for fiddle, guitar and orchestra.
Duration: 4 mins.
Trad. Arr. Hayes/Cahill/Flynn
Programme Notes
‘The Mountain Lark’ and ‘Tom Doherty’s Reel’ are two reels that Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill used as a regular part of their touring repertoire.
They asked me to create an orchestration that would allow them use it with an orchestra with the unusual requirement that they can place any number of tunes before it.
At the premiere in the National Concert Hall on 24th November 2010 this orchestration was played twice. First at the end of a long set of tunes that Martin and Dennis put together. The energy that accumulated that night as the orchestra gradually joined in was incredible and the audience responded with the biggest spontaneous eruption of applause I’ve ever experienced.
They played this orchestration again at the encore after Martin had brought the house down premiering my fiddle concerto Aontacht. This time they coupled it with just one tune, The Star of Munster. The audience reaction was incredible again.
I since re-arranged the orchestra part for string orchestra alone. Martin, Dennis and the Irish Chamber Orchestra used this as the encore for their 2011 tour of Ireland.
Martin and Dennis later used elements from my orchestration in their recording with The Gloaming.
