This article is from page 20 of the 2014-01-07 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 20 JPG
A CLARE musician says she is excited to be joining some of the giants of Irish music on their United States tour next month.
Tara Breen will play alongside The Chieftains on their North American tour.
The talented fiddle player will perform with the legendary band on their four-week coast to coast tour. The former Rice College student was offered the invitation to play by Chieftains founding member Paddy Moloney.
“I play with this Galician piper, Carlos Nunez and Paddy was saying to him they were looking to do something new and he was asking him did he know any fiddle players,” explains Tara.
“So Paddy came along to one of the gigs and I thought we were just playing with him. Nobody gave me a heads up that it was almost a rehearsal! So I got the invitation after that. It’s great.”
Tara has already played with the band, performing alongside them at a concert in the University of Limerick in November.
The four-week US tour from February 16 and March 18 will take in gigs in California and a St Patrick’s Day concert in New York.
“They’re lovely people and it’s brilliant to be get the opportunity to play alongside them. It should be a good trip. I’ve been to America before but this going to be a lot bigger,” she says.
The invitation caps a busy year for Tara, who teaches music in schools as part of the Comhaltas outreach programme.
She also appeared on TG4’s ‘Geantraí’ Christmas Day special
Tara’s multi-instrumentalist talents came to the fore at the age of 13 when, in one year, she won the All-Ireland U-15 Fiddle, U-15 Fiddle slow airs, U-15 Flute, U-15 Flute slow airs.
In 2006 Tara won the coveted ‘Fiddler of Dooney’ competition, and in 2009 she added the Michael Coleman Fiddle Competition to her list of accolades.
She is a former student of University of College Cork. In 2010 she was selected to join Ciorras, a group put together by music legend Donal Lunny.