field. Again, I’m probing the question of what lies beyond this world:
Vimutti is the Pali Buddhist word for freedom. I was crafting the track for a few years, and it came out of the last couple of years before my mother passed away. On reflection her passing was inevitable but at the time we still clung on to some hope that she would beat the cancer that had taken hold. What does freedom really mean, in the face of the inevitable, cruel suffering of our existence?
Somewhere between the tumult and cacophony of tracks such as Cascade and the meditative calm of Temple Gong is Fetus. Also featuring the Thai Gong Circle, Fetus was directly inspired by Noah’s birth and passing, and was composed directly after it happened; art therapy in the true sense.
Balancing a sense of melodrama with deep contemplation, I’m really proud of it, and very grateful to Jonathan Ouin from the band Stornoway who beautifully replayed the main melody lines on cello and Cornish singer Sarah Tresidder who I sampled for the track. Adrienne from Neon Dance helped me put together this ace video for the track, which, similarly to the clip for Cascade, captures the feeling of being overwhelmed:
A reference to the canary in the coalmine as a warning of encroaching threat, the penultimate title track features an extract from a speech by John F. Kennedy where he outlines the dangers of secret societies, apt that within years Kennedy was allegedly murdered by the very institution charged with his protection.
This is also taken as symbolic for one’s own mind, the failure to perceive threats, and the fact that those threats can come from one’s own psychological systems designed for self-preservation.
Unlike the rest of the album tracks, which are Ableton Live productions with to the grid beats, Canary is a free-flowing ambient piece, based on the electronic part, with my friends Greig Stewart and clarinettist Rachel Coombes improvising in the studio. It’s a nice contrast to all the electronica tracks to have something that’s more fluid and organic. Having live musicians to work with in the studio is something that I’d like to explore more in future.
As referenced throughout the album, the final track The Afterlife optimistically gestures at the notion of peace and relief in the transcending of our mortal coil. Here’s hoping!
When I was five, I made myself a paper flute. I played it sitting on a stone in the Danish summer. My parents later gave me a real flute and I played it fervently until my teacher said it was time I learned some more instruments. I didn‘t consider myself a musician. I just loved to play.
My main instrument today is the harp, but it took me a while. Living near the Alps, it should have been easy. Alpine music is full of string instruments. But I played the flute, and loved folk music which was not from Germany. I didn‘t know at that point how fine German folk music can be. I thought Volksmusik was a lot about brass, and yodeling, and mostly for loud men in leather pants.
Growing up in the Catholic Bavarian countryside can be an ambivalent experience. Like singing in the local church band while dreaming of travelling with a circus. My first idea for a future profession was to be a woodturner, or a carpenter, which earned me comments like, girls should not work as carpenters. This was in the 1990s.
One day, I learned about an instrument maker in the region who taught people how to build historical harps by themselves. I was thrilled. This is how it started. I participated without being able to play one note on my new harp. In my head, making it came first.
This self-made, improvised kind of doing things is a quality I like a lot about folk music. Generally, about this thing called Kleinkunst in German, small art. In the beginning, there often is just the longing to play. A tiny stage, a handful of people, you did‘t even plan it, and suddenly, there is magic in the air. Like in a song by the Portuguese band Deolinda:
He passed and smiled at me and all of a sudden, the ugly face of the town changed, everything was covered in flowers … what would happen if we talked to each other?
Passou por mim e sorriu (gerda vejle):
Travelling musician
What qualifies you to be an artist? If you make a living of it? Or is it a particular way to be in the world? If you manage to transform the ordinary into beauty? Tell a story in a manner that opens a new perspective on the world, which others can relate to?
For me, it has to do with connecting. Connecting people, places and perspectives. I play a harp model called Bohemian Harp. It is neither a Celtic nor a classical harp. It is an instrument of travelling people, linked to the tradition of travelling dance musicians. Especially in the nineteenth century, there were small orchestras of Bohemian harp players, often women, who though poor managed to make an autonomous living by playing music travelling from place to place.
