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Irish Music Interview

Flute player and singer, Nuala Kennedy, has recently made her first solo CD, The New Shoes. Aidan O’Hara talked to her about herself and the new recording that has been hailed as ‘a dazzling debut’.

“I do a whole combination of things, like promoting the new CD, The New Shoes, and there’s the band that goes with that, and I have other projects. I teach sometimes, like for Feis Ross, for example, and I’m musical director for the Ceol an Feis Tour that’s coming up. And I’m doing a residency in New York.” Flute player and singer Nuala Kennedy says all this like it was a passing reference and then continues talking about her life to date and what she is planning to do in the next chapter of her career as a musician.

The first thing that struck me about Nuala was her easy laugh. Even though we were chatting on web cam, and the picture froze on screen a minute after we started, I was left with the impression of a handsome and wholesome young woman with a laid back manner and a happy chuckle. Not long into our conversation I was aware that I was talking to someone who was at ease with herself and very sure about the direction her musical career is taking her. I listened enthralled as she talked, marvelling at how much she had accomplished and her quiet dedication to her future in music. And what a path it’s taking, too.

Childhood & learning the music

She was born in Co. Louth and now lives in the village of Kincraig south of the beautiful city of Inverness, Highland capital of Gaelic Scotland. “I really like it here,” she said. “It’s just like Ireland.” I said I wanted to know how she came to be living in the hinterland of a city described in tourist literature as “gateway to the countless scenic and environmental delights of the Highlands,” but thought we might start with where it all began – her musical and family roots in Dundalk. And right away the surprise: this highly respected Irish traditional musician grew up listening to her parents’ records of James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, The Doors, and Pink Floyd. “I was really into them and those kinds of sixties and seventies bands,” she says, and chuckles.

“There was no traditional music in the house,” Nuala continues, “and my introduction to it was live stuff I would have heard at music sessions in the town, at Mark’s Bar, for instance, or in the céilí band. I never heard any traditional material on disc until I heard tin whistle player Mary Bergin’s LP, the one with the robin on the cover.” And was there anyone from the trad scene locally she remembers hearing early on? She paused for a while, and then said. “Mmm, let me see. I can’t think who else really. I was pretty clueless really,” and laughs again.

Nuala is very open and honest about it, and makes no pretence at all of having deep trad music roots. She continues: “I never liked competitions and never went in for them. I liked the music, and I played the tunes in my own way, and it wasn’t until later I began to appreciate the richness of the heritage I had got myself involved in. I’d been living in a bit of a little bubble up until then. Mind you, I knew what good musicians the people around me were, and I aspired to be as good as they were.” And who were they?

“There was lots of céilí band music around the Dundalk area when I was small, and that really was her introduction to Irish traditional music. “A leading man in that scene was Brendan Gaughran,” she remembers, “and he set up Ceoltóirí Óga Oirialla (Young Musicians of Oriel). He was one of my earliest teachers.” They used to practise once a week in the Christian Brothers School in Dundalk. “Among the musicians who emerged from that group was fiddler, Brendan Needham, uilleann piper, Tiarnán Ó Duinnchín and his brother, Rónán, and fiddle player, Zoe Conway, her sisters and brother.” Quite a who’s who of Irish music in Ireland’s northeast. “Some of us were only thirteen, and others were as old as nineteen, and we did well in the under-twenty-one competitions.”

Nuala paints a delightfully chaotic picture of how she was drawn into the music, and recalls being dropped off at the AOH Hall where Mary Grinnell sat in a corner of the hall and taught the whistle. “It was like a sort of a crèche, with kids running all over the place, and she’d maybe grab you and teach you a tune, and if she thought you were any good she’d ask you to come for a one-to-one lesson. I loved going to her for lessons, and I loved music, but I never really thought I’d be a musician.”

And who taught her the flute? “I had one lesson on the flute from Peg Needham, and that was just a one-off. I did have regular whistle lessons from Mary Grinnell, and that would have been when I was about seven.” Occasionally Pat Conway took her and other young promising musicians out to Mullaghbawn, Co. Armagh, where there were good traditional music sessions.

As I listen to her, I begin to realise that this modest and understated young woman was obviously very talented, and others realised it, not least her parents who facilitated her in every way. Did she ever feel pressured? “Only from myself. Never from my parents. If I asked if what I had just played was good, they’d say oh yes, that was really good. They weren’t into traditional music at that time, so they were quite relaxed about it all.”

