Date & Time: Friday 17th August, Doors open at 8pm. Tickets € 16
Caoimhín makes music on a 10-string fiddle called the hardanger d'amore, and travels the world as a solo musician, in duos with Dan Trueman, Mick O'Brien and Brendan Begley, and as a member of The Gloaming and This is How we Fly.
He has performed on some of the most beautiful stages in the world, including the Sydney Opera House, the Royal Albert Hall and the Lincoln Center. Although, he admits: "some of my favourite performances have been much more intimate and ephemeral events, special one-off things invented by friends."
He has made twelve recordings to date, ranging from quite traditional to fairly out there, and continues to explore the region where traditional music begins to disintegrate.
Caoimhín explains his instruments: "I play a stunning 10-string instrument made by Norwegian luthier Salve Håkedal. The top five bowed gut strings plus the five sympathetic strings below give the fiddle a wonderful resonant sound. It is somewhere between a hardanger fiddle and a viola d'amore , so I've taken to calling it the Hardanger d'Amore.
I use baroque and transitional bows made by a wonderful French bowmaker named Michel Jamonneau. His bows are things of great beauty, and for me they are like paintbrushes for sound. They are the perfect match for the Hardanger d'Amore, and together they teach me something every time I pick them up, expanding what is thinkable and possible."
"Ó Raghallaigh’s particular achievement is that he has stimulated a new move towards avant-garde experimentation in Irish traditional music, and demonstrated that it is possible to step entirely outside of the genre and back again – and that the process enriches both worlds." - Toner Quinn, The Journal of Music