Music and medicine working in harmony for piper Jarlath

Groove Tube with Jimi McDonnell – tribunegroove@gmail.com

The Jarlath Henderson Band bring their contemporary take on traditional music to Monroe’s Live in the City’s Dominick Street on Friday, February 23. Hailing from Tyrone but now based in Glasgow, Henderson won the BBC Young Folk Award in 2003 for his skills on the uilleann pipes. Since then he has played in various ensembles and released his solo debut, Hearts Broken, Heads Turned.  The album was recorded in Carrier Waves studio in Glasgow and was produced by engineer, multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer Andrea Gobbi.

“Andrea is massively into sampling, and with that element we were able to take the album in the direction that I wanted it to go,” Jarlath says. “The album is based around my voice and the uilleann pipes. We recorded the white noise of the pipes – the stuff that music people want to get rid of. The air noises from the pipes were turned into beats and percussive elements on the album.”

The record also features multi-instrumentalist Innes Watson, pianist and flautist Hamish Napier and bassist Duncan Lyall, all three of whom have reputations as top-class folk and contemporary musicians.  Naturally, Jarlath wanted his solo debut to be special and everyone worked hard to ensure it was.

“There was layering and producing, pre-recording and re-recording – a lot of stuff going on!” he says. “I was pulling my hair out and enjoying it at the same time. I think if I wasn’t frustrated in equal measure to being excited, I would have been doing something wrong. I wanted the album to be something I could be proud of for a long time.

“It was a lot of hard work, but I’m not afraid of hard work,” he adds. “I had a great team that I couldn’t have done it without. I had four of my favourite musicians in the world working on it with me, who have a great scope of knowledge and appreciation of different musical styles.”

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.