REVIEWS

LIVE REVIEW

Mick Conneely & David Munnelly perform at the 42nd Clifden Arts Festival 2019

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(Photo & review copyright © Mike Harding 2019)

When you get two masters of their craft coming together and they flow together like two mountain streams meeting to make a mighty river then, in artistic terms, that’s about as good as it gets. Clifden Arts Festival, one of the great Arts Festivals invited Mick Conneely and David Munnelly to appear there recently and for me it was one of the highlights of the entire festival. Consumate playing as you might imagine from two musicians who are in their musical prime and who have been playing solo and in various bands, from De Danann to Niamh Parsons for many years, but the surprising thing is that the two lads rarely get together to play and rehearse.

You wouldn’t know, you couldn’t get a slip of fag paper between them – instinctively they locked together and lifted the roof of the old church; the natural acoustics of a space and the music made within it blended so sweetly that what you got was total perfection.

Conneely on fiddle and Munnelly on melodeon were absolutely on fire for well over an hour as they worked their way through the cannon of great traditional tunes with a number of more recent compositions thrown in for good measure. Jigs, reels and slow airs flowed and after the last number the audience got to their feet and whooped and hollered for them to come back for an encore. And they did.

When I told Mike McGoldrick I’d seen one of the finest trad concerts I’d ever seen he said “Ah the bullet from Belmullet” and true enough, the big man must put a few bellows into the repair shop over the years, but his playing, well as being powerful and rooted, can be sweet and soulful too and his playing of slow airs was breathtaking.

Mick, one of the most respected Irish traditional fiddlers on the planet was born in London but is steeped in the Irish tradition – he was well aware that his da Mick senior, another fiddler and Connemara born was in the audience taking notes.

If you get chance to see them then do - if you want to hear them on CD then get hold of their album “’Tis What It Is.” It’s a cracker.

Mike Harding
singer, songwriter, comedian, author, poet, broadcaster and multi-instrumentalist

CD REVIEWS

​'Tis What It Is - Mick Conneely & David Munnelly (2012)

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  • "A raucous encounter between chaos and melody. I loved it!" Tommy Tiernan
  • "...what we in Leitrim used to call 'hearty' music." Ben Lennon
  • "There are albums that become obligatory, legendary performances, benchmarks of taste, the right stuff bottled in less than an hour of music. And this is one of them." Sean Laffey - FolkWorld
  • "Bottling the chutzpah of a session is an elusive goal that few musicians achieve in the recording studio. This aptly named CD is a welcome exception." Siobhan Long - Irish Times
  • "...a brilliant album." Dan Neely - New York Irish Echo
  • "It steps outside the boundaries in approach and delivers one of the most energetic albums you will hear this year." Tony Lawless - TradConnect
  • "Fourteen superb sets of tunes from this Irish duo – 57 minutes of pure gold..." Grem Devlin - Living Tradition
  • "...a revelation ...undeniably exciting ...together they’re a damn force of nature ...they sound like an underground prohibition-era dance hall party ...I think of Conneely now as the Art Tatum of Irish trad ...the album just gets better and better..." Devon Leger - Hearth Music​

Wonderwaltz - De Danann (2010)

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  • "De Danann's Wonderwaltz presents a true vision of Irish music today... The band sounds like they've returned to their roots... This is a wonderful nod to the past... But fiddler Mick Conneely is the great surprise here, with a ferocious fiddling style..." Devon Leger - Hearth Music
  • "It is a masterpiece of Irish traditional music right up there with the seminal recordings the band made over the past 30 years, with its highly distinctive sound and mesmeric rhythmic pulse..." Kevin HJ Macleod
  • "De Danann are back, all guns blazing. It's like they never left the building..." Irish Music Magazine

Selkie - Mick Conneely (2001)

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​
  • "Finesse and ferocious talent in full flight..." Siobhan Long - Irish Times
  • "Excellent..." Fiddle On Magazine
  • "Brilliant and highly recommended..." Taplas
  • "Quite breathtaking..." Irish Music Magazine
  • "A truly wonderful debut fiddle album that in every track has a rigour, patience and calm tempo which define it as pure passion..." Sunday Tribune
  • "An album of robust, atmospheric and exciting fiddle music of outstanding quality..." Living Tradition

All About [:Time] - Errislannan (1998)

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  • "...with 'All About [:Time]' Errislannan have made a fine album... For lovers of the pure tradition of Ireland this is a hidden secret..." Christian Moll - FolkWorld