IMN : Updates for The Gloaming

Martin Hayes & Dennis Cahill: Tiny Desk Concert

IMN

March 11th, 2013

From NPR.org

Martin Hayes & Dennis Cahill: Tiny Desk Concert

Click here to see Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill, of The Gloaming, featured on All Things Considered during their Tiny Desk Concert segment.

Confirmed Tourdates As Of February 8th, 2013

IMN

June 19th, 2013: Union Chapel London, England
June 21st, 2013: Centre Culturel Irlandais Paris, France

Bill Bragin on The Gloaming

IMN

August 2nd, 2012

From WQXR

Mixtapes: Involuntary Songs with Bill Bragin

Declared “one of the most influential figures in the New York live-music business” by The New York Times, Bill Bragin has had his hands in everything from Central Park SummerStage to Lincoln Center’s Out of Doors festival to the annual globalFEST world music celebration. Formerly the director of the NYC’s iconic Joe’s Pub, Bragin is currently the director of public programming at Lincoln Center, is the music advisor for the TED Conferences and performs as part of the world-music tinged DJ collective GlobeSonic. He also finds time to maintain an active following on Twitter under @activecultures.

Here’s what Bragin has to say about his edition of this week’s Mixtapes, with a playlist that stretches from contemporary classical to world music, no-wave and beyond. An excerpt below:

The post-rock, post-minimalist (post-everything? to use your term) piano of Thomas Bartlett (Doveman, Nico Muhly, The National) undergirding the dramatic crescendos of Irish supergroup The Gloaming; Germany’s Brandt Brauer Frick Ensemble’s shifting chamber music arrangements of minimal techno; ETHEL’s driving performance of composer/dj Raz Mesinai’s “La Citadelle”; and new music pioneers Kronos Quartet and Finnish avant-folk accordionist Kimmo Pojnonen filtered thru Samuli Kosimen’s samples –- all these tracks play with repetition, tension and release like an expert dj leading the dance floor to ecstasy.

REVIEW: The Gloaming

IMN

May 14th, 2012

from State

The Gloaming
By Niall Crumlish

There won’t be much in the way of arguments over this gig. There won’t be any bad reviews. The Gloaming – Thomas Bartlett, Dennis Cahill, Martin Hayes, Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, and Iarla Ó Lionáird – are five stunningly gifted and diverse musicians and together they are more than the sum of their parts. They are currently playing a music that is so vibrant, emotional and elemental that to fail to be electrified by it would be, I think, to be missing something about what music is. As they blazed to the end of a twenty-minute opening salvo of tunes, building intelligently from the rich, meditative sean-nós of ‘An Chuil Daigh Ré’ to the swift, savage, dazzling climax of ‘Tom Doherty’s Reel’, it was all we could do not to howl with joy; some did. Michael D was there, and I’m pretty sure I heard him howling too.

The Gloaming are still a new outfit, with barely a recording to their name, but already they are acting as a Rosetta stone for people like me who know little or nothing about Irish traditional music, but feel that ignorance ever more acutely, and want a way in. Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh is probably the key member of the band for these people; over the last five years he has shown a willingness, even a need, to experiment with form and an ability to speak a language understood by those who have kept themselves at arm’s length from traditional music. He toured with Norman Blake and Euros Childs; he worked with Amiina; that kind of thing. So when he goes back to more classic forms, as he does here and with Martin Hayes in Triúr, we trust him and follow him, because he’s one of us.

In fact, I wrote something in State in 2009, now a bit embarrassing, to the effect that Caoimhín made a refreshing change from regular traditional musicians because his extraordinary 2007 album Where the One-Eyed Man is King did not stick “to the forms handed down like commandments over generations”, as if I even knew what those were. Don’t ask me to tell between a reel and a jig.* I even called Caoimhín “the most singular traditional musician of his generation”, which might imply that I had a list of singular traditional musicians, from which I had carefully chosen him. It wasn’t quite like that. Still, I was in Vicar St almost solely because of Caoimhín, so he is important if only because he has introduced the odd newbie to The Gloaming’s music, and by extension to the untold wealth of traditional music that’s out there, beckoning.

