Who's in The Chieftains now?

Subject: Who's in The Chieftains now?
From: michaelr
Date: 07 Jan 09 - 06:40 PM

Got a postcard from my local concert venue advertising an appearance by "Paddy Maloney and the Chieftains".

I was surprised not only by wee Paddy separating his name from the group's - when did he start doing that? - (rather like "Ronnie Drew and the Dubliners" or "Paul McCartney and the Beatles"), but also by the photo which showed only three people: Paddy, Matt Molloy, and Kevin Conneff.

I know Martin Fay retired some time ago, and of course Derek Bell is dead, but what about the other fiddler (the tall one, is it Sean Keane?) Are the Chieftains a trio these days?

Slainte,
Michael

Subject: RE: Who's in The Chieftains now?
From: Suegorgeous
Date: 07 Jan 09 - 07:12 PM

Well, Wikpedia and BBC websites all show pics of and list 4 members, including Sean Keane.

Subject: RE: Who's in The Chieftains now?
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 07 Jan 09 - 07:16 PM

Their current line-up (to the best of my knowledge) is Paddy Moloney, Kevin Conneff, Matt Molloy and Seán Keane.

Subject: RE: Who's in The Chieftains now?
From: Sorcha
Date: 07 Jan 09 - 07:18 PM

Well, I seem to remember Paddy And...from a few years ago....How long? I don't know...that was 'then'

Subject: RE: Who's in The Chieftains now?
From: Compton
Date: 08 Jan 09 - 05:41 AM

Well a Blas concert featured on BBC Alba late last year had a young fiddler (sorry name not known!) who also step danced a girl harpist (sorry don't know her name either...and NO Matt Molloy!!...Sorry I know this doesn't help at all!

Subject: RE: Who's in The Chieftains now?
From: GUEST,PL
Date: 08 Jan 09 - 06:26 AM

Sean Keane in an interview said he hasn't the stamina for constant touring anymore and bows out on some trips. Molloy's wife died recently so it seems fair to assume he needed some time off.

Subject: RE: Who's in The Chieftains now?
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 08 Jan 09 - 06:32 AM

Sinead O'Connor and The Chieftans

Isn't Sinead beautiful, I've always thought she has such a gentle face, lovely eyes.

I can still remember the first time I ever saw The Chieftans on TV, a very long time back now. Paddy's lovely grin..and the joy and beauty in the music.

Subject: RE: Who's in The Chieftains now?
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 08 Jan 09 - 06:35 AM

OH! Just in case anyone misses this one (sorry to thread drift a bit)..but LOOK at this!

The Chieftans and The Corrs

YES! :0)

Subject: RE: Who's in The Chieftains now?
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 08 Jan 09 - 07:14 AM

The harpist is Tríona Marshall. She is a top-rate player who is well able to fill the vacant seat (I know Derek would have approved her as a fitting replacement).

Subject: RE: Who's in The Chieftains now?
From: Suegorgeous
Date: 08 Jan 09 - 10:50 AM

I get the impression anyway that their lineup varies from gig to gig.

Subject: RE: Who's in The Chieftains now?
From: caitlin rua
Date: 09 Jan 09 - 05:03 AM

The last time I saw them on Irish TV (a few months ago) they also included a guitarist whacking out the usual heavily strummed chords and using a music stand to read them from! I don't know whether this has become the norm or whether it was a one-off, but I don't think it added anything to their sound, only covered up. That monotonous (and over-amplified) strumming beat obscured any rhythmic subtlety in the music. But I don't know how regular an occurrence this is. (A music stand???? For bog-standard three-chord accompaniment that you hear in every pub? What's that about?)   

Also it meant that you couldn't really hear the bodhran much. Or the harp either - a plectrum hitting metal strings will always dominate finger-plucked nylon ones. Harp is kind of unusual and it has been a unique part of the Chieftains sound since about 1974 when Derek Bell joined them on Chieftains 4 (?? I think it was 4). It's not a common instrument in trad line-ups and the woman they have playing it is excellent. Shame we couldn't really hear her. Kevin either.

Still, it was Irish telly, which means local, which means that this isn't necessarily their gig-touring outfit. BTW I think Paddy has been given star billing for a long time, maybe always. "Paddy Moloney and The Chieftains" is a familiar tag. Now that Martin Fahy has retired it makes Paddy the only survivor from Seán Ó Riada's original group Ceoltoiri Cualann, out of which which The Chieftains originated in the early 60s.

[formerly GUEST caitlín]

Subject: RE: Who's in The Chieftains now?
From: Nerd
Date: 09 Jan 09 - 11:32 PM

For many years now, the Chieftains have tended to take one or two guests on tour with them. They also often hire someone from the local area to fill in, especially since Martin and Derek have been gone.

I have a good friend who was their harpist for several US gigs soon after Derek's passing. Such fill-ins are sent a stack of charts and expected to play Paddy's arrangements note-perfect, as though they were in a chamber orchestra. Generally they have only a week or so to prepare and are only on two or three gigs.

Sometimes it's not possible to drop your entire life to learn all those pieces in a week just for two gigs, no matter how high-profile or how well paid. It's not surprising the guitarist would need a music stand. It's a pity he was heavy-handed, though. Paddy probably didn't ask him back!

