Colm to launch in Vicar St

IRISH singer-songwriter Colm

Mac Con Iomaire returns with a new album entitled The River Holds Its Breath : Tost ar an Abhainn, which he is planning to launch in Vicar St on May 18.

Colm says the album was inspired after some chance meetings with composer Bill Whelan. He had somehow gone his whole life without meeting the renowned Riverdance composer until he finally bumped into him three times in the space of a few weeks in 2016 – at the National Concert Hall, at Kylemore Abbey, and then in Clifden.

Both took it as a sign that they should work together. At the time, Bill had reconditioned his reel-to-reel tape machine and was looking for a new project. The stars aligned.

Colm sees this record as a collection of short stories. But, he added, “it can also be considered as both journal and journey, the culmination of song gathering, commissions and creations over the last few years”, during which Colm has charted out tunes like nodes on a map of a broader Irish artistic universe.

There is a song inspired by paintings in the National Gallery stored in darkness but yearning for the light, a piece for the contemporary dancer Maureen Fleming, music from Colm’s score for the Oscar-nominated short film Late Afternoon, a piece for Nuala O’connor’s documentary Keepers Of The Flame.

Retreating to a studio in what was once the writer Kate O’brien’s house in Roundstone,

Connemara, Colm brought in musicians Lorcan and Cillian Byrne, the Con Tempo Quartet, Colm Quearney, Bill Blackmore and Wyvern Lingo to contribute.

This is Colm’s third solo album, following on from And Now The Weather and the debut The Hare’s Corner.

lcolm will also be performing (with John Sheehan) at Fiddle Fair Marquee, Cork on May 11