Read the full article here

Listen to The Gloaming's New EP

IMN

March 14th, 2012

from The New Yorker

LISTEN TO THE GLOAMING
By John Donohue

With St. Patrick’s Day coming up on Saturday, it’s not hard to find Irish music at this time of year. Traditional bagpipe players will soon be marching up Fifth Avenue and elsewhere. Local bands, such as Black 47, which is at the B.B. King Blues Club & Grill this weekend, get prime stages, or they hit the road (the Prodigals, who have been found at Paddy Reilly’s every Friday night for more than a decade, will be at the House of Blues, in Cleveland). And Irish stars like the Pogues, who in recent years have made a habit of playing Roseland, are on their way to Japan and Australia.

The music of the Emerald Isle may have spread far and wide, but there is little that will be performed this week that sounds like The Gloaming, a group so new it hasn’t even released an album yet. The Gloaming unites musicians who come at Irish music from different perspectives. The master fiddler Martin Hayes, who grew up in County Clare, and the guitarist Dennis Cahill, his longtime partner, ground the group in the traditional. So does Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, who was born in Dublin and plays the fiddle, five-string viola, and hardanger fiddle, which is the national instrument of Norway. The vocalist Iarla Ó Lionáird shares their approach—he’s a master of the sean-nós (“in the old way”) a-cappella song style—but like the hardanger fiddle, his background suggests something else might be afoot—he recorded a number of albums with Afro Celt Sound System in the nineties.

But The Gloaming doesn’t have a world-music sound. What it does have is Thomas Bartlett, a young piano player and songwriter who has worked with Yoko Ono, Bebel Gilberto, David Byrne, Antony, Grizzly Bear, Justin Bond, Nico Muhly, and the National, as well as recorded a series of quiet, intense albums as Doveman. Barlett’s sparse, subtle piano playing is laced through the Gloaming’s music, moving it, and the music of Ireland, in captivating new directions.

The band performed its first concert at the National Concert Hall in Dublin last summer, and they recently released a portion of the show as an EP. It is only available in one place in America right now, but you won’t have to go far to find it. The band has offered readers an exclusive download of the music. After all, St. Patrick’s Day is coming up.

Read the full article here
Download the new EP here
Stream the EP here

The Gloaming Announce Vicar Street Gig

IMN

February 23rd, 2012

from Golden Plec

The Gloaming Announce Vicar Street Gig
By Kev Meagher

The super group concept runs again, this time we have five men who sold out the National Concert Hall last August when they made their live debut, now they are back for a run at 2012. They are a strange combination featuring New York pianist Bartlett, sean-nos singer Ó Lionaird, Chicago guitarist Cahill, fiddler and hardanger innovator Ó Raghallaigh and fiddle master Hayes.

They are virtuoso’s in each their own right and will be coming together to make beautiful music in Vicar Street on Saturday 12th May 2012. Tickets for the show will be €28 inclusive of booking fee and they will be going on sale on Friday 24th February at 9am.

Tickets are available from Ticketmaster.ie and outlets nationwide. Doors at 7pm and show starts at 8pm.

Read the full article here

The Gloaming's Martin Hayes: Rhythm and Strings

IMN

January 31st, 2012

from Irish America

Martin Hayes: Rhythm and Strings

By Tara Dougherty

Whether playing solo or with the newly formed The Gloaming, Martin Hayes, the marvelously gifted fiddler, finds his mesmeric rhythm in the Irish tunes he learned from his father – the leader of the famed Tulla Ceili band – and other master musicians in east County Clare.

