Mary Black is an Irish folk singer. She is well known as an interpreter of both traditional folk and modern material which has made her a major recording artist in her native Ireland.
De Dannan is an Irish folk music group. It was formed in 1975 by Frankie Gavin (fiddle), Alec Finn, Johnny "Ringo" McDonagh (bodhrán) and Charlie Piggott (banjo) as a result of sessions in Hughes's Pub in Spiddal, County Galway, Ireland, with Dolores Keane (vocals) subsequently being invited to join the band. The fiddler Mickey Finn (1951–1987) is also acknowledged to have been a founder member.
Joseph Ronald Drew was an Irish singer, folk musician and actor who had a fifty-year career recording with The Dubliners.
Maura O'Connell is an Irish singer. She is known for her contemporary interpretations of Irish folk songs, strongly influenced by American country music.
Tommy Fleming is an Irish singer. He rose to fame in the early 1990s after he was asked to tour the US with Phil Coulter. He soon established himself as a solo artist and found his greatest success singing traditional Irish music, both old and contemporary. Fleming has toured extensively throughout Ireland, UK, United States, the Netherlands and Australia.
Sharon Shannon is an Irish musician, best known for her work with the button accordion and for her fiddle technique. She also plays the tin whistle and melodeon. Her 1991 debut album, Sharon Shannon, was the best-selling album of traditional Irish music ever released in Ireland. Beginning with Irish folk music, her work demonstrates a wide-ranging number of musical influences. She won the lifetime achievement award at the 2009 Meteor Awards.
Mary Coughlan is an Irish singer.
Dolores Keane is an Irish folk singer. She was a founding member of the group De Dannan following which she pursued a solo recording and touring career.
How to Cheat in the Leaving Certificate is a 1997 independent Irish film directed by Graham Jones, in which six teenagers devise a plan to cheat in their Leaving Certificate final school examinations. The film was shot in black and white on Super 16mm and was later blown up to 35mm for theatrical distribution. Many well known Irish faces made cameo appearances in the film.
Eleanor McEvoy is an Irish singer-songwriter. She composed the song "Only a Woman's Heart", title track of A Woman's Heart, the best-selling Irish album in Irish history.
Seán Keane is an Irish singer and musician, known for his distinctive sean-nós-style voice.
Eleanor Shanley is an Irish Roots musician, from Keshcarrigan in County Leitrim in the North West of Ireland.
Frances Black is an Irish singer and politician. She came to prominence in the late 1980s when she began to play with her family's band, the Black Family, performing a mix of traditional and contemporary Irish music.
Eleanor McEvoy is the 1993 studio album debut of Eleanor McEvoy, released on Geffen Records. International radio hits followed with the release of the two main singles "A Woman's Heart" and "Apologize." The former track had originally gained fame as the title track for A Woman's Heart, the biggest-selling Irish album in Irish history.
Snapshots, Eleanor McEvoy's third studio album, was released in 1999. McEvoy's primary goal was to make Snapshots her most song-oriented album to date. Toward that goal, McEvoy hooked up with producer Rupert Hine. The extensive use of drum loops on the album was a complete change in style from McEvoy's previous work. This is McEvoy's only album on which she does not play violin. Before the overdub sessions, she was attacked whilst walking down the street on the way home from the studio and her hand broken, although she recovered completely. Columbia Records had not been prepared for these changes and not long after the release of Snapshots McEvoy was dropped; her subsequent recordings were on independent labels.
The 2009 Meteor Music Awards ceremony took place on 17 March 2009 in the RDS Simmonscourt, Dublin. It was the ninth edition of Ireland's national music awards. The event was recorded and it aired on RTÉ Two on 18 March 2009. The awards show was hosted by television presenter Amanda Byram.
TradFest is an annual music and culture festival that takes place at the end of January in Dublin, Ireland. Founded by the Temple Bar Company, a not-for-profit organisation who work on behalf of businesses in the cultural quarter of Temple Bar, Dublin, as well as programming events on Moore Street and in Fingal, this festival celebrates Irish traditional and folk music and cultural offerings. It was launched on January 26, 2006.
Richard Farrelly was an Irish songwriter, policeman and poet, composer of "The Isle of Innisfree", the song for which he is best remembered. His parents were publicans and when Farrelly was twenty-three he left Kells, County Meath for Dublin to join the Irish Police Force. He served in various Garda stations throughout his thirty-eight-year career, ending up in the Central Detective Unit (CDU) Dublin Castle as the pay Sergeant up to his retirement. At heart Farrelly was very much a songwriter and poet. He was a private, modest and shy man who wrote over two hundred songs and poems during his lifetime. He married Anne Lowry from Headford, County Galway in 1955 and the couple had five children. His two sons Dick and Gerard are professional musicians.
Transatlantic Sessions is the collective title for a series of musical productions by Glasgow-based Pelicula Films Ltd, funded by- and produced for BBC Scotland, BBC Four and RTÉ of Ireland. The productions comprise collaborative live performances by various leading folk, bluegrass and country musicians from both sides of the North Atlantic, playing music from Scotland, Ireland, England and North America, who congregate under the musical direction of Aly Bain and Jerry Douglas to record and film a set of half-hour TV episodes. The Television director is Mike Alexander and the producer is Douglas Eadie.