I too had been travelling for some time when I arrived in Berlin, a place of many perspectives and travelling existences. Studying music therapy there and later with fantastic harp player and teacher Uschi Laar, I learned something important: That music is not something you show off. Music can be something that saves you. Sometimes it is the only continuity you have. It can give voice to the unspoken, transform depth into lightness. And it has a great inclusive power.
I then met a storyteller, Ana Rhukiz. We started a travelling duo project, performing barefoot under the open sky, in tiny villages, on smaller and bigger stages, for young and old, few and many. We connected composition and performance, art and nature. What I like about fairy tales is that they often transport a hidden wisdom over time. One piece was about making rain. Drought had fallen upon humanity because nature had been disrespected. During the piece we would say the rain spell together with the audience. Often, it would rain for real, even on a sunny day.
The Lucky Accident
One element of improvisation is accident. And, at the right moment, Kairos.
Do you know Kairos? The Greek God of the lucky accident. A harp maker in Berlin told me the story of Kairos: he has just one hair and is fast. When he passes your way, you have to be lucky to grasp him at his one hair before the moment is gone.
Meeting violinist Judith Retzlik might have been one such moment of Kairos: I had placed one single note on a black board at university saying I was a harp player looking for other musicians. Our band was completed by double bass player Anne Drees, who gave the warm grounding to our violin, harp and voices improvisation. We named ourselves gerda vejle.
In concerts, people ask: Who of you is Gerda? And we smile and say: all of us. Gerda is an imaginative woman. She is creative. She might change her identity now and then. She loves to try out new things, be it styles or genres. She certainly is a feminist.
Over time, gerda has grown. She was drawn to idyllic and disastrous moments at the beginning. Much of heartbreak and rebellion. More themes arouse over time. Less drama, more questions. More laughing also. We made and discovered more instruments. The nyckelharpa, the trumpet, the ukulele. We sing in many languages, merging songs, mostly unplugged. I moved to Austria for some time, the yodeling came back to me from childhood days. I am not a great yodelist. It is a fun way to give credit to something that belongs to me without taking it too seriously.
The Layers Beneath, and Beyond
Gerda vejle is also often asked: Are you a cover band? And in fact, we play mostly songs that already exist. In the beginning, I had the ethos that we should be making our own tunes. But nowadays I would say I proudly cover. In folk music, like in oral tradition, the origin of a tune cannot always be figured out. And many true stories have been truly told before you entered stage. What gerda vejle is doing is collecting them, retelling them, giving her own voices and character to them.
What I learned when I studied literature and ever more working with storytellers is that very text, be it written or spoken, is woven from other texts. Likewise, music is a texture of relations and worlds. It is a vibrant body with many layers under the surface. Folk pieces never get finished. You just keep on crafting them over and over again.
Making music feels like exploring these layers by time. I seldom seek for ideas with a plan. They are hidden in the music, and sometimes quite somewhere else.
With the pandemic and other crises, I am asking myself more questions. What is the role art should play in a time of transformation? Which responsibility falls upon artists when there is so much confusion, and where values are challenged and resources running scarce? Should art be more political, and if so, in which way? Or could artists become people you turn to in confusion, as they often have lived through confusion and hardship themselves? For me, art is not something you add to your life when everything else is fixed. Rather, it is something that can give you another perspective to look at during bumpy times, a bit like humour.
So, one idea I found so far: there should be lightness in the heaviness. Thus, never forget the playfulness. When I teach music, I try to remind people they can be playful. I don‘t believe in the unmusical child. I believe everyone can enjoy creativity. You have to find the language. And a way to play around the bumpiness. Make a song of it. Make it fly.
Earlier this month I released The Blue Light, a selection of solo piano and chamber pieces spanning the last decade, performed by pianist Michael McHale and musicians from Crash Ensemble. The album offers a range of sound-worlds, and I like to think that I am open to the possibility of my music changing, but I realise that there seem to be some constants in what I am doing: I want to create highly concentrated, meditative – even ritualistic – experiences. Maybe I always will.
In 2006, I co-founded a record label and music production company called Ergodos with composer Benedict Schlepper-Connolly. We have co-curated dozens of projects together, and my work as a composer has often involved composing for specific contexts (such as, e.g., the Ergodos Musicians project I Call to You). For The Blue Light, my first solo album, I wanted to try to keep a sense of curated “coherence” across the record, even though the album is essentially a compilation.
