Mary and Johnny put finishing touches to new musical suite

Date Published: 06-Feb-2013

A new musical composition by well-known Connemara performers and composers Mary Bergin and Johnny Óg Connolly will be the highlight of this year’s Éigse an Spidéil arts festival, which takes place from March 6-10 in the Connemara village.

Sruth, a mix of traditional and baroque music, with jigs, reels and laments, will be 30 to 40 minutes long and will be performed as the second half of a longer concert on March 9. The title of the suite translates into English as a stream or sea current, reflecting the movement of music through time. It’s also a pun on the word sraith, which means series, explain the composers.

Mary is one of the country’s top whistle players and a member of the group Dordán, while Johnny’s most recent album, Aisling Yoshua won Best Trad album in the 2011 Irish Times Ticket awards.

Both of them teach with the Gaelacadamh, the Spiddal based arts organisation that teaches traditional music, sean-nós singing and dancing to children in Connemara, through the medium of Irish.

It also runs the annual festival that is Éigse an Spidéil. The Gaelacadamh is run by local woman Deirdre Nic Chonaonaigh who, last May, successfully applied for an Arts Council grant for this commission and its debut performance. Her application was made under the Arts Council’s traditional arts strand and to her delight the project received the maximum amount of €10,000.

It was great to get musicians of the calibre of Mary and Johnny involved, she says simply. The two had previously worked together on tunes for the 1996 album from Dordán, Christmas Capers.

The debut performance of Sruth promises to be a special event, featuring some of the finest names in Irish music, among them the composers themselves, Liz Kane, Éilis Lennon, Colm Gannon, Jim Higgins, Garry Ó Briain, Brian McGrath, Dearbhail Standún, Máire Breathnach and Plunkett O’Toole – a student of Mary’s.

They will be performing a range of instruments, including fiddle, viola, guitar, keyboard, percussion, accordion, whistle and flute.

Mary and Johnny have been “working solidly” on Sruth since last summer, says Mary. After discussing their overall approach they went off and worked on tunes separately. In late September they pooled the tunes they had written and got an idea of how the piece was coming together. With a month to go, they have still to put the finishing touches to it and that’s the trickiest part, says Johnny, but things are falling into place.

“I have a similar background in music to Mary and a similar outlook and interest,” he explains. “We both love baroque so our music blends well together.”

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.