Danny Diamond & Tom French

Hailing from Meath, Tom French was awarded the inaugural Ted McNulty Prize, the 2016 O’Shaughnessy Poetry Award and his first collection Touching the Bones won the Forward Prize in 2002. His latest collection, The Way to Work has just been published this summer. His poetry is historical, witty, acerbic, insightful.  His poetry draws on the traditional arts, folklore and the rich heritage of rural Irish life; he writes vividly about traditional music, the people who play(ed) it, and the context in which it lives.  Danny Diamond origins are as a traditional fiddle player, music archivist and researcher gives a parallel but different insight into the same context that informs French’s work. Danny plays with the contemporary Nordic/Irish band Slow Moving Clouds and the Irish traditional band Mórga; his 2014 solo album Fiddle Music and 2016 duo fiddle album NORTH (with Conor Cladwell) were both widely acclaimed as classics of the genre, and he is currently working on a follow-up solo project, Elbow Room, which combines new and traditional music with live loops and analog electronics. The proposed live event to be developed at Cois Tine is based on a reading his work in a simple but evocative stage setting with live music and sound design filling out and enriching the world created by his words. The audio world will be comprised of live fiddle playing and subtle pre-recorded sound design cues re-enforcing the recitation. Following performance in Cavan and at Solstice in Navan they envisage that the performance of the work will tour nationally and internationally.

Mark Crickard & Family

Belfast fiddler Mark Crickard spent his formative years in music playing Trad with his family: Philip (guitar, fiddle, mandolin), Stephen (classical and Irish flute and electro-trad). Having had something of a departure from his roots, drawing from rhythms and melodies of Portugal, Spain, North Africa and Brazil, Mark proposes to use the residency to revisit the earlier influences of his family roots and collaborate once more as the Crickard Bros. to write new work for a family album. In recent years Mark has added alto sax and violin to his repertoire and has been keen to explore the Irish Trad and electronic sound fusion to define a new approach to folk music. He also proposes to work with Aiden Shortt from Tyrone (tenor banjo, guitar and keyboards, his brother Conall (tin whistle, and sister Teresa (tin whistle). With influences such as Martin Hayes and Denis Cahill, Mark hopes to bring two families and two genres together at Cois Tine to make a completely new musical style in the folk tradition.     

Michael Gallen & Collaborators

Michael Gallen is an Irish composer and performer whose parents came from Cavan/Monaghan. Although his original influences Irish traditional and folk music, he pursued studies in composition with Jose Manuel Lopez Lopez in Paris, developing a wide range of musical styles. He has been commissioned to write for solo instrument, small ensemble and orchestra, and is fast developing a reputation as one of Ireland’s most exciting composers of new choral music. Recent work includes Wilde Stories, a suite for the RTÉ Concert Orchestra and Cór na nÓg responding to Oscar Wilde’s fairy tales, and What You Forget, a series of choral pieces and sound installations commissioned for the Ireland 2016 project. His work was featured in the National Concert Hall’s Composing the Island series in 2016. He has been involved in several collaborations with dance and theatre (TARDIGRADE, Age of Transition) and has been a participant at the MAKE programme in the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Dublin Theatre Festival’s Next Stage programme, and residencies at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre and Cill Rialaig. Next year he will begin work on a new opera entitled A Month in the Lock. His work as a documentary maker includes Vocal Chords, a series made with singer Iarla O Lionaird which won Gold Medal at the 2016 New York Radio Awards. Michael is the pianist and lead vocalist with Irish band Ana Gog and is the current Artist in Residence at the Trinity Long Room Hub. He plans to collaborate with other artists in researching the Bardic traditions, Breifne and Oriel folk traditions of Cavan and the borderlands to create a new body of work as well as develop his work for a Cavan performance and European tour.

Gráinne Conaty

Gráinne Conaty is a 26 year old musician from Loch Gowna Co. Cavan. Having Graduated in Marketing from DIT in 2011 she pursued her career in Marketing for two years realising that her passion and talent lies in Music.
Gráinne is a singer songwriter who has performed at venues in Ireland including Café Sessions in Cavan, The Ramor Theatre, Sweeney’s Bar Dublin, Open Mic Drogheda, The Gallery Wine Bar Westport, various Cavan County events and venues in New Zealand. She plays a Martin acoustic electric and her lyrics are inspired by childhood memories and travel. Gráinne is currently working on her first EP with Willow Sea Studios in Knocknacarra, Galway and plans to transform her passion for music into a full time occupation.  She is using her residency at Cois Tine to create new work, develop her musical style with a particular focus on the healing powers of music.