The album opens with a solo piano piece composed last year: Und weinen, und lächeln. This short toccata takes its inspiration from “Des Fischers Liebesglück”, a song by Franz Schubert with words by Karl Gottfried von Leitner. The final stanza reads: “Und weinen / Und lächeln, / Und meinen, / Enthoben / Der Erde, / Schon oben, / Schon drüben zu sein.” An English translation: “Weeping, / smiling, / we think / we are relieved of the earth, / and are already up above, / in another place.”
Audio embed: use code below to embed “Des Fischers Liebesglück” by Franz Schubert from Spotify
Audio embed: use code below to embed Und weinen, und lächeln by Garrett Sholdice from Bandcamp
St Dunstan-in-the-East for piano, two violins, viola & cello was also composed last year, although the idea for the piece was sparked several years ago, whilst visiting London. St Dunstan-in-the-East was a church on St Dunstan’s hill in the City of London. It was mostly destroyed by bombing during the Second World War. After the war, the decision was taken to turn the ruins into a public garden. The space is unassuming and beautiful.
St Dunstan in the East, City of London.
My piece St Dunstan-in-the-East represents an attempt to create meaning out of fragmentary materials, perhaps in a way that is resonant with the idea of transforming a ruined building into a public urban space. Looking back over the notebook I used whilst sketching the piece, I noticed the following entry: “where is it going / what is it made from / why is it here / thick / thin / husks / the beauty of damaged, fragmentary things…”
Sketches for St Dunstan-in-the-East, from the composer’s notebook, 2022.
The next work on the album, Das blaue Licht for two violins, viola & cello dates from 2013, when I was based in Berlin. The title (which means “the blue light” in German) refers to the luminous blue of the sky above Danziger Strasse in northeast Berlin, during the hot July weeks in which I wrote the piece. The first part of Das blaue Licht features intricate pizzicato “hocketing”: a brief (ec)static dance. In the second part a series of chordal “breaths” eventually lead to a gentle song inspired by Javanese gamelan.
Berlin, Danziger Straße.
Often, at the ends of my pieces, melodies emerge as if finally remembered or unearthed. (This can be heard in the second part of Das blaue Licht.) I think this comes from my earliest musical experiences as a boy chorister in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, where sung melody was a daily experience. It was here that I first got to know choral music of the late Renaissance, such as William Byrd and Thomas Tallis. The weaving of melodic lines in this music always seems somehow miraculous to me.
At the beginning of the Tallis excerpt above, the soprano part (“S. P.” = “sexta pars”) and alto part (“Sup.” = “superius”) are both “divided” into two, a technique known as “gymel” in Medieval and Renaissance vocal music. This technique was the inspiration for my viola and cello duet, Gymel, composed in 2018. In my piece, the cello and viola begin in unison, singing as one. This unison line then bifurcates, and the individual personalities of the two instruments emerge.
The album closes, as it opens, with a solo piano piece: Prelude No. 12, composed in 2017. This is a soliloquy: just me, spinning out a single unbroken melodic line. The American poet Frank O’Hara talked about writing “personal poems”; this is maybe a “personal piece”. When I wrote it, I prefaced the score with these lines from his poem, “To Gottfried Benn”: “Poetry is not instruments / that work at times / then walk out on you / laugh at you old / get drunk on you young / poetry’s part of yourself”.
For me, as a composer working with notation in the classical tradition, the score is not the music – only the performers can create this. It has been my good fortune to work with such extraordinary performers for this record: pianist Michael McHale, and musicians from Crash Ensemble – violinists Diamanda La Berge Dramm and Larissa O’Grady, violist Ed Creedon and cellist Kate Ellis. The sensitivity with which they interpreted these scores was more than I could hope for.
Similarly, I am in indebted to the most diligent and incisive audio team: assistant producer Caterina Schembri, recording and post-production engineer Eduardo Prado, and mastering engineer Christoph Stickel. Often, for my music, the challenge is to somehow translate the atmosphere of a live acoustic performance experience into a digital recording. Thanks to this team, the intimacy and ritual of live performance comes across on this record.
