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Nuala Kennedy is an all-round musician par excellence… her voice is as luminous as her flute and whistle playing. She imbues the album with a freshness that’s palpable.

NUALA KENNEDY THE NEW SHOES COMPASS / MGM
June 07, Rhythms Magazine (Australia) 

Nuala Kennedy is an all-round musician par excellence whose talent shines through on The New Shoes. While there might not be anything ground-breaking about the music or indeed the album itself, the Scotland-based Irish composer, singer and flute virtuoso, performs a well chosen selection of medleys and songs with such consummate skill and subtlety that she imbues the album with a freshness that’s palpable. 

The Irish tunes, traditional and self-penned, include side trips to the Balkans, Cape Breton, Brittany and the Hebrides. Kennedy and her excellent side players, who include Claire Mann (fiddle/flute/whistle), Marc Clement (guitar), Julian Sutton (melodeon) and Mhairi Hall (piano), inject swing into several of the medleys — even an excerpt from The Wombles theme on ‘Dolphin School’! 

Kennedy's voice is as luminous as her flute and whistle playing. Her diction’s outstanding on the stripped back Gaelic ballad ‘A Bhean Úd Thíos’ and ‘Erin on the Rhine’, the latter enhanced by Daniel Lapp’s trumpet.