Harps Together at the O’Carolan Harp Festival, Keadue
Harps Together at the O’Carolan Harp Festival
Keadue, Co Roscommon
Friday, 1st August 2025, 9pm
Featuring Cormac de Barra and Anne Marie O’Farrell, Laoise Kelly and the Keadue Harp Quartet.
Come along to Cruit Eireann|Harp Ireland’s concert Harps Together at O’Carolan Harp Festival and Summer School featuring some of our most renowned harpers. Laoise Kelly, Cormac de Barra and Anne-Marie O’Farrell will be joined by some of Keadue’s up and coming harpers, who have formed the Keadue Harp Quartet especially for the occasion.
When: Friday August 1st 9pm,
Where: Keadue Community Hall.
Tickets at https://www.tickettailor.com/events/ocarolanharpfestival/1688825
Cormac de Barra
Cormac de Barra is a third generation harper in a family of traditional Irish musicians and singers from Dublin. He studied Irish harp with his grandmother, Róisín Ní Shé, and went on to study concert harp in the US with Leone Paulson.
Cormac has toured the UK, Europe, US, Japan and Australia as a solo artist, and performs regularly with harpist Anne-Marie O’Farrell. He has also toured and recorded with Moya Brennan, Clannad, Julie Feeney, Hazel O’Connor, the Irish Harp Orchestra, and Slide to name but a few.
As well as performing, Cormac presented the traditional Irish music series, Flosc and the arts series Imeall on TG4 .
Cormac is also part of a family trio, Barcó, with his brothers Fionán and Éamonn. Recordings to date include the CDs Barcó and An Caitín Bán with the De Barra family, the harp duo CDs Double Strung and Duopoly with Anne-Marie O’Farrell and the flute and harp recording Music of Great Irish Houses with Karin Leitner.
Other collaborations include a duo CD with Máire Breatnach on fiddle and viola, and three CDs Down By the Sea, Songs of the Celtic Winter and Night Travels with the Celtic singer songwriter Ashley Davis in the United States.
Anne-Marie O’Farrell
Leading harpist of her generation, Dr Anne-Marie O’Farrell from Dublin has performed all over the world as a solo artist, accompanist and in ensembles, and is regularly featured in broadcasts. On lever harp, she is particularly recognized for her expansion of repertoire and levering techniques, as a result of which the world’s leading harp makers Salvi Harps redesigned their lever harps to become concert instruments. She has performed with numerous orchestras, including the Irish Baroque Orchestra, the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, the Irish Memory Orchestra, and the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra. In 2022 she premiered her lever harp concerto, ‘In Light Anew’ (commissioned by RTÉ Lyric FM) with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales at the World Harp Congress in Cardiff.
A prolific recording artist, she has released several CDs, including ‘Just So Bach’, ‘Harping Bach to Carolan’, ‘The Jig’s Up’, ‘My Lagan Love’ and ‘Embrace: New Directions for Irish Harp’; ‘Double Strung’ and ‘Duopoly’ with Cormac De Barra; and ‘Harp to Harp’ with harmonica player Brendan Power.
She is Head of Harp at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, where she runs a thriving harp department. Dedicated to the expansion of repertoire for the lever harp, she has published critical editions for lever harp of Bach’s cello, keyboard and lute repertoire. Anne-Marie holds a PhD in composition with Piers Hellawell at Queen’s University Belfast and masters degrees in performance, musicology and composition.
Recent large-scale commissions include a Civil War Cantata commissioned by UCD, several orchestral works, and a five-movement work for large harp ensemble commissioned by Harp Ireland/Cruit Éireann.
Laoise Kelly
“Laoise Kelly is a young harpist with the disposition of an iconoclast and the talent and technique of a virtuoso.” – Irish Times
Laoise Kelly from Westport, Co. Mayo, now living on Achill Island, is regarded as the most significant harper of her generation – Nuala O’Connor.
She has pioneered a new style of driving instrumental harping showcased in her three critically acclaimed solo albums Just Harp, Ceis and Fáilte Uí Cheallaigh. She was director of the Achill International Harp Festival, encompassing her role as musical director of music Suites Sraith Oileán Acla, Mayo-Breton & Ireland Galicia collaborations.
Throughout her solo career she has recorded on over 70 albums with many of Ireland’s foremost artists including Seamus Heaney, The Chieftains, Christy Moore, Sharon Shannon, Dónal Lunny, Tommy Makem, Matt Molloy, Tommy Peoples, Mary Black, Maighread & Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill, as well as Kate Bush and American country/bluegrass icon Tim O’Brien.
Laoise tours regularly with different collaborators: piper Tiarnán Ó Duinnchinn; fiddler Tola Custy; Music Network pals Josephine Marsh, Tara Breen & Nell Ní Chróinín; singer and accordion player Breanndán Begley; award winning Scottish Gaelic singer Kathleen MacInnes; & Achill fiddler Diarmuid Gielty.
Laoise composed new music in 2018 for Theatre Gu Leòr’s Scotties, a co-commission of the National Theatre of Scotland and The Abbey, Dublin. She was Musical Director on Brendan Beehan’s The Hostage and Seán O’Casey’s Purple Dust with Glasgow theatre company Arches at the Edinburgh Festival. She toured with NY based Mabou Mines award winning production of Peter & Wendy to the Edinburgh Festival and the Old Vic, off Broadway.
She has toured and performed worldwide, at festivals including Womad, Celtic Connections, Celtic Colours, Tonder, Dranouter, Lorient, Milwaukee, Armagh Piping Festival, and at harp festivals throughout Europe and South America.
She has performed for Irish Presidents Michael D. Higgins, Mary Robinson, Mary McAleese and for the twenty-five EU Heads of State and Presidents in Dublin. She has represented Ireland with the Irish Embassy in Nigeria, Ghana, Russia, Argentina, and is honoured to have represented Ireland at the World Harp Festival in Paraguay.
Laoise has featured on numerous TV and radio programs both in Ireland and internationally including RTÉ’s A River of Sound, The Late Late Show, Sult, Eurovision; BBC’s Folkworks UK Harp tour Documentary, Colmcille sessions, and many of TG4’s music programmes Hup!, Fleadh TV, Féilte, Gradam Ceoil, Mná an Ceoil … She recently presented an RTÉ Radio 1 programme of highlights from Viljandi Folk Festival in Estonia where she also performed.
In 2020 Laoise was awarded Musician of the year, TG4’s Gradam Ceoil Ceoltóir na bliana.
