Maire Breatnach
"Angels Candles"
Máire
Breatnach re-released her acclaimed debut album Angels’ Candles/Coinnle
na nAingeal on 9th July 1999. This completely new recording was completed
and mastered using 24 bit digital technology, and all tracks have been
reworked and rearranged since their initial release in 1993.
Maire Breatnach is a fiddle player who has played with Mary Black, Mike
Scott, Sharon Shannon, Nigel Kennedy, The National Symphony Orchestra
and a whole lot more of the bigger names in the music business. "Angels'
Candles" is a 14-track album which allows her to speak with her own
musical voice for the first time. And a right good voice it is, but it
is not quite accurate to say "for the first time" because this
is a re-recording of the fourteen tracks that were on her first album
issued in 1992. Some of the top musicians supported Maire on the first
recording and Mairtin O'Connor, Niall O Callanain and Liam O Maonlai are
there again. It is fascinating to listen to how her style and approach
have developed over the years in between. The freshness and youthful eagerness
of the original recording is succeeded by a more considered and complex
performance on this latest album. Sometimes naivety and freshness win
out, but overall the new recording is a great leap forward. These tunes,
all of which are written by Breatnach, have obviously haunted her since
she first put them down at the start of the nineties, and the soulful
search for resolution gives the latest recording a strength and depth
perhaps missing in her earlier effort. Some of the tunes are nothing short
of brilliant, from the opening "Mystic Slipjigs" through the
title track to the finisher, which is a set of three joyful slides most
appropriately called "Hop, Skip, Jump".
Irish Music magazine - Jim Kelly - Oct '99
MP3 Samples
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