Far From The Hills Of Donegal

This is his first solo album. A good mix of Irtrad and contemporary tunes plus some tunes from other places. Oisin is is a great player who can really rip on those fast tunes, but still manages to play very soulfully on slower tunes. Guests on this album are Peter Browne on Box, Ronan Browne on Pipes, Tony Byrne on Guitar, Aongus McAuley on Cello, Shane McGowan on Guitar, and Peter Molloy on Flute. This album is worth buying for Oisin and Ronan’s duet version of Port Na Bpucai.

My head exploded.

Great stuff.

Gigue à Pierre/Reel à Ti-Douard

Those two reels are not commonly heard. The first one is sometimes called Gigue à Pierre but I would not bet my life on that title. The second is from the repertoire of Edouard “Ti-Douard” Richard, a fiddler from Grande-Vallee, a town on the north shore of the Gaspesie peninsula.

The first name is Gilles not Gille.

Does anyone have the dots for “Belle of the Stage”?…or is that a silly question?!! I never resort to asking that but trying to learn it by ear & have got a bit stuck…!!

I was mystified by the “Souvenir of Venice” at first, since he says these tunes are from Cole’s/Ryan’s, and that title is used in this book for the hornpipe usually known as the Banks. The tune he plays is actually an Eb hornpipe titled Buckley’s Favourite in that book, with attribution for the tune to Fred Buckley - who was also possibly the source of the reel Buckley’s Favourite that Leo Rowsome recorded in 1933, and which was subsequently put on disc by Charlie Coen, Jack Coen, Frances Quinn, Joe Derrane, and Le Cheile.

The Belles of the Stage was recorded in the 1950s by the famous fiddler/composer Dan R MacDonald. I’d been hacking away at it for a while now; Oisín really goes to town on the thing, it sounds like he’s been through the Suzuki method.

The tune he calls “Neil Gow’s Wife” is actually an old strathspey in F, the Lass of Corrie Mill, that Winston Fitzgerald recorded: http://www.archive.org/details/TheLassOcorrieMillStrathspeyFishersWeddingPearthAssemblyReel I see that someone has contributed the dots already: https://thesession.org/tunes/7274

Track #3 listing is a bit confused.
I’m sure the first reel - played slowly is here, but not under Con Cassidy’s name.
I really like the second tune - haven’t heard it anywhere else.
The 3rd reel is a highly-personalised version of “Eddie Kelly’s” [ I think ].
The last reel IS a version of the “Killavil Fancy”, but sounds as if it’s being played maybe in “A”, rather than the more common “G”.