celticladies | One of the sites for our Celtic Woman ladies

Mairead

"Energy" and "Beauty' are the two words that Mairead feels best describe what she strives for as a musician and as a person. A fiddle player since the age of 6, Mairead 's Loughmore, Co.Tipperary background is steeped in music in the way that only those who grow up in a family of accomplished musicians can be. Her parents John and Kathleen, her sister Frances and brothers Sean, Michael, Noel and Karl are all musicians and in addition to them, Mairead cites such diverse influences as classical violinist Itzakh Pearlman, Irish Fiddlers Liz Carroll, Michael Coleman and Andy McGann, Jazz musician Stephane Grappelli, Country player Alison Kraus and rock performers David Bowie, Sting, U2 and Bjork.

A former All-Ireland fiddle champion, Mairead began formal training in music at the Ursuline Convent in Thurles, and continued at The Waterford Institute of Technology, the Cork School of Music under Cornelia Zanidache and at the London Royal Academy, London Trinity College, with post graduate studies under Emanuel Hurwitz on violin and piano. She is also a past member of the National Youth Orchestra of Ireland.

All along, Mairead 's career has been one that has encompassed the contrasting styles of classical and traditional music. "Growing up, I split the two in my head," she explains. "You can count on your hand the number of fiddle players that play both classical and traditional music professionally. It is an easy thing to mix styles up badly but an altogether harder thing to do it in a professional, tasteful way given that both styles are completely different disciplines and ways of playing with distinctive techniques." Although she was advised by her teachers not to try to learn both methods of playing, she was driven to master the two differing styles.

Where as in classical music, players read sheet music, Irish music is typically improvised or played by ear. Classical music also includes a vibrato sound not typically found in Irish music, but which Mairead has introduced into her playing. "I knew from an early age that I wanted to play in both styles so I developed different bow-holds for each. Then I learned to compartmentalize everything in order to play both styles to the level that I wanted to. Once you get to a certain level you can bring a few elements from Irish music into classical music and vice versa. I've also brought in elements of jazz as well. I studied hard because before you break the rules, you have to be able to do everything perfectly and then you can break the odd rule and it will be tastefully done and true to the music."

This information is from www.celticwoman.com

Meav

Meav never imagined that music could take her this far. "Ireland has changed a lot in the few years since I graduated from university" she says. "There was no sign of the Celtic Tiger and I presumed that music for me would simply be a passionate hobby".

Instead she has surpassed all of her dreams. Meav has toured the world as sole vocalist with the RTE Concert Orchestra, as a principal soloist with the Celtic Choral group Anuna, as Erin the Goddess in Lord of the Dance, in the London and Dublin productions of Riverdance and as a soloist with the Irish National Chamber Choir. She has headlined a festival as part of the Korean World Cup celebrations, performed at a prestigious Celtic Festival in Tokyo and sang in the Beo Festival of Irish Music at the National Concert Hall in Dublin. She has also recorded two solo albums which have been very successful worldwide and particularly in the USA, Japan and South Korea. In the last twelve months, Meav has also received two gold discs as one of the five featured soloists in 'Celtic Woman', whose highly successful DVD and CD released by EMI topped the World Music Charts for over a year. Meav's solo compilation album Celtic Journey also debuted in the Billboard World Music top ten on its release in February.

Meav was raised in a home steeped in classical and Irish traditional music and she studied singing, harp and piano from an early age. "Music was just a natural part of my life growing up, but I wasn't always sure I wanted to pursue it as a career" she says. Meav followed in her brother's footsteps and went to law school at Trinity College Dublin. The flexible timetable also left a lot of time for singing with various musical groups and ever since graduating from law school, the music has been gradually taking over.

Meav is best known for her classical and traditional singing, but she cites a broad range of musical influences, among them Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald. "I think they're amazing," she explains, "because of how they tell a story." As a fluent Gaelic-speaker, Meav's other major influence has been traditional Gaelic music which she learned from her Gaelic-speaking father and her school where she was educated in Gaelic.

She gained valuable experience while working with Ireland's two most prestigious choirs, Anuna and the National Chamber Choir-Ireland's only full-time professional choir. Through Anuna she had the opportunity to perform with a wide variety of performers including Elvis Costello, Brian Kennedy and The Chieftains.

This information is from www.celticwoman.com