Welcome to the official website of musician and composer Gráinne Brady
Debut Album 'The Road Across the Hills' - Out Now!
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"Arrangements evoke both adversity and lively inner strength." - 5***** RnR Magazine
"..Gráinne Brady excels herself as a tunesmith within the traditional mould. This is a richly hewed and entrancing melange of words and music all patched within a seamless whole..." - The Living Tradition
"..Gráinne Brady excels herself as a tunesmith within the traditional mould. This is a richly hewed and entrancing melange of words and music all patched within a seamless whole..." - The Living Tradition
Recorded over a week in Spring 2018, The Road Across the Hills was tracked, mixed and produced by award-winning musician and composer Mike Vass, and features household names from across Scotland’s traditional and classical music scene: Su-a Lee, Megan Henderson, Innes White, Andrew Waite, Steve Forman and Feargus Hetherington.
Exploring themes of immigration and extreme poverty, Gráinne took inspiration from the work of Irish poet and writer Patrick MacGill – the music for the album acts as a soundtrack to Patrick MacGill’s ‘Children of the Dead End’. Born in Glenties, Co. Donegal in 1889, MacGill emigrated to Scotland in the 1900s and began to discover his talents as a writer whilst working as a labourer on the railways in Glasgow and as a navvy in Glencoe. His writings reflected on his growing preoccupation with the poor, the downtrodden and the workers who, like himself, toiled in the muck to build civilisation but lived on the outside of society. Each track on The Road Across the Hills was written in response to pivotal moments in this novel; a book that has stuck with Gráinne since first reading it as a child.
The ten-track album features Donegal native Jack Houston reciting abstracts of MacGill’s evocative poems. Incorporating spoken word as well as percussive sound effects to augment the tracks allowed Gráinne to create a dramatic soundscape throughout the album. The music takes the listener on a journey; from his childhood in rural Donegal, to gruelling labour in Scotland, as a potato picker, or ‘tattie howker’, and a navvy, with some colourful characters along the way, as well as a bittersweet story of love and loss, entwined with words from the man himself, which work as an extra layer to the soundtrack.
Exploring themes of immigration and extreme poverty, Gráinne took inspiration from the work of Irish poet and writer Patrick MacGill – the music for the album acts as a soundtrack to Patrick MacGill’s ‘Children of the Dead End’. Born in Glenties, Co. Donegal in 1889, MacGill emigrated to Scotland in the 1900s and began to discover his talents as a writer whilst working as a labourer on the railways in Glasgow and as a navvy in Glencoe. His writings reflected on his growing preoccupation with the poor, the downtrodden and the workers who, like himself, toiled in the muck to build civilisation but lived on the outside of society. Each track on The Road Across the Hills was written in response to pivotal moments in this novel; a book that has stuck with Gráinne since first reading it as a child.
The ten-track album features Donegal native Jack Houston reciting abstracts of MacGill’s evocative poems. Incorporating spoken word as well as percussive sound effects to augment the tracks allowed Gráinne to create a dramatic soundscape throughout the album. The music takes the listener on a journey; from his childhood in rural Donegal, to gruelling labour in Scotland, as a potato picker, or ‘tattie howker’, and a navvy, with some colourful characters along the way, as well as a bittersweet story of love and loss, entwined with words from the man himself, which work as an extra layer to the soundtrack.
‘...a composer of enormous talents. ... Her composition approaches take many directions, all of which show unique connections to the chosen stories behind each piece, from magical rhythms to roaring high tempo melodies, all of which connect to you as a listener. ’
Pádraig Rynne, NOTIFY
Pádraig Rynne, NOTIFY