The first time I heard Martin Hayes it felt like an earthquake. Not ten seconds into his first tune, the ground started to pulsate, the bottles behind the bar were shaking as everyone in the room felt the urge to stamp their feet to the rhythm of Hayes’ fiddle. While there is undeniable electricity in the way Hayes commands an audience, it is juxtaposed with a very distinct gentleness. He plays as if each note is made of glass; mishandle it slightly and the emotion is shattered. As a man, he exudes that same gentleness. Quite soft-spoken and self-deprecating, the County Clare native is uninterested in fame and has no concern with being best. His concern, it seems, is always to connect with people. He works to be better only than himself, than how he played the day before.

Hayes, who now splits his time between Connecticut and Ireland, has lived in the U.S. for 23 years. As well as playing, he composes scores for film and stage. His newest project, The Gloaming, is a dream team of Irish and Irish American musicians. Hayes is joined by Caoimhin Ó Raghallaigh on fiddle, his longtime musical partner Dennis Cahill on guitar, the legendary Iarla Ó Lionáird on vocals, and newcomer Thomas Bartlett on piano.

I spoke with Hayes just before the group’s debut at Webster Hall, in New York City.

When did your life as a musician begin?

I started playing when I was seven. My father was a fiddle player in the Tulla Ceili Band so there was always music in the house, always musicians coming and going and people interested in music. I had been hearing traditional music as the predominant music form since I was a little child so it wasn’t something I had to get to know. I grew up in that environment. I don’t know that I exactly learned. I learned some tunes from my father, but there was a lot of just being around it, kind of absorbing it.

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The Gloaming LIVE at globalFEST 2012

IMN

January 10th, 2012

from NPR

The Gloaming: globalFEST 2012

By Anastasia Tsioulcas

The onset of globalFEST usually marks the arrival of artists largely (or totally) unknown to American audiences, but The Gloaming’s set was something else altogether: It was the U.S. debut of an Irish supergroup.

The Gloaming features indie-pop favorite Thomas Bartlett (a.k.a. Doveman), fiddlers Martin Hayes and Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, guitarist Dennis Cahill and singer Iarla Ó Lionaird, whose vocals electrified the collection of pieces by fellow Irishman Donnacha Dennehy which became one of NPR Music’s favorite albums of 2011. Bartlett’s moody musings at the piano provided a dark undercurrent to Celtic reels and jigs.

Listen to the show here

REVIEW: The Gloaming at globalFEST 2012

IMN

January 10th, 2012

from The New York Times

A Night When All the World’s Onstage
By Jon Pareles

The world was fused at Globalfest on Sunday night. The sold-out event at Webster Hall was the ninth-annual world-music showcase, timed to coincide with the Association of Performing Arts Presenters’ annual convention: 12 acts from 5 continents. At Globalfest the old image of world music as ethnomusicological finds — pure local styles directly imported from out-of-the-way places — has given way to a more worldly music, played by artists who self-consciously decide what to mix. They select from their own heritage and countless other possibilities; after all, they’ve got Internet connections themselves. Globalfest was recorded for NPR.

The Gloaming puts Irish music through prisms of jazz and minimalism. It merges the long-running duo of the fiddler Martin Hayes and the guitarist Dennis Cahill — who already push Irish music in impressionistic directions — with the singer Iarla O Lionaird (from Afro Celt Sound System); another fiddler, Caoimhin O Raghallaigh, who also plays hardangar, a Swedish fiddle with sympathetic strings, and the pianist Thomas Bartlett, a k a Doveman. With chordal layers or subtle counterpoint, Mr. Bartlett’s piano transformed slow vocal melodies or racing fiddle tunes into meta-Irish music, ruminations on a long legacy.

Read the full article here

INTERVIEW: The Gloaming

IMN

January 6th, 2012

from Journal of Music

Interview with Martin Hayes and Iarla Ó Lionáird of The Gloaming
By Paul O’Connor

After their first ever concert, which took place in the National Concert Hall, Dublin in August last year, I spoke to Martin Hayes and Iarla Ó Lionáird about their new band, The Gloaming, which includes in its line-up Dennis Cahill on guitar, Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh on Hardanger fiddle and Thomas Bartlett on piano.

