Liz Carroll

For the foster mother suspected of murder, see Marcus Fiesel.
Liz Carroll

Liz Carroll at the Dublin (Ohio) Irish Festival, August 2011; photograph by Cindy Funk
Background information
Born September 19, 1956
Origin Chicago, United States
Genres Folk music
Celtic
Irish traditional
Occupation(s) Musician, music teacher
Instruments Fiddle
Years active 1974 – Present
Labels Compass Records
Associated acts String Sisters
Green Fields of America
Trian
John Doyle
Daithí Sproule
Website Official website
Notable instruments
Fiddle

Liz Carroll (born September 19, 1956) is an Irish American fiddler and composer. She is a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts' National Heritage Fellowship Award. Carroll and collaborator Irish guitarist John Doyle were nominated for a Grammy Award in 2010. Carroll is considered one of the greatest contemporary Irish fiddlers.[1]

Early life and education

Carroll's parents were born in Ireland; her father from Brocca, County Offaly, and her mother from Ballyhahill, West Limerick.[2] Carroll's maternal grandfather played the violin[3] and her father played button accordion.[3] Carroll was born September 19, 1956, in Chicago, Illinois[3] and raised on Chicago's south side. On Sunday nights, Carroll and her family visited a south side Irish pub that hosted a live radio show featuring Irish traditional music. Carroll earned a degree in social psychology at DePaul University.[4] Carroll's influences include Chicago-born Irish fiddler John McGreevy, Irish button accordionist Joe Cooley, Irish fiddler Sean McGuire,[1] 1983 National Heritage Award-winning uilleann piper Joe Shannon, and pianist Eleanor Neary.[3]

Competition achievement

Carroll won second place in the All-Ireland under 18 fiddle championship at the 1973 Fleadh Cheoil, the Irish music competition run by Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann; Frankie Gavin won first.[5] Carroll returned the next year and won first place in the category. The next year, 1975, at age 18, she won the All-Ireland Senior Fiddle Championship, at the time only the second American to have done so.[3][6] That same year Carroll and Chicago piano accordionist Jimmy Keane won the senior duet championship. The championships brought recognition of Carroll as one of the most outstanding Irish fiddlers of all time.[3]

Recordings and performances

Liz Carroll and John Doyle at Club Passim in Cambridge, Massachusetts on June 21, 2007

In 1977, Carroll and button accordionist Tommy Maguire released the album Kiss Me Kate. The following year, Carroll recorded her first solo album A Friend Indeed, accompanied on piano by Marty Fahey, and featured five Carroll compositions.[6]

In the early 1980s, Carroll toured with Green Fields of America, the Irish traditional music ensemble led by Irish musician and folklorist Mick Moloney.[5] In 1987 Carroll was asked to join the debut tour of the all-female Irish American ensemble Cherish the Ladies, but declined for family reasons.[7]

Carroll's second, eponymous solo album was released in 1988, and featured accompaniment by Irish guitarist Dáithí Sproule. In 1992, Carroll, Sproule, and Irish-American button accordionist Billy McComiskey formed Trian and recorded two albums.

Lost in the Loop (2000), Carroll's first solo album in over a decade, featured thirteen original compositions and was produced by Séamus Egan of Solas.[6] In the 2000's, Carroll recorded three albums accompanied by Irish guitarist John Doyle, entitled Lake Effect, In Play and Double Play. A 2005 Carroll and Doyle concert at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. and interview was collected by the The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.[8]

Carroll is one of the String Sisters and performs on their live album and DVD titled Live which was recorded in 2005 and released in 2007.[9]

Composer

Carroll composed her first reel at age nine, and composed 170 tunes by 2000.[6] In August 2010, two hundred Carroll compositions, recorded and unrecorded, were published as Collected: Original Irish Tunes. The Irish Echo, a weekly newspaper based in New York City, named Collected the best collection of tunes in 2010.[10]

Carroll is "recognized as a gifted composer of tunes in the Irish idiom," according to the Irish Echo.[9] Carroll's compositions are in the performance and recorded repertoires of other musicians.[2] "Many of her tunes have become modern standards," wrote the The Scotsman, a compact newspaper in Edinburgh.[11] Carroll "has composed more than a dozen tunes that have become beloved standards among her peers," according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.[12]