Subject: RE: Who's in The Chieftains now?
From: Nerd
Date: 09 Jan 09 - 11:55 PM

By the way, Paddy denies that The Chieftains originated out of Ceoltoiri Chualann. He claims that he and Sean O Riada were like-minded from the start, that they had similar ideas, and that to say the Chieftains came from O Riada's group gave O Riada all the credit for ideas that were partly Paddy's. He says he started the Chieftains while Ceoltoiri Chualann still existed, and it was his idea...the resemblance to O Riada's group was simply because he and O Riada had had similar ideas from the get-go, and because he imported Martin from O Riada's group.

I only say this because Paddy took me to task for making the same suggestion during an interview I did with him. (I still kind of agree with you, though.)

Paddy also took me to task for espousing an idea of Tomas O Canainn's. He started to harrumph about the 40s and 50s, when he was a youngster coming up in the piping world. "Where was O Canainn?" he blustered. "I never heard TELL of him!"

A great fellow, Paddy...but forceful in telling you his opinions!

Subject: RE: Who's in The Chieftains now?
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 10 Jan 09 - 05:28 AM

If he never heard of Tomás, it reveals far more about him than it does about Tomás, who is widely known and respected (which may be the problem). Or perhaps because he doesn't live in Dublin, and some people don't believe there is a world outside of Dublin. That's only a guess, but such a statement irritates the bejaysus out of me. If Paddy honestly means that, then he needs to educate himself a bit. (Maybe because you dared mention the name of Another Piper, which immediately had to be batted away?) I also have a strong feeling that Martin wasn't the only "import" from the original group, but can't remember the specific first Chieftains line-up and haven't time right now to go digging through my LP's for it. More info here:

http://homepages.iol.ie/~ronolan/riada.html

Tomás - who lives nearby and is a vital part of the scene here - has enriched Irish musical life immeasurably. In addition to playing & singing he also composes, writes fiction, non-fiction, poetry & songs, and speaks Greek, Japanese, Spanish and of course Irish. (He visits foreign sailors who land in hospital here and can't communicate in English, where he reads to them, chats, passes messages on etc.) A piper friend describes him as a true Renaissance man. A true gentlemen also.   

If Paddy's slighting of Tomás is possibly tinged with jealousy, then the same could be the case with Ó Riada and Ceoltoiri Cualann. Ó Riada isn't around to tell his side of it, and the rest of us weren't there, so we only know what we read or hear. But I would want more evidence than just his word for it before making my mind up. Incidentally, Tomás wrote a book about the life of Ó Riada: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sean-O-Riada-Life-Work/dp/1903464404/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&

Who is the US harper, Nerd? If you don't think he or she would like their name plastered on the internet you might PM me. I'm only curious, no agenda!

Subject: RE: Who's in The Chieftains now?
From: caitlin rua
Date: 10 Jan 09 - 06:02 AM

There's also been controversy and dissatisfaction among some publishers over issues of copyright claims, and traditional material being treated in some cases as original compositions rather than simply arrangements-of.

Subject: RE: Who's in The Chieftains now?
From: Bonnie Shaljean
Date: 10 Jan 09 - 07:02 AM

Found this here:

http://www.musicianguide.com/biographies/1608003175/The-Chieftains.html

Sean O Riada, a classically trained composer and performer, envisioned something different and formed Ceoltoiri Chualann, a sort of Irish folk orchestra. He was joined by several future Chieftains; Moloney, [Martin] Fay, Sean Potts, Michael Tubridy, and Peadar Mercier. O Riada's experiment eventually became the norm and before long ensembles were common.
In 1963, Moloney, Tubridy, Potts, Fay, and David Fallon formed the Chieftains...
Tubridy on flute and concertina, Potts on tin whistle, Fay on fiddle, Fallon on bodhran (a goat-skin drum), and Moloney on tin whistle and uilleann pipes.

Subject: RE: Who's in The Chieftains now?
From: Nerd
Date: 10 Jan 09 - 01:05 PM

Hi Bonnie,

I didn't mean to give the impression that Paddy had never heard of Tomás O Canainn at the time of the interview. What he meant was that, in the 40s and 50s, when piping was unfashionable and only a hardy few were playing, those people mostly knew each other from going to the same events, etc. At that time, apparently, O Canainn was not on the scene, and Paddy never heard of him until much later. (Of course, Tomás lived in England in those days, so even that wasn't really fair--but Paddy may simply have meant the T O C got a late start on the pipes; wasn't he an accordionist first?)

Paddy's feelings may partly be affected by the fact that Tomás has written a biography of O Riada, was in some senses O Riada's successor at UC Cork, and subscribed to the same belief we have all just expressed, that the Chieftains was more or less a development of O Riada's ideas.

Whether this was true, of course, is a matter of interpretation. Paddy's point about Martin Fay was that Martin was the only member of the original Chieftains that he, Paddy, had met through Sean O Riada. The others were already friends known to him in other ways. (Indeed, they may have joined Ceoltoiri Cualann through being Paddy's friends more than through O Riada.) So his ability to draw those musicians into the Chieftains was in no way dependent on their previous participation in Ceoltoiri Cualann.

Paddy's point was not that O Riada's group wasn't important, it was that the Chieftains was bound to happen anyway, whether or not Paddy had first been in O Riada's band. Of course, no one can say what would have happened had things gone differently, so it's all guesswork, even on Paddy's part.

I should say that Paddy was careful to be very respectful of O Riada and what he accomplished, and to say that he had nothing but affection and admiration for his old mentor. He just didn't want it said that The Chieftains was a mere offshoot of O Riada's previous project. His irritation at Tomás O Canainn was, I think, just another reaction to that same idea.