Description
I’ve always been interested in playing different styles of music on the standard classical flute and have been playing Irish music for over 20 years. It started when I heard Matt Molloy playing wooden flute on “James Galway and The Chieftains” and after failing to find a decent wooden flute to buy (it’s much easier to get a good quality one these days, but back then it was very hard to find a good one without joining a seemingly endless waiting list) I started trying to play Irish music on my silver flute. What followed was lots of listening, experimenting, lessons with Sarah Allen & Brian Finnegan (From the band Flook!) and attending the excellent Folkworks summer school in Durham (thanks to my school friend & fiddle player Pete Lyons suggesting we go). I ended up studying for my Masters in Irish Music Performance at the Irish World Academy of Music & Dance at the University of Limerick on the west coast of Ireland.
What started out as trying to make the silver flute sound like a wooden flute, has led me to develop a style of playing traditional music on the silver flute which is very enjoyable to play. It has enabled me to write and record some music which I’m very happy with. I hope you’ll enjoy listening to the albums and playing the pieces in this series.
This piece is perhaps less obviously inspired by Irish music than the others in the series, and I’ve kept it simple by not including any special techniques – it didn’t feel like it needed anything more.
About the Piece
The melody for this piece was written on tour with the David Munnelly Band in America in 2008/9. We used to play at the amazing Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield Kansas every year – home to the national flat-picking championships! After a few great days and nights at the festival, filled with music and meeting new friends, one year we drove away from the festival late night whilst it was still in full swing, and this melody came from that feeling of leaving.
Ryan Molloy played piano with the Munnelly band too, and we worked on a flute and piano arrangement – I think Ryan has managed to capture the feeling I was going for, and take it further than I could have imagined. You should check out his playing with Fergal Scahill, with Shauna Mullin and also the Dave Munnelly albums!
Other pieces in this series:
Trip to Pontivy
The All-Knowing Salmon/Noogleshifty
Jigeria
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