Liam O'Flynn & The Piper's Call Band

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Liam O'Flynn & The Piper's Call Band

Each concert by Liam O'Flynn and The Piper's Call Band is a unique event. The core members of The Piper's Call Band are Arty McGlynn on guitar and Liam Bradley on percussion, whose immense talents provide the perfect setting for Liam's piping. The band are regularly joined by friends and guests who each bring a special magic to the show. Because of the calibre of musicians, endless rehearsals that can erode the spontaneity of a concert are a very rare event with Liam and the band, thus ensuring each concert is a special event for the musicians and audience alike.

Liam and the band have performed acclaimed concerts at The Royal Albert Hall (as part of the prestigious BBC Proms concert series), Dublin's National Concert Hall, Glasgow's Celtic Connections Festival, Barcelona's Palau de la Musica, Lorient's Interceltique Festival, Denmark's Tonder Festival, Krakow's St. Catherine's Cathedral and London's Queen Elizabeth Hall. In addition to these concerts Liam and 'The Band have also had a number of very successful tours in Ireland, France, Spain, Finland and Italy as well as a coast to coast tour of America and Canada. In all cases standing ovations and rave reviews were a regular occurrence

Arty McGlynn has been performing with Liam for many years. He comes from a family steeped in traditional music. He is one of the most sought after musicians and producers in Ireland working with most of the country's top artists. Arty's picking of tunes is hugely impressive, the impact he has made to the use of guitar in traditional Irish music, is beyond question.

Liam Bradley, Who also hails from the north of Ireland has now established himself in the elite of percussion players not only in Ireland, but on a wider international scene. Over the last ten years he has worked with top Irish artists such as Frances Black, Dolores Keane, Brian Kennedy, Maura O'Connell, Kieran Goss, Mary Black and Eleanor McEvoy. In addition to which he has also recorded and toured with household names such as Van Morrison, Sinead O'Connor and The Chieftains.

Derryborn Frank Gallagher has worked with many artists since leaving university with a master's degree in music.For the past eight years he has played violin,viola,whistles and keyboards with Mary Black.In addition to recording and touring extensively with Mary he has worked with Sinead O'Connor,Ronan Keating,Midge Ure,Bonnie Tyler, Ralph McTell and Nightnoise.As a producer and arranger Frank has worked with Charlotte Church,James Galway,Phil Coulter and the Celtic Tenors, and he has also composed and orchestrated for TV and film.

Buy Albums online

The Piper's Call

Also available online
The Given Note

Out To An Other Side

The Brendan Voyage (boxset includes CD & Book)

After The Break - Planxty

The Woman I Loved So Well - Planxty

Prosperous - Christy Moore & Friends

The Piper's Call Band Reviews

Through an expertly controlled selection of jigs, reels and slow airs O'Flynn built up an emotive, expressive mood of music that is both of its time and timeless. Cynics might argue (and occasionally I might agree) that between the jigs and the reels all traditional music sounds the same. Experience a Liam O'Flynn concert and you will have to think otherwise.
Tony Clayton-Lea - Irish Times

The Liam O'Flynn band played with a classical symmetry and precision indicative of the early formality of Irish dance music. Liam himself is of the inscrutable school of Irish pipers - impassive as music of pure soul flows from his fingers.
Tony Rose - The Guardian

A huge roar of applause greeted the very sight of Liam O'Flynn and his band at the Whitla Hall on Friday and the mood continued throughout a mighty concert.
O'Flynn is one of the few people who can coax Arty McGlynn onto the road these days and he was complimented by another of the great guitarists in the land, Steve Cooney. With Rod McVey on keyboards and percussionist Tommy Hayes, this was a band of the highest quality and so was the music, from the stately Galician tune which opened proceedings through to the final blast, The Gold Ring. The high point of the weekend.
Belfast Newsletter Nov. 30th 1998 - Geoff Harden

Without compromising his strong traditional lineage, Liam O'Flynn has in his three solo albums and session projects successfully managed to take the uilleann pipe's sound into other contexts, like rock, European folk music and movie sountracks.
O'Flynn has always been equally respected for the charisma of his live performance, a charged mix of cool delivery and unhurried fluency. Add to that an empathetic band that includes Arty McGlynn and Rod McVey, and it's only natural that the Whitla Hall audience should expect something unique. A great man for the jigs, O'Flynn began with a pair of Muineiras, Galician/Spanish tunes. These were a perfect way of introducing the band, allowing for a democratic, bouncy interplay between lead and rhythm instruments.
The reels too were presented in a setting that left plenty of room for O'Flynn's snapping grace notes, Steve Cooney's guitar rolls and Tommy Hayes's bodhran work. Arty McGlynn started and shared the melody during the 'Willie Clancy's Reel/milliner's Daughter' tunes.
For the song-air Sliabh na mBan (The Women's Mountain), O'Flynn moved to tin whistle, turning in a lyrical version, with solos expertly taken by Cooney and McVey (keyboards).
An Droichead (the Bridge), written by O'Flynn for Mary McAleese's inauguration, showed his ability to create in the traditional mode. Liam O'Flynn's band has been evolving at its own good pace, slowly gathering people who know exactly where he's coming from and what sound he's after. And judging by his solid performance, what begun as a piper working with friends has become, naturally, a unit in its own right.
The Irish News Nov. 30th 1998 - Michael O'Hanlon

Uilleann pipes maestro Liam O'Flynn and his friends took the Whitla Hall by storm last night. This was a vintage performance which captivated the appreciative Friday night audience, The Co. Kildare piper led an all-star quintet through a one-and-a-half-hour traditional music session of the highest quality. And what a band it was - ace guitarists Artie McGlynn and Steve Cooney, keyboards player Rod McVey and percussionist Tommy Hayes. The other three did a sound job, but it was O'Flynn and McGlynn - 'the rhyming couplet', as I like to call them - who stole the show. They were the main men as we were taken through a delightful set of Irish, Scottish and Galician dance tunes and airs. I have been listening to both of them now for upwards of 30 years, and I still marvel at their sensitivity and feel of their music. McGlynn was in majestic form, matching O'Flynn note for note in even the most demanding of fast Irish reels. And the piper was at his virtuosic best too, notably on tunes like The Bridge, which he composed (at her request) for Mary McAleese's inauguration. All in all, a superb night's entertainment.
Belfast Telegraph Nov 28th 1998 - Neil Johnson

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