The Historical Harp Society of Ireland

Artists

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Toby Carr

Concert artist

Lutenist and guitarist Toby Carr is known as a versatile and engaging artist, working with some of the finest musicians in the business. While studying classical guitar at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, London, he was introduced to historical plucked instruments, an interest he pursued during a postgraduate degree at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, London, graduating in 2016, and welcomed back as a professor in 2021.  Now in demand as a soloist, chamber musician and continuo player, his playing has been described as ‘sensuous and vivid’ (The Guardian), ‘eloquent’ (BBC Music Magazine) and ‘mesmerising’ (Opera Today). Toby has performed with most of the principal period instrument ensembles in the UK and beyond, as well as with many symphony orchestras, opera companies and ballet companies.  He collaborates with singers such as Nicholas Mulroy, Alexander Chance and Helen Charlston. Notable recordings include Battle Cry with Helen Charlston for Delphian and Drop not, mine eyes with Alexander Chance for Linn. Settled in Greenwich, south-east London with his Irish wife and collaborator, the harpist, Aileen Henry, Toby’s interests outside of music include reading, cooking and travelling, though when not working he generally tries to do as little as possible.

 

FESTIVAL EVENTS:

Concerts

www.tobycarr.co.uk Listen to Toby Carr
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Dr Tamzin Elliott

Tutor, concert artist

Tamzin Elliott is a composer and harpist based in Los Angeles. Tamzin’s music stems from their love of immersive, world-building experiences and the process of learning music by rote, often incorporating elements of early European music and living folk music such as polyphony from the Republic of Georgia. As a harpist they specialize in historical performance practice, performing European Renaissance repertoire as well as 17th- to 18th-century Irish and Scottish repertory on the wire-strung cláirseach. The work, reconstructing this repertory from Ireland and Scotland, with the tutelage of harpist and scholar Siobhán Armstrong, has played a major role in the development of Tamzin’s current composition project, Meidelant: an opera on the Maidenhood of Morgan le Fay. Tamzin holds a doctorate in composition from the University of Southern California, studying under Ted Hearne, Don Crockett, and Sean Friar. 

 

FESTIVAL EVENTS:

Concerts

 

Players' Sessions

www.tamzinelliott.com Listen to Dr Tamzin Elliott
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Allan MacDonald

Concert artist

Born in the tiny Gaelic-speaking township of Glenuig in Moidart, Allan is a leading light in the Gaelic musical scene, and is in demand internationally as a composer, musical director, piper, singer, workshop leader, and lecturer on Gaelic music. One of his myriad gifts is to make pibroch accessible and lovable. His work as a scholar-performer reuniting seventeenth-century piping with its Gaelic roots is influencing a whole generation of pipers. Allan has performed at all of the major Celtic and piping festivals. He lectures on the Scottish Music course at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama, and has had numerous commissions to compose for BBC television. In 1999 and 2004, Allan directed two pioneering series for the Edinburgh International Festival. In 2005, he co-directed a six-part television series screened on RTE, BBC3 and ITV—“The Highland Sessions”—addressing the common language and musical traditions of Scotland and Ireland, which won the Best Documentary Music Award in Ireland. His approach to performing is infused with an insider’s ear for the fragile traces of historical continuity that survive within Gaelic-speaking communities, and he attempts to reverse the effects of post-Industrial sanitisation and cultural colonialism.

 

FESTIVAL EVENTS:

Concerts

allanmacdonald.com Listen to Allan MacDonald
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Dr Martin Tourish

Concert artist, speaker

Martin Tourish is an acclaimed accordionist, composer and producer from county Donegal. His debut album, Clan Ranald, was listed in the top 20 albums of 2005 by Earle Hitchner, a track from which now features on The Rough Guide to Irish Folk Vol. 2. In 2008, he was TG4’s Young Musician of the Year, and completed his BMus, 1st-class honours, also winning the Anne Leahy award for the highest academic mark for his thesis. In 2010, he presented an episode of the traditional music show Geantraí, and was a guest with the National Symphony Orchestra in their Naxos album, Music for Great Films of the Silent Era. In 2011, he was one of the musicians invited by the President of Ireland to produce and perform a Galician / Irish concert with Carlos Nunez in Madrid as part of a visit there by President McAleese. In 2013, Martin had a number of articles published in the Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland. Later that year, he orchestrated a piece he co-wrote with Ciaran Tourish for the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, featuring traditional instruments. He recently completed a PhD, and has also just released his latest album, Under a Red Sky Night, to critical acclaim.

 

FESTIVAL EVENTS:

Concerts

Other

www.martintourishmusic.com Listen to Dr Martin Tourish

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