Ó Súilleabháin to perform musical salute to Cork's Captain O' Neill

One of Ireland’s finest traditional musicians, Professor Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, will perform for one night, October 3, at The University of Notre Dame, in Indiana, in the US, in commemoration of the works of Cork-born Captain Francis O’Neill.

“Captain O’Neill is the single most important collector of Irish traditional dance music in our history,” says Ó Súilleabháin “His work is set apart in that it is directed at, and for, performing musicians themselves, rather than towards academic research, as we normally think of it. Traditional musicians have always referred to his primary collection, The Dance Music of Ireland (1907), as ‘The Book’.

“Many traditional musicians do not have musical notation, but O’Neill wrote down the tunes in a simple, but skilful way, allowing direct access by that musical community to his tune settings.”