Derek Foott with Colin Aherne & Áine Mangaoang

‘(Re)Creating Cavan’ is the title of this artistic collaboration which aims to produce a high quality short audio-visual documentary to be available on the Cois Tine online archive and to host temporary installations/exhibitions of the project's artistic outputs in local venues with a view to touring widely with the work.

Derek Foott is a composer, intermedia artist, and film editor based in Oslo, specialising in creative music technology, digital music composition, audio-visual interactive media, and post-production film. The winner of the People’s Choice award & Judges Panel Award at Cork Photo Festival 2016, his compositions have premiered at the National Concert Hall, Dublin, the Irish Film Institute, International Computer Music Conference (Athens), the Bluecoat (Liverpool), and York New Music Festival (UK). Current intermedia exhibitions include the Brighton Photo Fringe (UK) and the Crawford Art Gallery, Cork (IE).  His film work includes the award-winning feature The Young Offenders (2016), advertising campaigns for Fáilte Ireland, TV3, and Focus Ireland. As director, content-writer, cameraman, and editor, Derek has worked with the Institute of Popular Music, University of Liverpool, and University College Cork on promotional videos, research documentaries, and online video courses. Derek’s music explores a variety of genres including algorithmic composition, ambient electronica, contemporary classical, and electronic dance music. He is a lecturer and research affiliate with University College Cork teaching creative music technology practices and composing with visual programming languages.

Musician, researcher and educator Áine Mangaoang joined the faculty at the Department of Musicology, University of Oslo as Postdoctoral Research Fellow. Before this she was held a Visiting Lectureship in Popular Music & New Media at Listaháskóli Íslands | Iceland Academy of the Arts, Reykjavík, and research positions in the Institute of Popular Music, University of Liverpool and St Patrick's College, Dublin City University. She is on the Editorial Board for the journal Arts. Recent publications have appeared in Postcolonial Text, Popular Music, and Torture: Journal. Áine is the author of two commissioned reports for the Irish Chamber Orchestra's Sing Out with Strings project (2015 & 2016), the Mapping Popular Music in Dublin Executive Report and The Dublin Music Map with John O'Flynn (2016). Forthcoming contributions include a chapter for the Routledge Companion to Popular Music Analysis: Expanding Approaches and an essay on Beyoncé, Deaf culture, and Sign Language Music Videos. A founding member of GlasDrum she served on the board of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM) UK & Ireland from 2011-2016, and sits on the national executive committee for the Society for Music Education in Ireland. Current research & commissioned projects include: The role of music in contemporary places of detention, Archiving music: accessing, curating & exhibiting mixed-media materials, Music Tourism (inc. Ireland, Iceland, & Norway), Inclusive music education (inc. Deaf & Hard-of-Hearing).

Colin Aherne is an award-winning photographer based in Cork specializing in analogue techniques. Founding curator and editor of Howl photo-zine, an online photography platform promoting projects from both established and emerging photographers, his own work has been featured in a wide range of print and digital publications such as The Fix, Irish Artistic Platform, Japan Camera Hunter, Headspace Magazine, In Bloom Magazine, Splash and Grab, Zzzzoom, to name a few. Since 2014 he has served as Festival Coordinator at Cork Photo Festival and has had many photography exhibitions including Empty Stretch’s Petty Thieves Three Projection (Washington DC), Review Central 2013 (Cork), Homeless Gallery (Dublin), After Hours (Cork), Cork Photo 2015.

The Jobseekerz

Musicians Jonathan Durnin (vocals, guitar), Darragh Garland (vocals, guitar), Simon Dixon (vocals, guitar), Christopher Leahy (bass), James Levins (drums), came together in 2015 to form the band The Jobseekerz. Based in Cavan their inspirations come from all corners of music ranging from funk, blues, metal, hard rock, skat and reggae. Although a young dynamic band starting out in their career they already have a significant fan base and have performed many live gigs around the midlands including Scrobernoch in Mullingar. As part of their residency they hope to develop their work, fine tune live performance, create videos and demos to help consolidate and expand their audiences as well and to explore avenues for the further development of their unique sound.  

Dairena Ní Chinneide & Sean O Treasaigh

Dairena and Sean will use the Cois Tine residency to research and explore themes around the border and border crossings to create a new, collaborative body of work using visual, poetry and sound.

