The Irish Night

A great fiddler, Martin Hayes has also been the critical conscience of Irish-folk revival for the last forty years. A quiet man born into a musical family, Hayes has managed to infuse his irreversibly urbanised America with the musical tradition of County Clare, Ireland. Well aware of what it meant to handle music that had sprung from the popular womb of a far-away world, Hayes has absorbed from rock music just enough of the contemporary moods that were needed to dissect the ductility of Celtic folk into a compositional style that ranges from Steve Reich’s minimalism to jazzy “Third Stream”. In the end, he preferred depth to virtuosity. With him on stage are Birkin Tree, the most important Irish folk band in Italy, celebrating their fortieth anniversary this year.