Paul O’Connor: That was a powerful reaction from the audience after that first sequence. There were some people getting to their feet there and then.

Martin Hayes: There is a moment of expectation in the first set of the first gig of a new band. And deciding to start your band with a concert in the National Concert Hall adds to it. It didn’t seem so outrageous an idea early on, but as it got closer I realised we were biting off a lot.

We didn’t have any idea how people would respond. I was ready for it to go either way, to be honest, and I was really pleasantly surprised when I saw that response. After all, we have all had experiences in our lives where there wouldn’t have been huge reactions to things we’ve done, especially when you step outside your norm just a little bit. I was really happy.

Iarla Ó Lionáird: We were maybe a little unsure because we were delivering songs and tunes within somewhat larger movements of music than people are used to – something we wanted to stop us from being too archeological, stop of us from reverting to our default way of presenting material, and also to give the audience the chance to get more out of it and feel more. It was a gamble for sure, but when we finished that first sequence it was a moment I’ll never forget.

POC: A lot must have happened during your ‘creative retreat’ together in Grouse Lodge earlier in the year.
MH: The instrumentation was agreed, the melodies were there, the general sketch of the arrangements was there, but they were very much sketches. There’s a lot of on-the-spot decisions being made live. There are stretches where Caoimhín and myself are going ‘what’ll it be tonight I wonder?’. And there’s definitely big chunks for Tom to produce something different every night. We’re enjoying that – there’s a kind of formation process going on live, where we are leaving plenty of freedom for each other.

IÓL: We prepared material together in Grouse Lodge, but to see Tom in full flight on stage is a very different experience.

POC: Thomas is obviously an important factor in the sound you’re producing.
IOL: He’s very powerful and he’s very surprising and potent. He’s a great believer in the moment because he can be. When you have those kinds of abilities and such a command of your instrument, you can believe in the moment and you can wait for it to come.

Read the full article here

New Album From The Gloaming in 2012

IMN

January 2nd, 2012

from The Irish Times

25 things to look forward to in 2012

The Gloaming Album
It was short, but The Gloaming’s summer tour was invigorating and potentially seminal, with the music bracing and beautiful in equal measure. The supergroup of sean-nós singer Iarla Ó Lionáird, fiddle players Martin Hayes and Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, guitarist Dennis Cahill and classically trained pianist Thomas Bartlett grew from sessions at Grouse Lodge Studios, in Westmeath, early this year. From those recordings will come an album, but before that may be a live EP. Their live performances so far have been revelatory, and they play New York’s GlobalFest in January. Future Irish dates are likely to cement them as one of the great forces in Irish music.

Read the full article here

REVIEW: The Gloaming at National Concert Hall, Dublin

IMN

August 28th, 2011

from Thumped

The Gloaming
National Concert Hall, 20th August

By Siobhán Kane

Siobhán Kane caught The Gloaming’s recent performance at The National Concert Hall.

The seed for these five brilliant musicians to come together was sown, as so many things are, over a few tipples and talk; and somewhere, from initial conversations between fiddler Martin Hayes and sean nós singer, Iarla Ó Lionáird, to their first live performance together on the stage of the National Concert Hall, which also housed American pianist Thomas Bartlett, guitarist Denis Cahill and fiddler Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, The Gloaming was born. The lexicon associated with birth, for example – renewal – well describes what took place, and what will surely continue to evolve from the rich collaboration and friendship they have nurtured.

They began with a flurry of traditional tunes to set the tone for the evening, which was to honour tradition and pulverise convention, paying homage to what brought us all here, from the past to the present, from the streets to the Concert Hall; providing a familiar template that they could then use a touchstone to deviate from and soar back to. The reels segued seamlessly into something vibrant and joyous, and it was pleasing to see so many people of varying ages let themselves melt into the fluidity of the music.
The collective then proceeded on to new, less familiar, but collaborative territory, interpreting poet Michael Hartnett’s Muince An Dreoilín/A Necklace of Wrens, and Samhradh, with Ó Lionáird’s sublime vocal revelling amidst the swooping, free sound of his accompaniment, ably illustrating that poetry is not simply transmitted through words, but also feeling. Before the first half broke, Hayes excused the length of the piece they were about to play, in the most charming way particular to his way of thinking and speaking, “it’s a long piece, so we’ll see you after”, and again when describing how The Gloaming and some of the work came together, “so there we were, here you are, and there you go”.

