I.NY 2019 | Martin Hayes & John Kelly

I.NY festival event, hosted by Dance Limerick.

World renowned fiddle player Martin Hayes, and award-winning author and broadcaster John Kelly, appear together in conversation and performance at I.NY 2019, discussing the impact New York has had on their personal and creative lives, and performing the music and writing which tells the story of that influence.

Fiddle player Martin Hayes is regarded as one of the most significant international talents in the world of Irish traditional music.

John Kelly is an acclaimed author, and one of Ireland’s best-known broadcasters. His first collection of poetry, Notions, was published by Dedalus Press in 2018, and he is a multiple PPI award-winner, presenting some of the most critically acclaimed music programmes on the Irish radio and television.

www.thisisiny.com

More about Martin Hayes

Performing solo, within a duo with Irish American guitarist Dennis Cahill, and with the Martin Hayes Quartet, Martin has also collaborated with one of New York’s leading quartets, Brooklyn Rider.

As founder member of The Gloaming, the remarkable contemporary traditional band comprising Irish and American members, he tours internationally and shared the prestigious Meteor Prize in 2014 for their debut album.

Martin has been recognised as Musician of the Year (Gradam Ceol) from TG4, Person of the Year by the American Irish Historical Society in New York City and recipient of the annual Spirit of Ireland award from the Irish Arts Center NYC. He was the first musician to win The BBC Instrumentalist of the year and the first to win the RTE folk instrumentalist of the year. Martin was the recipient of six All-Ireland championships before the age of nineteen and spent his youth playing in his late father, P. Joe Hayes’ Tulla Celi Band, which has now been together for more than 70 years.

“A remarkable artist, the only one of his type.” – The Sunday Independent, Ireland

“In the decades to come, we’ll surely talk of having seen this man in the way others talk of Miles Davis or Jimi Hendrix or John Coltrane.” – The Irish Times

“…the dominant message always coming to me from my father, and lots of the finest musicians of county Clare, was their idea that music must first express feeling.” – Martin Hayes

More about John Kelly

John Kelly’s first collection of poetry, Notions, was published by Dedalus Press in 2018. His work has appeared in The Irish Times, Poetry Ireland Review, Winter Papers, Oxford Magazine and several anthologies. A novel From Out of the City was shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards 2014. A radio play The Pipes, starring the celebrated Beckett actor Barry McGovern, was broadcast on RTE.

For many years he has been at the forefront of music and arts broadcasting in Ireland – best known for his cult radio show Mystery Train and for The Works Presents – a series of in depth television interviews with leading figures in the world of arts and culture.