IRISH traditional music has never had a higher profile than it does at the moment and it's hard to think of a musician within that tradition with a higher profile than Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh of Altan, whose album, Blackwater, has just gone platinum in Ireland. It was a coup for producer Julian Vignoles - who defected to TV two years ago after a stellar career in radio - when he bagged Ni Mhaonaigh to present his new, traditional music show, The High Reel, which will go out at 7 p.m. on RTE 1, on Sundays from September 15th.
"It was something I'd always wanted to do," says Ni Mhaonaigh. "I just loved the idea of working with the music from another angle." Researcher Fintan Vallely has sought out unknown faces for the show, as well as well known names like Tommy Peoples, Martin Hayes and Dermot Byrne, and Ni Mhaonaigh was astonished at the talent of some musicians she had never encountered before.
Meanwhile Philip King and Nuala O'Connor's Hummingbird Productions have been putting together no less than three traditional music packages for Teilifis na Gaeilge: Suit Le Donal Lunny, a 13 part series of Irish and Irish influenced music from artists such as Van Morrison, Elvis Costello and Sharon Shannon; sean nos singer, Lillis O Laoire's look at the singing tradition on Tory Island, Blath Gach Geag Da dTig; and a documentary on that explosive Australian Kerry duo, Cooney and Begley.
