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 máire: harp virtuoso

“The greatest Celtic harper of our age” LIVE IRELAND and TG4 Irish Traditional Musician of the Year 2001
 

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Máire is one of Ireland’s most influential traditional musicians, described by the late Derek Bell of the Chieftains as “the most interesting and original player of the Irish harp today”.

She has played harp since the age of eleven. As a 1970s West Cork teenager steeped in the oral tradition she developed new techniques that made it possible for the first time to play traditional music on the harp in a stylistically accurate way. These soon became the norm amongst both her contemporaries and the younger generation of Irish players, thus enabling the renaissance of the instrument that has taken place in the last thirty years. In 2001 she received Irish music's most prestigious award, that of Traditional Musician of the Year - Gradam Cheoil TG4 -
"for the excellence and pioneering force of her music, the remarkable growth she has brought to the music of the harp and the positive influence she has had on the young generation of harpers".

She won the All-Ireland and Pan-Celtic Harp Competitions several times and in 1985 recorded the first harp album ever to concentrate on traditional Irish dance music,
The New-Strung Harp - "an intensely passionate and intelligent record and a milestone in Irish harp music"
THE IRISH EXAMINER. Her approach has been profoundly influential - “a single-handed reinvention of the harp”.

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On stage at the Liverpool Irish Festival, 2012

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