The Kingfisher

THE KINGFISHER

There's a bit of a story behind this one.....going back 34 years....
Recently I was well chuffed to hear one of my 'long lost' tunes, a reel called 'Bundoran Junction', performed by three wonderful harp players, Gráinne Meyer, Ciara Taffe & Adam O'Neill, in a fantastic arrangement by Gráinne Hambly. Then a week or so ago a photo caught my eye on Instagram, showing a kingfisher sitting on a person's hand - I checked it out and wasn't it a photo taken by one of those three harp players, Gráinne Meyer! The bird had stunned him/herself by flying into a window, and Gráinne was very quick to pick him/her up and allow him/her to safely recover before flying off. This started the creative cogs turning and I remembered I had written a double jig called 'The Kingfisher', back when I was 17, and it hadn't been played since, although it did feature in my 2014 publication 'Tunes of Note'. So I told Gráinne about the tune and asked her if she would be happy to work with me on a remote video recording of it - this video is the result!

There is so much about this that I like, including how Gráinne has chorded the melody perfectly to my ear, and also how she has provided the arrangement with a beautiful and very hypnotic introduction. It's also nice to revisit one of my very earliest composed tunes and find that it might still have a bit of mileage!!! It's a 5-part double jig in the key of B minor and I hope you enjoy it. Huge thanks to Gráinne for her great work on this tune, at very short notice, and also for allowing me to include one of her photographs, as well as her music, in this project.

Thanks to The Arts Council of Northern Ireland for their support, which has made this video possible.