Máire Breatnach is one of the most prominent fiddle players in Ireland. She also sings in Irish on some of her albums. Since the early 1990s, she has had five solo albums, participated in many other albums (as listed on her website), with substantive contributions in some cases, and contributed to many music CDs, as well as material for children, mostly in Irish.[1]
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Born in Dublin, Máire Breatnach obtained a B.A., B.Mus. and M.A. degrees at UCD, in Dublin where she lectured, as she also did in the College of Music, DIT before starting a freelance career as a performing musician. She later obtained a further M.A., in Ethnomusicology, from the University of Limerick.
Máire Breatnach is best known for her fiddle playing, and has been a prolific solo player as well as participating in a number of traditional and neo-traditional groups.
She has worked with the Sharon Shannon, Moya Brennan and Mary Black bands, and features on albums by musicians as diverse as Dolores Keane, Mike Oldfield, Alan Stivell, Bryan Adams, Anúna, Matthias Kießling, Dónal Lunny, Brian Kennedy, Ronan Keating, John Renbourn and The Chieftains. She sings in Irish on some of her albums, and her composition Éist was an award-winning single.
Her TV and film credits include Glenroe, Tinteán, and Voyage (part of the Waterways series), all on RTÉ, A Freezing Summer (Japan), Angela Mooney Dies Again, In The Name of the Father, The Secret of Roan Inish, Rob Roy and Moondance.
She also worked on the Celtic arrangement album Final Fantasy IV: Celtic Moon, and with Yasunori Mitsuda on the arranged soundtrack to Xenogears, titled Creid [2], as well as featuring on albums by Chiaki Ishikawa and Mimori Yusa.
Her collaboration with Thomas Loefke and Norland Wind is recorded on the CDs "Norland Wind", "Atlantic Driftwood", "Northern Isles" and "Departures"[3] [4].
She has written a traditional/folk music column for the Irish language weekly newspaper Anois and later for the monthly magazine Comhar[5].
Her first book, Vera agus a Veidhlín, a children’s musical story, illustrated by Robert Ballagh, was published in Dublin by An Gúm in 2008 [6].
Since 2007 Máire Breatnach has been involved in the preparation of CDs and books to accompany a range of Irish language material aimed at the Naíonra (pre-school) and early-reading age groups. Máire has produced, composed incidental music and performed on a range of instruments for more than 40 titles, as well as narrating many of them.
1994 - The Voyage of Bran
1997 - Celtic Lovers
1999 - Angels' Candles/Coinnle na nAingeal
2002 - Dreams and Visions in Irish Song / Aislingí Ceoil
2009 - Cranna Ceoil / In Full Measure
2010 - Tarraing Téad / Pulling Strings (with Cormac De Barra)