University of Florida Performing Arts

presents

Lúnasa

Friday, March 1, 2013, 7:30 p.m.

University Auditorium

Sponsored by

ProgramThe program will be announced from the stage.

About LúnasaIreland’s all-star quintet Lúnasa has quickly become one of the most sought-after bands on the international music scene. Their inventive arrangements and bass-driven grooves are steering Irish acoustic music into surprising new territory. Called an “Irish music dream team” (Folk Roots) and “the new Celtic royalty” (Boston Herald), Lúnasa made their worldwide recording debut in 1997, and were met with instant acclaim. Their eponymous self-produced album became an immediate best-seller in Ireland, topping Hot Press’ folk charts and called one of the year’s top 10 by the Irish Echo. Appearances at international festivals across Europe, Japan and Australia included the Montreux Jazz Festival and a main-stage performance at London’s Guinness Fleadh. On their first American tour, word-of-mouth led to sold-out shows and rave reviews. “A standing-room only crowd in New York confirmed Lúnasa’s reputation,” wrote the Irish Voice. “This is the hottest Irish acoustic group on the planet.” They appeared on CNN, and performed at the Hollywood Bowl and the Chicago Celtic Festival.

Named for an ancient Celtic harvest festival in honor of the Irish god Lugh, patron of the arts, Lúnasa is indeed a gathering of some of the top musical talents in Ireland. Its members have helped formed the backbone of some of the greatest Irish groups of the decade. Bassist Trevor Hutchinson was a key member of The Waterboys, and later of the Sharon Shannon Band. Master guitarist Paul Meehan (Karan Casey Band, North Cregg) has recently replaced founding member Donogh Hennessy. Fiddler Sean Smyth is an All-Ireland champion who has played with Donal Lunny’s Coolfin; and Kevin Crawford, considered one of the finest flutists in Ireland, also plays with the acclaimed traditional group Moving Cloud. Add to this uilleann piper Cillian Vallely (of the same talented musical family as brother Niall Vallely of Nomos and Karan Casey Band) and you have the makings of a powerful new ensemble.

Like the younger generation of Nashville musicians such as Béla Fleck or Edgar Meyer, pushing the boundaries of bluegrass into jazz and beyond, Lúnasa redefines Irish music by going right to the heart of its rhythms. With its distinctive use of the upright acoustic bass — brought front and center by Hutchinson’s remarkable playing — teamed with Hennessey’s percussive guitar, the group seeks out the essential heartbeat of a tune.

“There are lots of great melodies in Irish music but often people don’t hear the rhythms underneath,” founding member Sean Smyth said. “We try to relate the swing or energy out of the music, using new rhythms, letting each instrument add its own unique layer. We’ll play the same tune over and over searching for the groove, exploring it. We let the music find its pulse.”

The result is a sound that, though distinctly Irish in flavor, touches on jazz and other improvisational music forms.

Inspired by Ireland’s great 1970s group The Bothy Band, Lúnasa use melodic interweaving of wind and string instruments, pairing flutes, fiddle, whistle and pipes in often breathtaking arrangements.

“I had a vision of the type of music I wanted to create,” Smyth said. “In my books, the most influential band was the Bothy Band, who were flute-, pipes- and fiddle-based.”

Seeds for Lúnasa were planted when Smyth hooked up with Hutchinson and

Hennessey for a short tour of Scandinavia in late 1996. The trio clicked so well that back in Ireland, they brought in John McSherry and Michael McGoldrick to record some concerts. A tour of Australia in January 1997 brought Crawford on board, and the band took off. “The response when we started playing at home was just great,” Smyth said.

Within several months, they were filling venues with spellbound audiences in Ireland, and began to expand their tours to other parts of the world. After a particularly memorable concert at Matt Molloy’s — a renowned music pub in the west of Ireland, owned by the former-Bothy Band and current-Chieftains flutist — Molloy himself gave the new band his blessing, remarking “they remind me of a band I used to play with!”

At the end of 1997, the band released their first CD, Lúnasa (reissued in the U.S. on Compass Records) — a mix of concert and studio tracks gathered from their prolific year together. It was immediately hailed as one of the finest, freshest recordings of Irish music in years, called “moving, pulsating, and thrilling to the very marrow” by Folk Roots and “a true must-have disc” by the Irish Voice. Otherworld, the exciting second album from Lúnasa, was a stunning cycle of instrumentals that captured all the performance intensity for which they have been widely acclaimed. The album impressively fulfills the promise of its title, taking listeners to a realm of Irish music full of imaginative leaps and blazing skill. The group reached new heights when, after McGoldrick and McSherry left to form a duo, piper Cillian Vallely was brought in. The revamped configuration recorded 2001’s The Merry Sisters of Fate, which catapulted the band’s name and music to international recognition when it won the AFIM Award for best celtic album of 2002. It was followed by the highly acclaimed Redwood in 2003, The Kinnitty Sessions in 2004 (whose Sing Out! review starts, “Seldom has such a humble title masked such magnificence!”), in 2006 by the luminous Sé and most recently, Lá Nua.