Album cover for The Blue Light by Garrett Sholdice, featuring a watercolour by Neil Sholdice. (Cábán i n-aice na coille, Loch Coirib, 2019)
I always considered myself a late bloomer when it came to music. Growing up, I didn’t have many opportunities to play instruments, and I chose to focus on art rather than music during my secondary school years. Becoming a better musician seemed like a mysterious journey with no obvious roadmap.
I credit my Dad for introducing me to some incredible artists like Led Zeppelin, Queen, Pink Floyd & Jethro Tull. In return, I introduced him to the captivating sounds of Radiohead, a band which played a pivotal role in developing my appreciation of interesting chord progressions and ambiguous harmony.
We listened to a lot of music together and aged fourteen my Dad surprised me with my very first guitar – an SX acoustic steel string. I remember eagerly trying to bend those strings in the style of Jimmy Page, with no great success. It would be some years before I would get round to purchasing my first electric guitar.
I struggled as a teenager to envisage my future career. I was less concerned with money, status, or even moral virtue. Instead, I found myself preoccupied with what the day-to-day experience would be like. I would ponder different paths, like the idea of becoming a doctor – helping people, earning a good income, a respectable profession. But then I would wonder, ‘What would the minute-to-minute reality be like?’ Would it involve blood, guts, and smelly feet? High stakes with people’s lives on the line?
That’s why I find myself where I am today – as a musician and a teacher. I derive immense joy from the everyday moments in my career. It’s not about the grand aspirations; it’s the day-to-day experience that fulfils me. Whether I’m playing music or sharing my knowledge as a teacher, I find deep satisfaction in the present moment.
Revelation!
Not long after finishing school, I stumbled upon a YouTube video of Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’ arranged for solo classical guitar. It instantly captivated me, and I dedicated that entire summer to learning the piece from start to finish. The experience brought me an unparalleled joy – the intricate polyphony, the interplay between the upper and lower voices, and the sublime harmonic movements, all projected from my own instrument! It was a revelation – I had finally found something I could pour hours into.
I discovered I had a knack for memorizing lengthy pieces, so I embarked on expanding my repertoire. Attending classical guitar recitals at the National Concert Hall became a regular thing, as I aimed to immerse myself in the rich tapestry of the classical guitar world. By the time I enrolled for lessons with Leslie Cassidy at the DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama in 2013, I had already delved into the works of various composers, including Villa Lobos, Tarrega, Barrios, Koshkin, and Albeniz. This played a pivotal role in shaping my technique and opened my ears to a more contemporary range of harmonies as I explored the guitar repertoire from the romantic period onwards.
My time with Leslie was absolutely crucial to my growth as a musician. I eagerly looked forward to our weekly Saturday morning lessons, where he meticulously reviewed every piece I had learned, correcting my mistakes and helping me break free from bad habits – especially my woeful right hand technique. Though my time with Les lasted only two years, he was an incredibly supportive and motivating mentor and teacher. I miss him dearly, and I often wonder what it would be like to have a conversation with him today, at this stage of my musical journey.
Everything in Its Right Place…
Regardless of my skill level as a musician, I’ve always been drawn to composing. It just felt right and has always been a natural part of how I absorb new musical ideas. I aim to combine elements that I find appealing in a way that feels satisfying—a blend of the familiar and the unpredictable. There’s a certain joy that comes with seeing a well-developed idea come to life, as if putting something in its rightful place.
I knew I lacked many of the skills and understanding necessary to compose music at the level I desired. Even though I was already composing for my band BiG Fridge, I wanted a deeper understanding of my own music to better develop and convey my ideas. That’s why I decided to enroll in the Bachelor’s program in Jazz Performance at the Newpark Academy of Music. Despite knowing little to nothing about jazz, I discovered that this foreign musical idiom shared many of the same values that resonated with me.
Attending Newpark was a humbling experience. I had never before been surrounded by so many individuals who loved and took music as seriously, if not more so, than I did. I met amazing people who possessed qualities I aspired to, and learned a great deal from them, both as individuals and musicians. Tommy Halferty, my teacher, was truly remarkable. He encouraged me to embrace my own strengths and musical voice, always pushing me to work harder and give my best.
