Innovative group Triœr to showcase talent in Nuns Island concerts

Date Published: {J}

Award-winning Galway musician Úna Ní Fhlannagáin has played for heads of state and was employed as the private harpist of a Lebanese millionaire but this weekend she performs in the more modest surrounds of Nun’s Island Theatre with her newly formed trad band, Triúr.

The series of gigs back in her hometown as part of the new three-piece group excites her as much as any of the prestigious events at which she entertained socialites in as many as 17 countries during the course of her travels as a harpist and singer.

In fact, she recounts the story of how the three musicians got together with such a fond sense of fate and romanticism that their coalescence of musical minds sounds more Mills and Boon than Gilbert and Sullivan.

“Do you know the way some people get together they say that it was like their eyes met across a crowded room? Well, it was like our fingers met across a crowded room one night at a session and we really enjoyed playing together,” says Úna.

“That was just before Christmas and, after that, we kept sort of ‘accidentally’ turning up at each other’s sessions. I think we were kind of in awe of each other until eventually I built up the courage to ask them if they wanted to be in a band together.

“It turned out that they both had been thinking the same thing. It does sound a bit like some illicit teen romance and I think it was actually around Valentine’s Day that we actually got together,” she laughs. “Now we play together as much as possible and we get uncomfortable if we don’t see each other for 48 hours.”

As is the case with most fairytale romances, Triúr do – quite literally – make beautiful music together. The sum of three quite diverse musical traditions, the group is perhaps the only one in the country to feature the rare combination of a harp, pipes and an accordion.

“I think the result is a unique sound,” says Úna. “There are three of us but, because our instruments are both harmony and melody, it actually sounds like there are more of us. I don’t believe there is another single combination of our instruments in Ireland.”

Piper Brewen Favrau hails from Brittany but plays a Scottish instrument and has completely immersed himself in Irish traditional music. Accordionist Ger Chambers is from Mayo and is described by Úna as “the grooviest player” she has ever seen.

“His speciality is rhythm,” she says. “You can’t help but tap your feet to his smoking, steaming fast reels. They just make you want to dance.”

Úna herself cites her father, John Flannagan, as her biggest influence and has been instilled with the distinctive musical style of his native north Clare. She self-diagnoses a “schizophrenic musical personality” however, and says her harmonic language is often quite “poppy”, peppered with blues notes and not uncommonly jazzy.

The trio hail from quite disparate musical traditions but all have been similarly steeped in musical backgrounds from an early age. Úna’s father is not a professional singer but that, she says, is only because he doesn’t want to be and he counts among his fans Christy Moore, who once wrote about him on his website after seeing him perform. Her musical pedigree also boasts her famous cousins, Dolores and Sean Keane.

Úna’s career to date has seen her perform for dignitaries including President Mary McAleese (twice), the Prime Minister of Jamaica, a host of TDs and senators, and a gathering of some of the world’s best-known human rights advocates at a recent function at the Glenlo Abbey Hotel.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.