And again out of the blue came one of those casually stated passing references. “I studied classical piano from the age of seven, and when I passed my Grade Eight at age fifteen, I went to Dublin for lessons at the Royal Irish Academy. My piano teacher was Professor John O’Connor, and I loved it for a while, but I couldn’t really see where it was going to take me. I played piano in the céilí band in Dundalk then, too.” I’m sure Professor O’Connor would have been impressed!

University & gigging

After secondary school Nuala studied Art at the University of Ulster Jordanstown, and at the College of Art in Edinburgh. I thought to myself, is there anything she’s not good at? As if being good on the flute, the tin whistle, the piano, and a great hand to sing wasn’t enough for one mere mortal. One gets the impression that Nuala would have been good at anything she took on. It all comes from being very bright, I suppose.

While in Edinburgh, trad music came to dominate her life. “That’s when I really became seriously involved in the music, playing in sessions almost every night.”
After graduation, Nuala did a post grad course in Teaching and taught in a primary school in Edinburgh for two years. “But my major preoccupation all this time was the music, and I had started doing gigs and tours with the bands. I became busier and busier, and eventually I decided that I could probably make a living at it. I quit teaching.”

The New CD

I asked Nuala to tell me about her new CD, The New Shoes. I hear it’s going down well, I said. “Yeah, so far. I’m happy about that, and the positive feedback I’m getting. Of all the CDs I’ve done, it has the most Irish material I’ve done so far. It has four songs in Irish. It’s kind of funny, because I feel like I’m going back to where I came from originally.” She’s too modest to reveal that The Irish Times reviewer described the CD as ‘a dazzling debut’ solo album. “Her plainsong treatment of Cáit i nGarráin a’ Bhile should be on every trad singing primer,” Siobhán Long wrote, “free as it is of the vocal quirks and chinks that can unhinge the finest of singers when they attempt to take a hold of songs with a history such as this. A final hidden track suggests the strangest kinship with Björk at her irrepressible best.”

Nuala had compliments galore for her fellow musicians on the CD. “There’s Claire Mann, a fantastic musician, a very sensitive player, equally good on flute and fiddle, and she’s a really good singer, as well. She’s a very big part of the sound and very experienced at what she does.” All the members of the band are virtuosos, really, she adds, individuals who are recognised in their own right as musicians. “Julian Sutton on melodeon plays regularly with Katherine Tickell and he has his own album out. He’s very interested in French music, and he writes fantastic tunes, and one of my favourite things about working with him is that he comes up with the great pieces he comes up with.” Marc Clement from Inverness plays guitar on the recording. “He was a very important part of the recording,” Nuala says. “He’s a great singer and was a great help to me in the studio.” Mhairi Hall plays the piano and one Nuala’s guests is singer, Cathal McConnell.

New compositions

“I’m very interested in the ‘new music’ side of things,” says Nuala, “and the compositions that are being made. I like to see what people are writing, the different styles, and so on. When I was younger, everything was strictly as it had been passed on, nothing new was known, never mind featured.” But her drive for new ideas in music is taking her far and wide these days, and they include Canada and the United States. Again, she makes a passing reference to the Art Omi centre in the Big Apple. What’s that all about?

“I’m into composition and writing quite a lot right now, and I’m going to New York for two weeks in August to take part in a World Music Residency in an Art Centre there. There’ll be fifteen people from all around the world who will get together over two weeks to put a new type of music together and then perform it a couple of concerts in New York.” She doesn’t say that she was selected out a the many students worldwide who applied for a place. Then she adds, “I’m writing out a piece of music at the minute for Distil. That’s a new music showcase they have every year in Scotland, and it’ll be in Stirling in October.” And Canada? “Around that time, too, I’ll be doing some recording with Oliver Schroer from Toronto. He’s amazing. The album we’re doing together is all our own compositions. Each little piece we’re recording creates its own atmosphere. I think of them as mini film scores almost, and they’re very evocative.”

Nuala Kennedy is a young lady on the move in every sense of the word, and is going places. I expect we shall be hearing a lot more about her in the years ahead, because for all her success to date, I have a feeling she’s only just beginning.