Two specific fiddles, two specific players, one specific outcome.
The primary request when creating the design for Laghdú's album cover was to produce something that could stand alone as a piece of art, where information takes second place to overall composition.
The materials and methods used in the production of this piece juxtapose both a distinctive tactility and importantly a responsibility toward the environment in the way it was printed by our colleagues at Generation Press England.
The integral and unique relationship between Dan Trueman and Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh that makes the album what it is ultimately provides the focus for its design.
They talk using the 10 strings of their Hardanger d'Amore fiddles and the sounds created by the players seem to endlessly cross, expand, re-direct, contract and ultimately lessen.
Laghdú is a conversation between friends, the cover is our attempt to visualise that conversation.
--Rossi McAuley of Distinctive Repetition
Dan Trueman
Dan Trueman is a composer, fiddler, and electronic musician.
He began studying violin at the age of 4, and decades later, after a chance encounter, fell in love with the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle, an instrument and tradition that has deeply affected all of his work, whether as a fiddler, a composer, or musical explorer.
Dan has worked with many groups and musicians, including Trollstilt and QQQ, the American Composers Orchestra, So Percussion, the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, the Brentano and Daedelus string quartets, the Crash Ensemble, many wonderful fiddlers, and has performed across America, Ireland, and Norway.
Dan's work has been recognized by fellowships and grants from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations, among others.
He is Professor of Music at Princeton University, where he teaches counterpoint, electronic music, and composition.
www.manyarrowsmusic.com
Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh
Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh plays traditional and contemporary
folk music on Hardanger d'Amore and other fiddles.
Caoimhín's distinctive sound can be traced back to an early interest in both the sound of the flat-pitch uilleann pipes and a love for the traditional music of Kerry and Clare. A proclivity for tuning the fiddle below concert pitch and a tendency to play on two strings simultaneously had already given him a unique and distinctive sound when he first encountered the Norwegian hardanger fiddle, which has since become his chosen instrument. He plays an unusual 10-string instrument made by Salve Håkedal, which lies somewhere between a traditional hardanger and a viola d'amore. The bows he uses are equally beautiful: baroque and transitional bows made by French bowmaker, Michel Jamonneau.
Highlights of 2014 include performing at the Sydney Opera House, the Royal Albert Hall & Union Chapel in London, the National Concert Hall in Dublin (thrice), a solo concert tour in Italy, a week-long residency in New York, and The Gloaming reaching No.1 in the Irish Album Charts.
He has released twelve CDs to date: two solo albums, Music for an Elliptical Orbit (2014) & Where the One-Eyed Man is King (2007); a duo album with Dan Trueman, Laghdú (2014); two eponymous albums with the groups The Gloaming (2014) & This is How we Fly (2013); Deadly Buzz (2011) & Kitty Lie Over (2003) with Mick O'Brien; A Moment of Madness (2010) with Brendan Begley; Triúr Omós (2013), Triúr Arís (2012) & Triúr sa Draighean (2010) with Martin Hayes and Peadar Ó Riada; and Comb Your Hair and Curl It (2010) with Mícheál Ó Raghallaigh and Catherine McEvoy.