Dairena is a bilingual poet  from the Dingle Peninsula, Ireland where she lives and works. Among her published poetry collections are An Trodaí & Dánta Eile / The Warrior and Other Poems by Cló Iar Chonnacht (2005) Cloithear Aistear Anama by Coiscéim (2014) and Labhraíonn Fungie - Fungie Speaks Ponc Press (2015). She has given readings at numerous festivals and conferences throughout Ireland, in Europe and the U.S.A. Widely published in poetry publications Dairena also writes and has won awards for short stories and flash fiction.  She is an accredited tutor with Foras na Gaeilge and a workshop facilitator with Poetry Ireland's Writer's in Schools Programme. She previously worked as a broadcaster, managing director of film & television company Smerbhic Teo, and an interpreter in the European Parliament.

Seán is a graduate of Dublin Institute of Technology and holds an honours degree in Fine Art Painting. Awarded many accolades for his art as a young man, including Kyntrich Gallery, Temple Bar Music Centre and Slógadh. He has exhibited in many group shows including Junior Arts Students Exhibition, An Artists Trio, Dún Laoghaire, and Christchurch Cathedral. A founding member of the artists group Oileán whose mandate was to establish a visual arts exhibition as part of Oireachtas na Gaeilge in Dingle.

Anna-Mieke Bishop

Anna-Mieke Bishop is a singer, cellist, guitarist and songwriter from Newtownmountkennedy in Wicklow. She grew up playing the piano and singing, and started writing songs in her twenties. She is interested in unconventional vocal harmonies and instrumentation, often collaborating with other musicians, and drawing influence from blues, folk and traditional music. She played her first live show in The Back Loft in Dublin in November 2013 and since then has played at venues, house shows and festivals around the country, including Homebeat, Sofar Sounds, Another Love Story and the Arbutus Yarns Theatre at Body and Soul. Currently, Anna-Mieke performs under her own name, alongside Naomi Murphy, a singer songwriter from Dublin, and Brían Mac Gloinn, a folk musician and songwriter from Carlow, one half of folk duo Ye Vagabonds.

Cian Rock

Cian Rock is an emerging artist based in Cavan who has recently been going from strength to strength in recent years. After his brothers tragic and untimely death in 2015 he organised a festival called ‘The Stoney Woods Festival’ raising thousands for the Mater Heart Foundation, both through the concert night and his charity single Another Way.  He has also performed on Irish TV and radio. He plans to use the residency at Cois Tine to focus on launching his career, developing new original works, creating demos to reach new audiences and through honing his skills as a performer.

Claire O’Brien & Neil Quigley 

This sound-based artistic collaboration aims to develop both new and existing compositions for voice and piano and to develop a performance of this original work.

Claire O’Brien is a composer and sound artist experienced in vocal performance, piano, movement and dance with an interest in costume design. She collaborates with artists working in many different disciplines including music, theatre, dance, visual art and performance art. She is a professional music teacher with a passion for equipping her students with the theoretical skills that will see them excel. Educated at The Royal Irish Academy, Trinity College London and University College Cork, she has won an All-Ireland Scholarship, the Doc Gleeson Award for Vocal Performance and was a finalist at the IMRO Christie Hennessy Songwriting Competition, amongst others. She has collaborated with Scintalla at Plugd 2014, composed and performed with The Pearls at Fuaim concert series, Aula Maxima 2012 and Katie Mag at The Everyman, 2013. As a performance artist her work includes Human-O-rama, a nomadic experimental Live Art experience 2016, Suantraí performance 2012-2016 where she performed on TG4 as part of Busker Abu and recorded an album Strings and Sealing Wax with an EP Flight into Egypt, 5.5.5 5 Chances INMA Pavon Firkin Crane, IV Willis, Granary Theatre, In the Lion’s Den for Utopia II, Dorone, Paris, Cork, Berlin, London 2014-2016 and worked as a costume assistant on Richard I, Everyman and Cork Opera House.

Neil Quigley is an Irish composer, performer, sound designer/Engineer and lecturer who has recently worked with the London Contemporary Orchestra, Crash Ensemble during their Free State #9 and has had electroacoustic pieces premiered at MUSLAB 2015 in Buenos Aires and Spazioersetti in Udene, Italy. He has studied in Ireland and the US with Alvin Lucier and John Godfrey. He has an MA in composition and has attended the Labo de Musique Contemporaine de Montréal in Concordia at McGill University and the Conservatoire de musique et d’art dramatique at Québec, Canada 2016, during which he performed his concert Elephant in a Dark Room. Other works include Dressed Like a King, or Headless Infant of Prague 2016, Audio Graffiti, Minnesota 2016, the score for two contemporary dance films Ferns and Browns 2015, Ideal Outcome premiered in Italy 2015, Data Pool, Buenos Aires 2015, Crutch 2015, Roundhouse Theatre London 2015, A Dance Concerto Firkin Crane with choreographer Laura Murphy and Composer Irene Buckley. He has also composed and recorded work for Nintendo.

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