Stór Amhrán (1988)

“This recording of eighteen musical gems, most of them recorded here for the first time ever, offers a magical inspired insight into the Irish soul through song. Song themes, traditions and intuitions span the secular and the sacred creating a highly charged tapestry of human existence which challenges the listener to transformation, touching the depths of the listening soul. I learned them all from a wonderful mentor of my teens and twenties, Pilib ó Laoghaire who transformed my life dramatically: In 1968, Pilib travelled from his native Cork to Dundalk, where I was in boarding school to examine me for music in the Leaving Certificate. Having nervously played piano and sung for him, he enquired what I intended to do next year. “Law at UCD” I confidently replied. “No, you’re not! You’re coming to UCC to do music.That’s it now. I’ll call into your parents in Limerick on my way home and settle it all.” And he did! So as well as lending me an entire library of music books, helping me with conducting and harmony, initiating me into his wonderful choir, Cór Cois Laoi, he passed on to me an exquisite repertoire of Déise songs of which this book and CD are a small sample of.

“At the outset of listening to this recording of some of my favourite songs from the Irish tradition, let me say to you listeners who cannot follow, word by word, the images I sing through here in the magical Irish language. Like Latin plainchant, it is not necessary to understand from the head; please, listener, listen from the heart and let these song-sounds take your breath away as they take mine!”

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