Review | Songlines

Tobar an Cheoil

Rating: ★★★★

View album and artist details

Album and Artist Details

Artist/band:

Draíocht

Label:

Draíocht

October/2022

Two of the purest voices in Irish traditional music – the harp and the flute – combine to beguiling effect on this third album from Draíocht, aka husband-and-wife duo, Michael Rooney and June McCormack. The duo’s name loosely translates as ‘Magic,’ and there’s certainly charms and enchantment aplenty on Tobar an Cheoil (The Well of Music), a 14-track set – the bulk of the original compositions by Rooney – dispatched with elegance.

Delicacy of tone, a lightness of touch, is all in the Monaghan-born harpist’s fleet way with a melody and his lightly-worn virtuosity. He’s ably matched by McCormack’s articulate, light as air, melancholia-tinged Sligo-accented flute. The result, lit up with genteel lyrical flourishes and nimble, nuanced reciprocity, is underscored by the obvious intimacy between the two. On offer is a wide array of material, from familiar reel and jig sets to new hop-jigs, airs and planxties, all set down with winning modesty. There’s a crystalline beauty to these crafted but alive and alert dialogues, Harper’s dexterously dispatched solo ‘An Cruitire’ as liquid and fresh, light and glinting as the proverbial sun-lit spring stream. Contributions by Jack Warnock and Seamie O’Dowd’s guitars, Maria Ryan and Lucia MacPartlin’s fiddles, and Aoife Burke’s low-lying cello add telling textures of their own to an enchanting recital.

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