The Vanbrugh Quartet are bringing it all back home

After massive success with The Gloaming, Iarla Ó Lionáird returns to Cork for a new project with the Vanbrugh Quartet, writes Ed Power

IT HAS been a whirlwind year for Iarla Ó Lionáird. In 2014, his band, The Gloaming, released an acclaimed debut album. They toured the world, were feted by critics from Sydney to San Francisco, and won the Choice Music Prize for best Irish LP. Even for a veteran performer such as the former Afro Celt Sound System man, it has been dizzying.

“It was a huge surprise how much people supported it,” he says. “I was in a band before and I wanted to see if I could do it again. That it would take off to the extent it did was astonishing.” The vocalist is renowned for his updating of the keening ‘sean-nós’ style he learned growing up in Cúil Aodha, in the West Cork Gaeltacht. Allied with violinist Martin Hayes’ melancholic runs and pianist Thomas Bartlett’s Radiohead-esque minimalism, it is one of the signatures of The Gloaming’s sound.