In truth, Hayes is probably the heartbeat of the whole collective, since he is the one that has enjoyed a long relationship with each of the other musicians, mentioning at one point that he has known Bartlett since he was twelve, when the precocious twelve year old booked Hayes and Cahill for a concert in Vermont. Hayes and Cahill also enjoy a beautiful musical shorthand that continues to add coal to the fire of the steam train that is The Gloaming, and this creates a reliable strength for the project which is almost giddy in its sense of combining and melding styles and influences, talents and kinship.

Read the full article here

Dream Team Gather in The Gloaming

IMN

August 19th, 2011

from The Irish Examiner

Dream Team Gather in The Gloaming
By Nicki Davis

THE enigmatic Dublin-born fiddle player Caomhín Ó Raghallaigh has stirred the traditional scene, releasing five albums in 10 years, four of them collaborations with leading lights in Irish music.
Known for marrying old-school techniques with an experimental outlook, Ó Raghallaigh now brings his unique soundworld to The Gloaming.

The Gloaming’s upcoming series of concerts around the country are the realisation of a dream for two of Ireland’s foremost musicians, Iarla Ó Lionáird and Martin Hayes. The vocalist and fiddle-player have played regularly in the last five years in Europe and around the world, experiencing what they describe as a “kind of feeling” onstage together. Seeking to create a context where they could create that feeling with a group and sustain it, Ó Lionáird and Hayes met in New York in 2010 to hatch a plan.

The celebrated guitarist Dennis Cahill, Hayes’ long-term collaborator, was an obvious choice to join their dream team. Adding the extraordinary talent of New York-based pianist Thomas Bartlett was more of a surprise, and will attract a new audience to traditional music here, the young musician having already worked with such seminal artists as Antony & the Johnsons, Laurie Anderson and David Byrne. To complete the quintet, Ó Raghallaigh came to their minds immediately.

“I suppose my background in a way is very traditional up until quite recently. One of my most memorable early moments was when I was about 11, and I heard Martin Hayes for the first time. That had a great effect on me.” It was 1991, and Ó Raghallaigh was at the Comhaltas Summer School. “It was the quiet in his playing, it could bring a room of screaming kids to silence. The teachers all would have played for us and we were pretty noisy regardless, but when Martin played you could have heard a pin drop.”

In particular, Ó Lionáird and Hayes were drawn to the sound of his hybrid Norwegian instrument, which Ó Raghallaigh called the 5+5. It is, he explains, “a cross between the hardanger fiddle and a viola d’amore.” The instrument has 10 strings in total, five playing strings and five which resonate of their own accord.

Bartlett was introduced to The Gloaming project by Hayes. “Thomas grew up together with Sam Amidon and they were really good pals. When they were about 14 they made this Martin Hayes tribute-type album. They held Martin in massive regard. The two of them organised a gig for him in Vermont around that time and I think he didn’t realise they were only 12 years old ‘til he arrived!” Amidon, who returns for his second Irish tour this year in September, has been enjoying exponential growth in an Irish fanbase. Although he isn’t involved in The Gloaming, his continuing involvement with pianist Bartlett and their deep involvement in the New York alternative music scene will allow this project to tap into popular culture.

“Thomas is an amazing musician, you just have to play with him to understand,” say Ó Raghallaigh. “He plays these clusters of notes, not blocking out chords or imposing harmony. It’s very suitable to trad, and he just has such a great feel. Thomas and Iarla seem to have this understanding, it’s amazing to see. I’m delighted to be working with them, and of course just watching Dennis play with Martin is very special.”

