Catrin Finch and Aoife Ní Bhriain: “The most important thing is hopefully people will love the music”

‘Creu gwir fel gwydr o ffwrnais awen / In these stones horizons sing.’ These words, inscribed on the front of Cardiff’s Millennium Centre, are by the inaugural national poet of Wales, Gwyneth Lewis. It’s also the title of a work by Karl Jenkins that was commissioned for the gala opening of the centre in 2004 and performed on harp by one of Wales’ most internationally renowned musicians, Catrin Finch.

Just under ten years later, Finch was back at the Millennium Centre, this time for WOMEX, performing alongside the kora player Seckou Keita. Their showcase was part of a newly formed alliance between the host country Wales and Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland and England. Aptly named Horizons, its aim was – and still is – to showcase to the world the richness and variety of these countries’ musical traditions. This October marks the tenth anniversary of the Horizons partnership, as well as Finch and Seckou’s debut album Clychau Dibon and that now legendary showcase.

“It was a massive catalyst moment for Seckou and I, that night at WOMEX,” Finch recalls. “We’d only done a few gigs, so it was very much still in its infancy and a time of not really knowing what people thought of the collaboration.” As it turned out, the concert was a resounding success: “literally the diary filled up,” says Finch. “All those concerts that came out of that one little showcase and after that, we were flying really for years.” And so began an incredible, decade-long journey that saw the pair release three albums, win numerous awards and tour the world.

Finch’s first foray beyond the classical music world took place in 2007 when she travelled to Colombia for a BBC TV series about the harp. It was here where she discovered joropo music and Cimarrón, the group that she’s toured with for many years, most recently this summer with much talked about performances at WOMAD and Cambridge Folk Festival.

Now her focus is on something completely different – a new collaboration with Dublin-born violinist Aoife Ní Bhriain. Their initial coming together was back in 2021, as part of Other Voices, the now global festival and music series that began in Dingle, Co Clare in 2001. Since 2019 Cardigan has been home to its Welsh event and during lockdown’s digital edition it was mooted that Finch and Ní Bhriain might perform together. “Some things are serendipitous,” says Finch about that first encounter with Ní Bhriain, “they happen at the right time for a reason,” coming as it did when it was becoming apparent that the duo with Seckou was unlikely to make it past COVID.

Whereas part of Finch and Seckou’s charm lay in their myriad differences, what’s striking about Finch and Ní Bhriain is that they could be musical siblings – hence their debut’s title, Double You. “We come from very similar worlds this time,” Finch remarks. They first bonded over their love of Bach. In fact, the first piece they performed together was Bach’s ‘Prelude from Violin Partita No 3’. “It’s the piece we’ll probably always start the show with, because actually the Bach thing is about where we’ve come from, the worlds we’ve come from.”

Finch’s story has been well documented in Songlines, but Ní Bhriain may be a less familiar name. Growing up in a family that was steeped in Irish traditional music (her father Mick O’Brien is one of Ireland’s leading uilleann pipers), Ní Bhriain made her concert debut aged nine with the RTÉ Symphony Orchestra. She was, like Finch, committed to a career in classical music from a very early age, but on discovering the groundbreaking Irish trad fiddler Tommie Potts as a teenager and a love of Norway’s Hardanger fiddle, it seemed destined that she too would soon be forging a path beyond the rigidity and stuffiness of the classical world.

Double You is an entrancing collection of new compositions inspired by their mutual love of Bach and baroque, bees and various traditional tunes from their native lands. It typifies just how the pair manage to straddle their deep classical roots with their love for innovation and tradition. “We are finding that it is sparking people’s imaginations,” says Finch about this new partnership. “The most important thing is hopefully people will love the music.”

Besides embarking on this new musical adventure with Ní Bhriain, last year Finch took on a new teaching role as head of harp at the Royal Academy of Music, the UK’s principal institution for classical music. “I’m really excited about being at the academy because I think it is time that even a place like the academy needs to start evolving… embracing all the different music that’s going on around it. I just think changes will happen as everything evolves, right?”

Catrin Finch and Aoife Ní Bhriain are performing at King's Place, London, on April 21. Tickets here

This article originally appeared in the November 2023 (#192) issue of Songlines. Never miss an issue – subscribe today

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