Although I often felt out of my depth, the further I progressed at Newpark, the more I realized that I had ended up exactly where I needed to be. I was exposed to new and exciting forms of music, and I acquired not only the skills and knowledge I sought in harmony, arranging, improvisation, and composition, but also a common language to effectively communicate my ideas with my peers.
Moreover, the experience gave me a glimpse into the vast realms of what I didn’t yet know. It provided me with the terminology and techniques that empowered me to delve deeper into these subjects even after completing my degree. While at the time, the degree felt all-encompassing, I later realized it was merely scratching the surface of music theory.
Harmony Takes Centre Stage
If there’s one quality that takes center stage in my own music, it would be the harmonic content. Reflecting on my own compositions, I’ve discovered that I can learn a great deal about myself and my personal taste through retrospective analysis. This understanding of harmony is crucial for me to achieve that. It’s simply the aspect of music that I find most fascinating and exhilarating.
Much of the music I create is either modal or strives to fully explore the relationship between two loosely related chords. I aim to employ parsimonious voice leading as a means of generating new movements that sound fresh and captivating to my ears.
After completing college, I set about forming the instrumental ensemble known as Rynx Laneran, with the goal of developing and performing my latest compositions. I joined forces with Andy O’Farrell and Alex Delogu, both of whom I had the good fortune of meeting at Newpark. The music we create is deeply influenced by my admiration for artists like Portishead, as well as renowned film composers such as Bernard Hermann and Lalo Shiffrin. Our sound also takes inspiration from the captivating style of Mulatu Astatke’s music.
I’m incredibly proud of the music we have crafted together thus far, and I eagerly look forward to returning to live performances this summer. Additionally, we have plans to release more music later in the year, and I couldn’t be more excited about sharing it with our audience.
Irish Music
My fascination with traditional Irish music began with a chance encounter at a party where I met guitarist Chris Cole. Chris took me under his wing and introduced me to the fundamentals of his rhythmic approach when playing traditional music on the guitar. He generously shared his insights into arranging tunes for the instrument, and as my repertoire grew, I started creating my own solo guitar arrangements of Irish tunes, drawing on my knowledge of classical technique.
Last year, I received a tremendous validation for my efforts when the Arts Council awarded me the Music Agility Award, enabling me to develop twelve original arrangements of traditional Irish tunes for contemporary Irish classical guitar.
Currently, I’m exploring how to merge different genres from around the world by applying scales from folkloric music such as Ethiopian music to the Irish tunes I’ve arranged. I’ve recently completed three “Ethiopian Jigs,” as I’m currently referring to them, and they possess a unique quality that is both familiar and exotic. I’m excited to see where this compositional approach will take me next.
These days, my schedule is busier than ever, and I’m constantly learning and expanding my musical horizons. I consider myself fortunate to have encountered a diverse range of musicians who have allowed me to pursue my various musical interests, no matter how niche they may be. I’ve never wanted to limit myself strictly to classical or jazz music; my love for different genres is vast, and I aspire to play them all.
In the past year, I’ve arranged numerous classical pieces by some of my favorite composers, which I perform as a duo with bassist Alex Delogu. Additionally, I formed a gypsy jazz quartet called The Tenters with fellow guitarist John Mahon, bassist Dave Mooney, and violist Brendan Lawless, and we regularly perform around Dublin.
I thoroughly enjoy my role as a session guitarist, collaborating with various artists such as Christian Wethered, Adam Nolan, and Yankari Afrobeat Collective. Each experience adds to my musical journey and presents unique challenges that I embrace as a contributing member.
As I reflect upon my career as a musician, I feel incredibly lucky to have dedicated myself to the study of the guitar. It may sound unbelievable, but it often feels like every positive thing in my life has either directly or indirectly stemmed from my commitment to this instrument. It serves as my meditation, my hobby, and my livelihood. It’s what motivates me to get out of bed each day. The impact it has had on my life is immeasurable. I’ve discovered an endless game, a never-ending journey that reflects my approach to life, one of constant learning and growth, an outlook that I intend to maintain throughout my life and journey as a musician.
