MUSICAL VOICES AND STORIES

Featuring a Novel, a Memoir and a Biography

This 3-part series of interviews in which the worlds of music and literature intersect has been specially produced for ICC Digital. The highly successful singer-songwriter Declan O’Rourke will discuss his recent novel The Pawnbroker’s Reward which is set during the Famine; the renowned fiddler Martin Hayes will discuss his memoir, Shared Notes: A Musical Journey; Richard Balls will discuss his biography of Shane McGowan, A Furious Devotion: The Life of Shane McGowan.

Martin Hayes, Shared Notes: A Musical Journey (Transworld, Ireland, 2021)

Martin Hayes is a renowned fiddler from County Clare. He won his first of six All-Ireland Fiddle Championships at the age of 13. He has toured and recorded with guitarist Dennis Cahill for over twenty years, he is a founding member of the Irish-American band The Gloaming, and a member of The Martin Hayes Quartet and The Common Ground Ensemble. He has played with many of the greatest traditional Irish musicians of the past thirty years, as well as Sting, Paul Simon and Yo-Yo Ma. He has won TG4 Gradam Ceoil Musician of the Year and BBC Instrumentalist of the Year. He is widely regarded as one of the most significant talents in Irish traditional music. In his memoir Shared Notes Hayes traces the remarkable journey from his childhood on a farm in County Clare in a household steeped in musical tradition, to dropping out of college, working as an illegal immigrant in the States and ultimately to building a hugely successful musical career.

Interviewer: Anne Flaherty

A journalist born in London and growing up in County Clare, Anne has worked for The Irish Press in Dublin and The Irish Times in Belfast as well as reporting from Africa and Asia. She is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, and holds an MA in Anglo-Irish Writing from Queen’s University Belfast and an MA in Children’s Literature from the University of Surrey.