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Ronan O’Snodaigh: A Perspective

July 17, 2012

Sept 11th/Oct 9th, 30th/Nov 20th/Dec 4th
Whelan’s Of Wexford St
Doors 8pm

Sept 11th ‘Water Off A Duck’s Back’
Oct 9th ‘Last Mile Home’
Oct 30th ‘Play Days’
Nov 20th ‘Tonnta Ró’
Dec 4th ‘Tiptoe’

Rónán Ó Snodaigh – A Perspective is a series of of five concerts being held between September and October in Whelans, Dublin. Each show will see Rónán take one of his five wonderful solo albums and reunite the musicians who played on the recordings. In all, thirty six different musicians will share the stage with Rónán over the course of the 5 nights. Each evening will be filmed and released afterwards and once the run is complete Rónán will record his sixth album.

A founding member of Ireland’s most celebrated World Music band Kíla, Rónán Ó Snodaigh is recognized as one of Ireland’s best and most innovative bodhrán players and a highly original singer songwriter. Described by John Walsh (Hot Press) as ‘the living embodiment of Turlough O Carolan and Bob Marley’, and by a fan as ‘…The Jimi Hendrix of Bodhrán’!

Rónán mixes the Irish Language, which is his first language of song writing , bluesy grooves with wild percussion to create his unique organic sound. Rónán has released five solo albums to date, 2010’s Water off a Duck’s Back was recorded with musical legends Liam Ó Maonlaí, Steve Cooney and Myles O Reilly (aka Juno Falls), the album is a beautiful collection of upbeat, nearly spiritual songs, set to a stunning musical backdrop. Rónán has also released four other solo albums: The Last Mile Home (2007) The Playdays (2005), Tonnta Ró (2004) and Tip Toe (2001) as well as nine albums with Kíla. The most recent Kíla album being Soisín launched January 2009.

Rónán has composed music for TV and Film including working on oscar nominated film The Secret of Kells, and three nature documentaries for RTE TV produced by award winning Crossing The Line film makers.

In 2003, Rónán’s first book Luascadán was published – a stunning collection of his Irish language songs to date. This was followed a year later by the publication of his book of English song lyrics entitled ‘Songs’. The Garden Wars, his first full volume of poetry, was published December 2007 to critical acclaim.

Why not let the man himself explain to you exactly what this run of shows is about…

“Today we make a pact that we will provide five fabulous gigs to celebrate five fabulous albums from the past eleven years. We are going to return to a few rare treasures from my recent past and spend a little more time working on and enjoying them! Sometimes the past moves too fast,and sometimes with the help of a few friends we can stop the clock and make time stretch to last that bit longer.

This is what we will be doing in Whelans, starting September 11th. Starting, stopping and stretching time with selection of songs that i left behind. I’ve done five albums, quite different. Different musicians, different engineers, different points of view and different arrival points. I’m going to do each one of the albums and try and the band like in ‘The Blues Brothers’ – reform the bands for each of the albums. All of them are quite special events and hopefully everyone involved will be as excited as me.

I’m going to gig the albums. Each night will be very particular, each night will be dedicated to whichever album with those musicians involved. I’ll probably do some of them better than before, some of them we won’t do better. To me it’s like swimming, there’s a point at which you run off a pier and you dive and you hit the water and as soon as you hit there you’re in a different world. You’ve completely taken on another thing and you’ve got to deal with boats, jellyfish, people, depth, breathing, your body, cold, muscles, blood circulation. You’ve to deal with a whole new set of things when you’re in there and there’s only a second in mid air between a completely different set of what you need to be thinking about to what you need to be thinking about. It’s hard to be saying what I’m going to be doing in there because it’s completely different, a different world from where I’m in now but as soon as I get in I’ll get in” – Ronan O’Snodaigh

Tickets €14 advance(inc booking fee), €16 on the door or €55 (inc booking fee) for all 5 shows. All tickets available to buy online from www.wavtickets.ie or call the WAV Box Office [Lo-call 1890 200 078]. All supporters who purchase a 5-night ticket through WAV or Fundit will also receive access to footage from all 5 shows, a download code for a Ronan album of their choice and a download code to an exclusive Ronan O’Snodaigh compilation! You can also support this very special run of shows here – http://www.fundit.ie/project/rnn–snodaigh—a-perspective

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