Traditional Irish music on accordion and flute with Tommy Mellett and Neansaí Ní Choisdealbha. This product includes a CD and a lovely booklet which includes notes in English and in Irish on all of the tracks on the album and a collection of beautiful photographs taken in Camus, Connemara by Seán Ó Mainnín and featuring the striking new artwork on Camus tower.
Excerpt from a note in the booklet written by Johnny Óg Connolly
Neansaí Ní Choisdealbha needs no introduction to the wider traditional music community, as she is as muc hloved and respected for the platform and exposure she gives musicians on RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta as for her own wonderful flute-playing. She was already a very accomplished player when I started learning the accordion and her father, Mícheál Ó Coisdealbha, taught me the rudiments of the B/C accordion system. Neansaí and her father were the first and pivotal contact my father and I had with music when we moved from England to Inverin in the late 1970s.
Tommy Mellett is another important musical friend whom we have played a lot with over the years and I am delighted that he has finally got around to recording this duet album with Neansaí. Tommy is a great accordion player with a prodigious repertoire of interesting tunes, very much in evidence on this recording which almost runs the gamut of traditional tunes, often straying from reels, jigs and hornpipes, to include barndances, waltzes and marches. It is a big album, (it contains twenty tracks!) but has endless variety owing to the judicious selection of tunes.
Track List
1. Reels: Boil the Breakfast Early / The Berehaven
2. Jigs: Geese in the Bog / Up Sligo! / The Old Geese in the Bog
3. Hornpipes: The Bantry / Flaherty’s
4. Slip Jigs: Kitty, Come Down to Limerick / Patsy Geary’s
5. Reels: Bolton Street / Palmer’s Gate
6: Barndances: Dances at Kinvara / The Chaffpool Post
7. Marches: The Battle of Geashill / The Pride of Erin
8: Jigs: the Yellow Wattle / The Shoemaker’s Last
9: Reels: The Traveller / Billy Brocker’s
10: Slip Jigs: Dever the Dancer / Give Us a Drink of Water / A Fig for a Kiss
11: Hornpipes: The Killeigh Hornpipes / The Good-Natured Man
12: Reels: The Whistler of Roslea / The Shoemaker’s Daughter / Richard Dwyer’s
13: Jigs: The Boys of Coomanore / Farewell to Ballinahulla / Billy McCormack’s (Paddy Cronin’s)
14: Slow Air: Peaceful Claddaghduff
15: Waltzes: The Jolly Man / The Blue Beetle
16: Hornpipes: McGivney’s / The Birds’
17: Reels: Lillies in the Field / The Ballina Lass
18: Jigs: Fraher’s / Helvick Head
19: Barndances: If There Weren’t Any Women in the World / Hill of Tara
20: Reels: The Mountain Top / Providence
