O'Sullivan meets O'Farrell - V

In Volume II of his seminal work on the O'Farrell Collections, Uilleann piper Jerry O'Sullivan is joined by members of the Newport Baroque Orchestra to reveal the symbiotic affinity between the Irish pipes and 18th Century baroque music. While Volume I featured solo pipe pieces from the folk tradition, this album explores, in suite format, music that is more baroque and continental in nature. Acoustically, the combination of pipes, harpsichord and cello presented by an ensemble of consummate musicians evokes a period where both rural and romantic idioms both delighted and satisfied a wide spectrum of musical taste.

In this second performance of selected works drawn from O'Farrell's collections, Jerry O'Sullivan has selected and arranged, interpreted and presented suites of tunes in a style that would have been most familiar to Mr. O'Farrell and his contemporaries. By recording O'Farrell's tunes in Baroque style reminiscent of their original context, as heard by audiences long-vanished in concert halls, the recording makes an important contribution to traditional Irish music.

Brian MacCandless (title) comments, "We should all celebrate the fact that someone has finally gone to the trouble of performing and recording O'Farrell's music for the Union bagpipes. Jerry's attention to detail, exactitude and sensitivity to the history of these tunes ensures that they will be preserved for future generations, enabling this important musical collection and its history to come to life and remain alive. The tune names and their associated stories may have faded, but as we listen to this record, we can gain a sense of what these tunes were to their composers - our own ancestors."

Jerry O'Sullivan: "The pieces featured on Volume II of O'Sullivan Meets O'Farrell were all taken from the O'Farrell collections. Unlike volume I, all of these pieces are very baroque in nature. In fact, nearly all these pieces do not sound well as solo Uilleann Pipes pieces; they need a harpsichord and cello to make them come alive.

"I found that the Uilleann Pipes chanter sounds superb with the harpsichord and cello and I was fortunate to have Paul and Audrey Cienniwa, (Newport Baroque Orchestra) two consummate masters of these respective instruments, play on this recording. Boston Uilleann piper Kevin O'Brien did an amazing job of writing harpsichord and cello parts for them. The original O'Farrell collections only had the lead melodies and Kevin captured perfectly the continuo parts that these pieces suggested."