Five star review for ÓRiada Re-imagined on Classical Ear. Download the app herehttps://itunes.apple.com/ie/app/id661641741?mt=8&affId=2284423#
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Seán Ó Riada was the most influential figure in the renaissance of Irish traditional music in the second half of the last century. Just as he found a wider audience for Irish music in the concert hall, theatre and cinema (his soundtrack to the seminal 1959 documentary Mise Éire a particular high-watermark), his Mass, completed just three years before his death at the age of 40 in 1971, annexed new territory for the genre in that most Irish of domains: the church.
This vital new arrangement, recorded live at this year’s Temple Bar Tradfest in Dublin, is performed by the crack 16-voice EQ Singers and employs three instruments – fiddle, harp and bodhrán – embedded in the very DNA of Irish music. Deriving from the unlikeliest of sources – the Uzbekistan-born composer Dmitri Yanov-Yanovsky – it’s a brilliantly realised exercise eloquently conducted by The Sixteen’s associate conductor Eamonn Dougan pays respectful homage to Ó Riada’s simple, hauntingly melodic, by turns ecstatic and tranquil original while teasing out revealing new textures and colours.
Michael Quinn Classical Ear
