Traditional Notes: A Celebration of Irish Music and Musicians

Photography and Text by Stephen Power

 "... you pick up your instrument to feel it, tune it, test it, breathe its incense … and then the magic starts. It is this magic that Stephen Power captures with these photographs. The meeting of craft and art, the joy and intensity of playing music, the spell cast by fingers deft as a conjurer, are here in close-up.... We are drawn into the visual dimension of an aural art.… Put this book up to your ear. See what you can hear." – Ellen Cranitch, From the Foreword

Traditional Notes is a stunning pictorial guide to contemporary traditional Irish music, focusing on Irish musicians, the instruments they play as well as traditional Irish instrument makers.

The musicians and singers profiled include many of the leading lights in Irish traditional music: Martin Hayes, Dennis Cahill, Alec Finn, Noel Hill, Joe Burke, Frankie Gavin, Kevin Crawford, Iarla Ó Lionáird John Spillane, Paul Brady, Dónal Lunny, John Carty and Micheál Ó Súilleabháin, amongst many others, and traditional Irish groups such as De Dannan and Lúnasa.

The striking photographs also capture the work of some current traditional musical instrument makers, including accordion maker Paddy Clancy, bodhrán maker Malachy Kearns and uilleann pipes maker Michael Vignoles.

In addition to the visually compelling photographic studies of the instruments, musicians and instrument makers, the book includes biographical and anecdotal notes on the musicians featured and background information on Irish music and the instruments themselves.

An ideal gift book, Traditional Notes will also be of great interest to anyone interested in Irish traditional music as well as music and photography fans in general.

To see some samples of the photographs, visit http://d1049698.blacknight.com/preview/

"With almost 30 years as a professional photographer, Power had developed a knowing affinity for his musical subjects and a knack for capturing their essence on and off stage." (Paul Keating: Irish Voice)

"Power is a professional photographer who has worked in theatre and the music industry for some years. This comes through in the quality of the photographs of musical instruments and musicians in this book.... All in all this is an affectionate, respectful and very lively tribute to the Irish tradition by a lover of the music and the whole traditional scene in Ireland." (Books Ireland: December 2011).

About the Author
Stephen Power is an award-winning professional photographer with more than 28 years’ experience in editorial and commercial photography. His interest in photographing musicians began in the early 1980s when, as an official photographer at The Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool, his subjects included Carl Perkins (the composer of Blue Suede Shoes), Ozzy Osbourne and an array of British rock and heavy-metal bands. He won the 2007 Guru Award for photography from the American association NAPP and has photographed for corporate organisations, government bodies, newspapers, magazines, book publishers and advertising agencies. He is based in County Limerick, Ireland. For more information, see www.adareimages.com.

ISBN 978-1-908308-01-6