Original Works and Arrangements with an
Irish Connection☘️

Although I’ve never considered myself overtly nationalistic or desperately patriotic, I absolutely adore the rich culture and music of my homeland. Irish traditional music has always been somewhere in my musical DNA, the first piece I learned on any instrument was playing penny whistle along with The Belfast Hornpipe on James Galway’s Songs for Annie album - but as a teenager it was the music of Bill Whelan in particular that had an enormous influence on me, opening my ears to what could happen when those traditional sounds were placed in a completely new musical world.

In recent years, I’ve fallen increasingly in love with this reborn, contemporary Celtic style of writing: music that takes the energy, character and forms of traditional Irish music and melds them with complex rhythms, unexpected harmonies, rich textures and a much more contemporary musical language.

That influence finds its way into a growing number of my own works. Sometimes it is unmistakably Irish, sometimes it is little more than a flavour, a rhythm, a turn of phrase or a particular kind of energy. I’m not particularly interested in recreating traditional music. What excites me is taking something deeply rooted in where I come from and seeing where else it can go.