TWO-TIME BBC Folk Award winner Daoirí Farrell promised to be one of the highlights of Letterkenny Trad Week 2019.
Excitement has already been building since it was announced that the rising Dublin folk singer will be performing during the week-long festival which takes place at the Regional Cultural Centre and An Grianán Theatre from January 19 to 27.
It’s been a whirlwind for Daoirí (pronounced ‘Derry’) Farrell since launching his debut album at a low-key show at Celtic Connections Glasgow in January 2016.
What followed the release of ‘True Born Irishman’ has been a catapulting of a career so far forward that Daoirí is now a name to conjure with in folk music circles, at home and abroad.
He was invited to play Other Voices in November 2016, toured Australia in Dec/Jan 2017 and in February 2017 he received three nominations in the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, leading to him being invited to play at the awards ceremony at The Royal Albert Hall in London, where he won the awards for best traditional track and the Horizon Award best newcomer.
That was a stop off date during another yet longer UK tour, and then the next week he was back in Australia to play the National Folk Festival.
There were small Irish dates starting to come in too and the summer brought festivals in Canada, Belgium, Denmark, Portugal and a first performance at Cambridge Folk Festival where he was immediately rebooked for the following year.
In autumn 2017 Dónal Lunny, a music hero of Daoirí’s, agreed to produce his next album. Recording took almost a year and in the meantime, Daoirí was not only invited back to Celtic Connections with a larger line-up but was also invited on to the all-star Transatlantic Sessions UK tour in February 2018, playing to audiences of 2,000 or more each night.
Of course all this success wasn’t as sudden as it appeared. Daoirí had spent most of his twenties studying traditional music at respected colleges across Ireland, having given up his original profession as an electrician for a career in music.
On February 19 the next stage of his blossoming career sees the release of the album made over many months in studios in Dublin and Donegal with Dónal Lunny, and with brother Manus Lunny, who is based in Braade, West Donegal, taking engineering duties on much of the album.
In Daoirí’s said: “This is my third solo album and it feels different, somehow more grown up. That for me is partly down to the song choice. Each song was very carefully chosen and each is beautiful in its own way.
“I really enjoyed the process of searching each one out and arranging them all. And I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to have recorded it with some of my favourite musicians.”
All concerts begin at 8pm. For ticket bookings or further information click on the link above or call An Grianán Theatre Box Office on Tel +353 (0) 7491 20777.