Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts is set to present traditional Irish music by fiddler Martin Hayes and guitarist Dennis Cahill.
Hayes and Cahill are two of the world’s leading artists in traditional Irish music. The New York Times calls the duo, “A Celtic complement to Steve Reich’s Quartets and Miles Davis’s Sketches of Spain.”
Hayes, from East County Clare, is considered one of Ireland’s most innovative and influential musicians. He was raised in a famous musical family and won six All-Ireland fiddle championships by age 19.
Cahill is a master guitarist from Chicago born to Irish-speaking parents from the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry. His spare, essential accompaniment to Hayes’ fiddle is acknowledged as a major breakthrough for guitar in the Irish tradition. Besides touring with Hayes for their duet performances, Cahill plays with The Gloaming and is a member of the Masters of Tradition ensemble, as well as an annual participant at the festival of the same name.
The duo has toured throughout the world for almost 20 years, including multiple tours to Australia, Japan, Italy, Germany, France, Holland, Scandinavia, Canada, the United Kingdom and Ireland, as well as stops in Hong Kong, the People’s Republic of China, Poland and Mexico.
Hayes and Cahill have recorded three critically acclaimed albums together on Green Linnet Records. They were the featured performers at the March 17, 2011 annual St. Patrick’s Day Congressional Luncheon playing for the President, Vice-President, members of Congress, and the President of Ireland at the Capitol, and that evening at the White House.
The performance is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. April 25 in the James M. Stewart ‘32 Theater at 185 Nassau Street. It is the final event in the university’s Fund for Irish Studies 2013-14 series.
The Fund for Irish Studies, celebrating its 15th anniversary season and chaired by Princeton professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon, affords Princeton students, and the community at large, a wider and deeper sense of the languages, literatures, drama, visual arts, history, politics and economics not only of Ireland but of “Ireland in the world.”
More information is online at arts.princeton.edu.
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