Niamh Ní Charra: Cuz

The riches to be mined from the music of Sliabh Luachra are inexhaustible, and Niamh Ní Charra's beautifully rough- hewn collection celebrates its bounties with chutzpah. Terry "Cuz" Teahan (1905-1989) was a concertina and accordion player (and remarkably, an ace embroiderer) who emigrated to Chicago from Glountane in 1928. His lifelong love of the music and his picaresque tune compositions lit a fire beneath Ní Charra's own playing. Here a roguish melee of musicians bristle with energy while putting a light-fingered stamp on such Cuz tunes as Mickey Chewing Bubblegum and The Man From Glountane. Ní Charra's fiddle jousts impishly with her music teacher and tune historian, Nicky McAuliffe, on the Newmarket polka. Elsewhere Liz Carroll, Mick Moloney and many others bolster and shade with a subtlety that has come to define Ní Charra's approach to her music. A fine and fiery collection.
niamhnicharra.com