What's Up?
"Her refusal to follow the tired trajectory that often characterises that instrument within the tradition results in a beautiful lightness of touch, and her own compositions shimmer in the spaces in between"
- The Irish Times
Life & Work
Bio:
Saileog Ní Cheannabháin is a musician, singer and composer. A native Irish speaker (Connemara dialect, Iorras Aithneach), who grew up in Dublin, her sean-nós singing style is mainly influenced by singers from Iorras Aithneach in the Connemara Gaeltacht, where she spent a lot of time over the years. Her father Peadar is a sean nós singer from Aill na Brún, Iorras Aithneach, her mother Úna Lawlor is a classical violinist and her siblings Eoghan and Muireann are also singers and musicians.
She plays Irish traditional music on fiddle, piano and viola, having taken fiddle lessons from various teachers at Craobh Naithí CCÉ and at the Willie Clancy Summer School and Joe Mooney Summer School at a young age. She also studied classical piano for twelve years at DIT, mainly with Shirin Tobin, and subsequently continued lessons at University College Cork, with Andrew Zolinsky and Tra Nguyen. Her traditional piano playing is self taught. She has been playing viola since 2010, as a result of trying a viola given to her mother Úna by cellist, luthier and family friend Peter Healy (R.I.P. 2016).
Saileog had the opportunity to study many genres of music and experience and explore various approaches to music during her time at UCC. Having graduated with a BMus (2009), UCC awarded her the Seán Ó Riada Prize, for a study of the Songs and Singers of Iorras Aithneach. She has performed at various festivals and venues in Ireland and abroad, and has also featured on music programmes for TG4, Raidió na Gaeltachta, Lyric Fm, RTÉ Radio 1 and BBC Alba.
In 2012, Saileog released her first album, I bhfíor-dheiriú oidhche, which consists of sean nós songs which she learned from Seamus Ennis' collection, from various singers in Iorras Aithneach, Connemara. The songs were collected in the early 1940s, and are a combination of songs that are no longer sung and unusual versions of more well known songs, chosen from the collection.
Saileog also features as a guest on Ensemble Ériu's debut album (2011), on the Tunes in the Church compilation album (2013) and on the forthcoming Rogha Raelach Volume 1 compilation (November 2020).
In 2014, she did research work for the project Amhráin Ó Iorrus, a compilation album of songs from Erris, North Mayo, which were collected at the beginning of the last century from emigrants based in Chicago. The project was initiated by Séamas Ó Mongáin and Síle Uí Mhongáin.
Saileog's second album is Roithleán (released October 2016), an album of Irish traditional music and sean nós songs, produced by Jack Talty, and released on the Raelach Records label. The recording also includes some of her own tune compositions. It features solo piano, fiddle, viola, and sean nós singing, as well as tracks with guest musicians Muireann Ní Cheannabháin, Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin, Jack Talty, Marie McHugh, Tim McHugh and Eoin Ó Beaglaoich. Roithleán was awarded Albam Thraidisiúnta na Bliana - Traditional Album of the Year by Nós Iris (Nós Magazine) in 2018.
She recently recorded a track for the 2020 Rogha Raelach Volume 1 compilation.
One of Saileog’s projects includes arrangements of sean nós songs from Connemara and Rinn Ó gCuanach, as part of a trio with Ailbhe Nic Dhonncha from Rinn Ó gCuanach, Co. Waterford, and uilleann piper Pádraic Keane from Oranmore, Co. Galway.
In the summer of 2018, she composed, arranged and performed original music, in collaboration with Maitiú Ó Casaide, for the play Baoite, written and directed by Darach Mac Con Iomaire. Some of the music was composed between both musicians, and other parts in collaboration with sound designer Steve Lynch. Baoite was commissioned by the Abbey Theatre, and performed for ten days in An Taibhdhearc, as part of the Galway International Arts Festival 2018. In 2019, the play was commissioned by the Abbey Theatre and performed again for several nights in the Peacock Theatre, Dublin, in May 2019.
Saileog also participated in an outdoor production of Shakespeare's The Tempest, singing and playing music for St. John's Mill Theatre Company, Co. Kerry, in 2013, and sang as part of a dance performance called The Wake, choreographed by Sarah Dowling, for the Dublin Dance Festival in 2012.
In February 2020, Saileog participated in Úna Monaghan's Aonaracht 1 project at the National Concert Hall in Dublin, performing a piece for piano and electronics.
Saileog also teaches classical and traditional piano, traditional Irish fiddle and sean nós singing. She has been teaching privately and also giving occasional workshops since 2009.
Saileog has recently been invited to be 2021 sean nós singer in residence at NUI Galway.
She is currently working on some new solo compositions, which she hopes to release in 2022.
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).