Goodman Trio

Mick O’Brien ( uilleann pipes/flute/whistle)

Emer Mayock (flute/whistle/pipes)

Aoife Ní Bhriain (fiddle, viola, concertina)

Father and daughter duo Mick O’Brien (uilleann pipes/flute/whistle) and Aoife Ní Bhriain (fiddle, viola, concertina) join Emer Mayock (flute/whistle/pipes to perform music collected by James Goodman (1828-96) in the southwest of Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century.

The manuscripts, held at Trinity College Dublin and now published in two volumes by the Irish Traditional Music Archive are of great significance because they preserve much of the traditional music of the south of Ireland as it was sung and played in the years before traditional culture there was devastated by the Great Famine of the 1840s.

Peter Browne of RTÉ Radio invited Mick O’Brien and Emer Mayock to take part in a documentary entitled Tunes of the Munster Pipers (named after Dr Hugh Shields’ edition of Goodman’s manuscripts), but it was only when Aoife Ní Bhriain joined in for a performance at the National Concert Hall in 2009 ‘that the musicians decided to explore the music further and to complete a recording entitled Tunes from the Goodman Manuscripts.

Having received a TG4 Gradam Ceoil Award in 2014 for their collaborative role in the revival of the music of the Goodman manuscripts, this recording marks a development in the trio’s musical approach, at times enlarging the instrumental palette and adding layers or paring things right back. The resulting sound is in places quite different from the previous recording having continued to develop through live performance for a number of years now.