The group spent four days in January at the Grouse Lodge recording studio in Co Westmeath. Ó Lionáird brought to the table a selection of Sean Nós songs which were explored, alongside new arrangements of old Irish poetry dating back to Tudor times which he developed with Ó Raghallaigh. “I’ve done some recording with Iarla and I just love the way he works, he’s really open, not looking to reproduce what’s in his head, he might give you some sense of what he imagined but really he leaves the canvas blank.”

Alongside more traditional sounds, some of the new music will have a darker, contemporary and alternative flavour. With the musicians involved each lauded for their improvisation and experimentation, every concert promises to be unique. “Somebody starts something, we’ll join in and it will go somewhere! It really is an unknown thing. It’s nice for us all if it’s completely different every night.”

The band’s name was coined by Ó Raghallaigh. “I came across the word gloaming in Beckett a couple of times. The way I have it in my head is somehow specific to Scotland at certain times, in certain conditions. Something about a quality of light, well after the sun has set, maybe with a bit of mist too. In some way I think it has something to do with the playing of Iarla and Martin. It’s an in-between time, I suppose, a time when new things seem possible.” nTHE GLOAMING TOUR AUGUST: Tomorrow, National Concert Hall, Dublin; Sunday, August 21, An Grianan, Letterkenny; Wednesday, August 24, The Model, Sligo; Thursday, August 25, The Riverbank, Kildare; Friday, August 26, Cork Opera House, Cork; Saturday, August 27, Glor, Ennis; Sunday, August 28, Mandela Hall, Belfast.

Read the full article here

The Dawn of The Gloaming

IMN

August 18th, 2011

from The Irish Times

The Dawn of The Gloaming

The Gloaming features some of the great names of Irish music – and an American who cut his teeth as a 12-year-old music promoter. The result is an intriguing supergroup, writes SIOBHÁN LONG

‘THE ONLY style of music I’d like to be identified with is good music,” Thomas Bartlett insists. This Vermont keyboards player and producer is a man of many musical identities. Founder of Doveman (whose members include The National’s Bryce and Aaron Dessner), he has worked with, among others, Antony and The Johnsons, Martha Wainwright, David Byrne and Glen Hansard.

He’s one of the five members of a newly-minted outfit who call themselves The Gloaming, and this weekend he’s joining Martin Hayes on fiddle, Dennis Cahill on guitar, singer Iarla Ó Lionáird and Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh on traditional and Hardanger fiddle for a seven-date tour. They plan to play lots of what Bartlett calls “good” music, which may, in all likelihood, fail to conform to any simple definitions of either traditional or contemporary music – but might just nestle somewhere on that spectrum where creativity trumps predictability – with chutzpah.

Bartlett is a musician who revels in the sparks that fly during collaboration. “I have an identity as a player,” he offers, “but since I work with many different musicians who are coming from such different places musically, I wouldn’t want to be too strong a flavour. My job should be to help make stronger what other people are doing, not necessarily to bring too many of my own ideas to it.”

The Gloaming is a reference to twilight, that nebulous part of the day just after sunset and before dark, and there’s a touch of the netherworld to the music the band has begun to create too. Born of a suggestion from singer Iarla Ó Lionáird to Martin that they “should do something together”, The Gloaming evolved gradually, as the pair developed some ideas about what kind of sound they might create. Thomas Bartlett sprang to Martin’s mind, as he had met him as an enterprising 12-year-old boy, when Bartlett booked and promoted a concert for Hayes and Cahill in Vermont.

“It was very unusual,” Martin says, “because we didn’t know that we were dealing with a kid, as we were in contact by e-mail. At that time I met Thomas, he was playing Irish music, and over the years I’ve followed his career and known that he’s really interested in the contemporary music world too.” Martin Hayes is enthusiastic about this latest musical coalition. “I felt we had a compatibility of people and ideas,” he offers. “We didn’t have any big master plan, but some form of aesthetic compatibility was there for sure.

Read the full article here