Thursday 22th August 2024
Location: Cleere’s Bar and Theatre
Mick O’ Brien
Mick is a highly regarded performer and teacher of the Uilleann pipes, whistle and flute, bringing his own style and sense of enjoyment to audiences and pupils alike.
Mick has recorded and broadcast extensively both at home and abroad as a soloist and with various artists. Though Mick has delved into various different music genres, it is as a traditional artist that he is best known.
In 2013, with his daughter Aoife Ní Bhriain and Emer Mayock they released two albums from the Goodman Manuscripts, bringing to life the music collected by Canon James Goodman in the Munster region. Mick and Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh have worked for many years creating a special fiddle and piping duet.
As Anita Botman says in a review of their first album “Kitty Lie Over”, “Now I know why this album is so well loved and has such raving reviews. It’s an inventive album and a classic at the same time. I don’t like the term “must have” but it does apply to this album.”
This year Mick was awarded the coveted TG4 musician of the award, “Gradam Ceoil na Bliana”
Ciara Ní Bhriain
Born into a musical Dublin family, Ciara Ní Bhriain started learning violin at the tender age of three. Parents Mick and Fidelma encouraged Ciara and her siblings to enjoy both their classical music studies and traditional Irish music, which they heard regularly at home.
Now recognised internationally as a performer, Ciara has toured with artists including Birkin Tree, Carlos Nunez, and Frankie Gavin and the Provenance. She also spent two years as resident performer at Raglan Road, in Disneyland Florida.
More recently, Ciara featured as soloist with the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra, performing The Princess Grace Suite, composed by Frankie Gavin. A little closer to home, Ciara has toured Ireland with Johnny Óg Connolly, performing his composition, An Cosán Draíochta.
Ciara is currently studying Audio Production and Music Project Management at Dublin’s Sound Training College. She continues to teach both fiddle and harp, including for DCU at St Patrick’s Campus. She can regularly be heard on Irish radio and television, most recently appearing on TG4’s Scoil Samhraidh Willie Clancy.

Dr Ciarán Ó Gealbháin
A native of an sean-phobal (the oldest part) in the Waterford gaeltacht (Irish-speaking area), Ciarán Ó Gealbháin is a musician, singer and head of the Department of Folklore and Ethnology, University College Cork, where his doctoral research focused on aspects of the Déise song tradition. A former member of the very well-known, traditional Irish music group, Danú, he has toured extensively in Europe and North America sharing his special interest in the music and song traditions of his native area.
He currently lectures on the Béaloideas and Folklore programmes at UCC, and has co-edited Béascna: UCC Journal of Folklore and Ethnology since 2007, acting as senior editor to the Journal since 2012.
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