From céilí bands to new quartets, musician Martin Hayes adds another string to his bow

Martin Hayes has travelled from the céilí bands of his native Clare, via The Gloaming, to a new quartet with American musicians, writes Ellie O’Byrne.

Fiddler Martin Hayes met jazz clarinettist Doug Wieselman while recording for RTÉ’s Other Voices series in New York.

New York native Wieselman was playing in the house band, and Hayes had taken his seat to perform without an introduction, hardly noticing what instrument Wieselman played.

“Shortly after I started playing, I heard the sound of a bass clarinet coming over my right shoulder,” Hayes recounts.

“He was instinctively playing with a powerful rhythm that echoed the rhythm of set dancers I had known long ago. I was having an incredibly instinctive and sympathetic dialogue with a musician that I had yet to say hello to, and whose name I didn’t know.”

Hayes has travelled far from the Céilí bands and sessions of his roots in east Co Clare, but it’s still those magical moments of musical spontaneity that he’s seeking.

“I’ve a long, long history of playing at the sessions in the corner of the bar in a communal atmosphere,” he says. “But things have taken a twist in recent years. Things just happen, and you follow them.”

Irish-American trad supergroup The Gloaming was one of those things that happened; two albums in, and there’s no sign of the band’s rapturous reception abating. Bringing a contemporary edge to traditional music, The Gloaming is made up of Hayes, singer Iarla Ó Lionaird, fiddler Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh and their transatlantic comrades Thomas Bartlett and Denis Cahill.

Hayes works with as many US musicians as he does Irish ones. Doug Wieselman is a member of his new project, The Martin Hayes Quartet, along with Kentucky fiddler Liz Knowles and, again, guitarist Denis Cahill, who has collaborated with Hayes since the 1980s.

“You can even count me as half American, because I have dual citizenship,” Hayes says. “It’s not a conscious choice to work with so many US musicians; it’s just the people I know and who I connect with.”

Hayes first took up the fiddle at the age of seven, under the tutelage of his father PJ, himself a renowned fiddler in the parish of Feakle, Co Clare. But 26 years spent in Chicago informed an awareness of the cross-pollination between US folk music and Irish trad, he says: “I became aware of this wider music scene there, which is quite multicultural and international. I got to work with musicians from the folk scene but also from in jazz and rock, and got to form musical relationships with a wide range of people.”

“In Chicago, I would have played all the pubs and clubs you could name; the most raucous places. I remember someone puking on my shoes one night while I was playing. At the same time, I was running two sessions of Irish music every week.”

These days, Hayes’ simultaneously scholarly and passionate approach to music has propelled him into grander venues on the world stage, or in Ireland, the National Concert Hall and the august surroundings of Bantry House. He curates the annual Masters of Tradition festival in

Bantry, and is also University of Limerick’s first Irish World Academy Artist, a three-year title.

The Martin Hayes Quartet is one resulting project. “It was waiting in the wings as a little possibility, and UL encouraged me to do it,” he says. “I gathered all this traditional

material I wanted to work with, and then we got together at UL and played it and teased it out.”

The quartet’s first album, The Blue Room, was recorded live in the beautiful surroundings of Bantry House. “We just sat in a circle and had our friend push the record button, and off we’d go,” Hayes says. “We didn’t get into any editing or retaking or separating of sounds, we just played, and waited for the energy of the moment to give us the best take.”

This simple, low-tech approach strips the recording back to its sheer musicianship. The bass clarinet’s mellow tone, pitched lower than most instruments that might be expected to carry the air in a more conventional trad ensemble, is a revelation on the opening track, ‘The Boy in the Gap’. Knowles’ and Hayes’ fiddling interweaves seamlessly, most notably on one of the more up-tempo offerings, ‘Brennan’s Reel’.

Hayes is looking forward to launching The Blue Room with the quartet in the NCH in Dublin, but also has US and European tour dates with The Gloaming coming up, and they are in the early stages of planning a third album.

“I’m literally frantic at times, but the actual gigs and playing are very exciting and I feel very lucky to have so much going on,” he says. “As long as I have ideas and an enjoyment of these things I plan to keep doing it. On the other hand, I do feel myself spread a little thin sometimes.”

Hayes, 55, has lived in Madrid with his Spanish wife, Lina, for the past two years. She has adult children from a previous relationship, but Hayes has never had children.

“I suppose that’s just the way my life has gone,” he says. So is his contribution to Irish music his legacy, then?

He shrugs off the notion: “At the point where you manage to do something important, you don’t even notice. I don’t think about legacy as an important thing; music just has its fleeting moment, and that’s where the beauty lies.”

The Martin Hayes Quartet debut album, The Blue Room, launches with a concert in the National Concert Hall, Dublin on October 28. See www.nch.ie