{"id":18545,"global_id":"geomaticattic.ca?id=18545","global_id_lineage":["geomaticattic.ca?id=18545"],"author":"3","status":"publish","date":"2023-12-21 13:38:05","date_utc":"2023-12-21 20:38:05","modified":"2023-12-21 13:47:50","modified_utc":"2023-12-21 20:47:50","url":"https:\/\/geomaticattic.ca\/show\/imar-2024\/","rest_url":"https:\/\/geomaticattic.ca\/wp-json\/tribe\/events\/v1\/events\/18545","title":"Imar","description":"
There are many reasons to be excited about new Glasgow-based five-piece \u00cdmar \u2013 not least a line-up featuring current and former members of M\u00e0nran<\/a>, RURA<\/a>, Talisk<\/a>, Barrule<\/a> and Cara<\/a> whose collectively crammed trophy-cabinet includes the 2018 BBC Radio 2 Musician of the Year, 2016 Radio Scotland Musician of the Year, BBC Radio 2 Horizon Award, BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award and several All-Britain & All-Ireland titles. By far the best and biggest reason, however, is how excited the band are themselves.<\/p>\n \u201cAs soon as we all sat down to play together properly, it just worked,\u201d says bodhr\u00e1n player Adam Brown (RURA), originally from Suffolk. \u201cWe were a bit stunned, to be honest; all looking round at everyone else, thinking, \u2018Is it just me, or was that really good?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s definitely more of a pure-drop trad sound than most of the other bands we\u2019re involved in,\u201d adds Cork-born uilleann piper, flautist and whistle player Ryan Murphy (M\u00e0nran), \u201cbut I think that\u2019s partly why it feels so natural. We\u2019re going back to the music we started out playing \u2013 which is ultimately the reason why we\u2019re all here as musicians.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00cdmar\u2019s formation also embodies a more personal reconnection with its members\u2019 formative years, dating back long before their recent camaraderie around Glasgow\u2019s justly celebrated session scene. All five of them \u2013 also including fiddler Tom\u00e1s Callister and bouzouki ace Adam Rhodes (Barrule), both from the Isle of Man, plus Glasgow native Mohsen Amini (Talisk) on concertina \u2013 originally met as teenagers through Comhaltas Ceolt\u00f3ir\u00ed \u00c9ireann<\/a>, the Irish traditional music network that tutors budding players throughout the British Isles and beyond, and stages the annual schedule of Fleadh competitions.<\/p>\n It was via the latter that \u00cdmar\u2019s paths first crossed, as its future members began to amass what\u2019s now a heavyweight collective haul of top prizes \u2013 nine All-Ireland and eight All-Britain titles between them \u2013 while Murphy is also a double winner of the prestigious Oireachtas contest. Bringing the tally of accolades up to date, Amini is the current BBC Radio 2 Musician of the Year and the 2016 BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year. He with his band Talisk won the 2015 BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award and at the MG Alba Scots Trad Music Awards<\/a> won Folk Band of the Year in 2017 and the Belhaven Bursary for Innovation in 2018 and was noted in The Lists What\u2019s Hot top 100. Meanwhile, Brown at the same awards celebrated RURA\u2019s crowning as Live Act of the Year, in 2015.<\/p>\n \u201cWe all have a really strong shared background in Irish music \u2013 even though we all live in Glasgow, and only Ryan\u2019s actually from Ireland,\u201d Brown says. These foundations underpin many of \u00cdmar\u2019s distinctive qualities, in both instrumentation and material, while also highlighting the cyclical evolution of Scotland\u2019s wider folk scene. Go back a couple of decades or so, and Irish repertoire still predominated at many Scottish sessions and gigs, whereas today \u00cdmar\u2019s sound stands out boldly from the crowd.<\/p>\n \u201cYou won\u2019t often hear anyone in Glasgow playing slides and polkas,\u201d Brown points out, \u201cbut even in the very first sets we put together, that\u2019s what we naturally gravitated towards.\u201d<\/p>\n Following their musical apprenticeships, the five went their separate ways for a spell. In Murphy\u2019s case, after a Diploma in Traditional Irish Music Performance from the London College of Music<\/a>, he studied in Limerick at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance<\/a>, under Niall Keegan and M\u00edche\u00e1l \u00d3 S\u00failleabh\u00e1in. Having formed his first band, \u00c9al\u00fa, at 18, he subsequently toured with German-based Celtic outfit Cara for four years, before moving to Glasgow to join M\u00e0nran in 2013.<\/p>\n Brown grew up amid a folk-loving family, attending numerous festivals as a child, most significantly the nearby world-renowned Cambridge Folk Festival<\/a>, where \u2013 then aged 14 \u2013 he first met and jammed with Scottish fiddler Ruairidh MacMillan<\/a> (now of Blazin\u2019 Fiddles<\/a> fame). Within a couple of years, Brown was travelling regularly north of the Border to accompany MacMillan at gigs, and made the move to Glasgow when he turned 20 \u2013 just in time for MacMillan\u2019s reign as Young Traditional Musician of the Year in 2009. Having by now extended his skills to guitar as well as bodhr\u00e1n, Brown also worked with top young accordionist Paddy Callaghan<\/a> before joining RURA in 2014.<\/p>\n Also the progeny of musical households, Callister and Rhodes rank among today\u2019s leading champions of the Manx music revival, a movement dating back to the 1970s, both having taken part as children in the island\u2019s traditional music and dance scenes. Rhodes was still at school when he co-founded the band King Chiaullee<\/a>, one of the most successful recent Manx acts, before joining Mabon, a five-piece with whom Callister has also toured in recent years. As well as the award-winning trio Barrule, formed in 2012, the pair also feature in new trad\/pop outfit Mec Lir<\/a>, retaining those native musical loyalties even as their geographic paths have converged on Glasgow \u2013 in Rhodes\u2019s case via Edinburgh, where he studied music technology; in Callister\u2019s by way of Benbecula, in the Outer Hebrides, home to the University of the Highlands and Islands<\/a>\u2019 traditional music courses.<\/p>\n