Carroll composed the music for The Mai, a play by Irish playwright Marina Carr that opened at the Irish Repertory Theatre in New York in 1994.[5] In 2001 Carroll collaborated with Irish-American author Frank McCourt on staged readings from his works, a production developed by the Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago.[13][14] Carroll compositions have been choreographed by Irish dance companies including the Dennehy School of Irish Dancing[3] and Trinity Irish Dance.[6]

Honors

In 1994, Carroll received a National Heritage Fellowship, a lifetime honor presented to master folk and traditional artists by the National Endowment for the Arts.[2][3][15]

At Chicago's Celtic Fest, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley declared September 18, 1999 "Liz Carroll Day" in Chicago.[5]

The Irish Echo named Carroll traditional musician of the year in 2000, saying "Carroll has enriched and extended the Irish tradition in music through performing, composing, and teaching."[2]

In 2010, Carroll's recording with John Doyle on Compass Records Double Play was nominated for a Grammy Award in the "Best Traditional World Music Album" category,[16] making Carroll the first American-born traditional Irish musician to be nominated for a Grammy.

In 2011, Carroll was the recipient of the Cumadóir TG4 award, Ireland's most significant traditional music prize, for composition. She was the first American-born composer honored with the award.[17]

Discography

Bibliography

References

  1. 1 2 Sawyers, June (March 11, 1994). "Irish Music Has A Sweet Home In Chicago". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved September 13, 2015.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Hitchner, Earle (February 16, 2001). "Carroll is Echo’s top trad musician". Irish Echo. Retrieved March 25, 2015.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "National Heritage Fellowships Liz Carroll". National Endowment for the Arts. 1994.
  4. ↑ Weigel, Jenniffer (March 15, 2015). "Fiddler, composer Liz Carroll on the life she has woven around Irish music". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved March 25, 2015.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Parrish, Michael (April 28, 2000). "Chicago's Gifted Irish Musician Is Back In The Limelight". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved April 25, 2015.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 Hitchner, Earle (May 2, 2000). "New Liz Carroll Album Throws Listeners For A Loop; Chicago Irish fiddler hits road to promote first solo CD in 12 years". MTV. Retrieved September 11, 2015.
  7. ↑ Alarik, Scott (March 10, 2000). "Budding Legend Celtic Fiddler Liz Carroll's Fame Spreads Far Beyond her Chicago Base". Boston Globe.
  8. ↑ "Liz Carroll with John Doyle concert and interview collection". Library of Congress. April 21, 2005. Retrieved September 12, 2015.
  9. 1 2 Hitchner, Earle (February 17, 2008). "It’s a string thing with these ‘sisters’". Irish Echo. Retrieved March 25, 2015.
  10. ↑ Hitchner, Earle (January 19, 2011). "Joe Derrane is the Irish Echo’s top traditional artist of 2010". Irish Echo. Retrieved March 25, 2015.
  11. ↑ "Liz Carroll and Friends and Mairearad and Anna, Glasgow royal Concert". The Scotsman. January 18, 2011. Retrieved March 25, 2015.
  12. ↑ Gilbert, Andrew (November 16, 2006). "The Reel Thing: Celtic whirlwind Liz Carroll's blown past the traditional repertory". The San Diego Union-Tribune (San Diego, California). Retrieved April 25, 2015.
  13. ↑ Stein, Anne (January 10, 2001). "Irish Fiddler Strikes A Harmonious Chord With Author Of `Angela's Ashes'". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved March 25, 2015.
  14. ↑ Houlihan, Mary (January 10, 2001). "Frank McCourt and Liz Carroll at Steppenwolf Theatre". Chicago Sun-Times.
  15. ↑ "Chicagoan Liz Carroll a National Heritage Fellow". Chicago Tribune. June 8, 1994.
  16. ↑ Hitchner, Earle (February 17, 2010). "Carroll and Doyle get Grammy nod". Irish Echo. Retrieved March 25, 2015.
  17. ↑ "TG4 Composers Award". TG4. Retrieved March 25, 2015.

External links

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