This Is How We Fly
18th Aug 2017
€15.00
This Is How We Fly
Sirius Arts Centre
Friday 18 August
8pm (door 7.45pm)
Tickets €15, available online www.siriusartcentre.ie or info@siriusartcentre.ie / 0214813790
"Even if you're not an Irish-music nut, there's a good chance you'll be charmed and even dazzled by this jazz-tinged stylishly modernized quartet of fiddle, clarinet, drums and, best of all, percussive dance." - Time Out, New York
This Is How We Fly are Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh (hardanger d'amore), Seán Mac Erlaine(clarinets & electronics), Nic Gareiss (percussive dance, Petter Berndalen (drums & electronics).
TIHWF brings together four musicians, each of them rooted in different cultures and musical vocabularies. Individually, each member has carved out a reputation for not just mastering their chosen fields, but rising above, redefining and renewing the musical world they come from. A sublime Irish fiddler who’s not afraid to step outside convention, a sophisticated Appalachian hard shoe dancer stepping into the rhythmic foreground, a thoughtful Dublin jazzman who has moved beyond the linear constraints of the genre, and a lyrical Swedish percussionist redefining the melodic and sonic place of drums within the contours of traditional song.
Their collective pedigree is eye catching, and includes bands like The Gloaming, The Chieftains, Darol Anger and Gjallarhorn, along with interdisciplinary work in theatre, dance and contemporary music. Their centred, inquisitive approach to finding a collective voice is now yielding a rich bounty of ideas, in the studio with the release of their eponymous CD and on festival stages where the music opens up to reveal a playful group energy with a liberated spirit. They’ve performed extensively in Ireland and Scandinavia, including performances at beacon festivals like Umefolk and Celtic Connection.
In late 2014, Caoimhín released two solo albums, as well as releasing The Gloaming’s debut album, which won the Choice Music Prize (The Irish version of The Mercury Award) for Irish Album of the Year, Irish Times Album of the Year, and Caoimhín came second in the Irish Times Artist of the Year category, behind Hozier in 1st place. In the same year, Sean Mac Erlaine released a solo album that was named on many Album of the Year list, and was played extensively on national and international radio.
In April 2015, This is How we Fly embarked on their first US tour, which included a ground-breaking music residency at Princeton University, where they worked with young composers and the famed So Percussion percussive group. At the end of the residency, they performed with all of these collaborators in a sold-out headline concert at the Princeton Sound Kitchen. The highlight of the US tour was three sold-out concerts at the prestigious Irish Arts Centre, New York.
2016 saw the band tour heavily throughout Ireland as well as France, with a landmark concert as part of the Dublin Fringe Festival (who commissioned the formation of the group in 2010). That concert was subsequently nominated for Best Live Performance at the Dublin Fringe Festival awards.
In January 2017, This is How we Fly successfully crowdfunded the recording of their second album. Audiences of 60 per night were invited into the studio with them over three nights of unique music making, mixed with informal chat and improvisations.
They releases this second album in September 2017 with a tour of Europe and the USA.
