Ceoltóirí Chualann: The Band that Changed the Course of Irish Music Peadar Ó Riada in conversation with Peter Browne

Seán Ó Riada (1931-’71), amongst his achievements, is credited as having revived Irish music, both drawing from tradition and through great innovation, along with his band Ceoltóirí Chualann. In Ceoltóirí Chualann: The Band that Changed the Course of Irish Music (Mercier Press), composer, musician, choir director and broadcaster Peadar Ó Riada charts the band’s history, with accompanying musical arrangements, handwritten scores, and more. Join Peadar in conversation with musician, broadcaster and producer, Peter Browne.

Peadar Ó Riada is a composer, musician, choir director, and broadcaster. He has been the director of Cór Cúil Aodha since 1971 and holds a Bmus from UCC (1976). Ó Riada is the founder of the women’s choir Cor Ban Cúil Aodha (1985) and has co-founded traditional music groups such as Triúr (with Martin Hayes and Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh), The Drole, and served as director of Ceoltóirí Chualann. He is also known for his collaborations with artists like Wajahat Khan. Living in the Cúil Aodha Gaeltacht since childhood, his contributions include 17 published CDs of original music, compositions for orchestra, radio, theatre, film, and numerous traditional Irish music pieces. His liturgical music is extensively studied, and he has authored books on Sean Nós, children’s stories, and music compositions. Ó Riada has performed internationally and is active in community development, founding Acadamh Fódhla in 2000.

Peter Browne worked as senior producer and presenter in RTÉ Radio for over 40 years – on all four stations: Radio One, 2FM, Raidió na Gaeltachta and Lyric FM. His work covered many programme areas with music being a central part of that – folk, world, country, jazz and classical including work with the RTÉ Orchestras. His principal focus was on traditional Irish music on programmes such as The Long Note, Áirneán, Céilí House, The Rolling Wave etc…He also produced documentary, magazine, arts and speech programmes. He is a professional musician playing uilleann pipes in solo performance and currently with a four-person group The Lark on the Strand. He has played with groups 1691 and The Bothy Band, been a session musician on many recordings and an orchestral soloist including performances of The Brendan Voyage by Shaun Davey and works by other composers. He has also produced, for RTÉ, a series of commercial CDs of recordings of traditional music selected from the Sound Archive, worked with the Arts Council, lectured in TU Dublin, was twice a first prize winner of the Oireachtas uilleann piping competition and performs and teaches uilleann piping at various events, summer schools etc…in Ireland and abroad.