Career

Lorcán Mac Mathúna is an improvising singer and composer with a special interest in the nature of vocal music. His many projects investigate and elaborate on the improvising nature of the human voice in solo and collaborative settings. This includes A Cappella Sean-Nós singing, contemporary compositions of an improvised nature, music composition theory based on poetic forms, and much, much more.

Lorcán’s first release in 2007, Rógaire Dubh, was the first step in a career which focuses on the performance of Sean-Nós conventions within diverse musical frameworks. Developing on the improvised nature of Sean-Nós, he collaborated with Irish composer Ian Wilson and improvising saxophonist Cathal Roche, in Common Tongue, to release Want and Longing in 2010. In 2011 he released the critically acclaimed Dubh agus Gheal: Darkness and Light –Loric Colloquies with his Hiberno-Norse project Northern Lights.

In 2010 he also wrote a composition for the Old-Irish epic tale An Táin with the avant-garde improvisational collective Deep end of The Ford. An Táin was recorded in 2011 and released in 2012.

Other compositional included the 2009 Tásc is Tuairisc, a tense and atmospheric depiction of the doomed Franklin voyage, which he co-wrote with Irish composer Simon O Connor.

Lorcán has undertaken studies in traditional music styles and extended techniques; of traditional music from select European and Asian cultures investigating their correlation with sean nós song style; of vocal dance music, which lead to the compositional project, Preab Meadar, with traditional fiddler, Daire Ó Breacáin; and the correlation between oral metre and improvisation in western Oral music.

As well as a solo and group performer, with performances from Germany to Vancouver, Lorcán regularly teaches singing in schools programmes, music organisations and festival workshops.

Formation

Lorcán Mac Mathúna was born in Cork in 1976 into a family with a passion for traditional music and singing. Much of his singing has been passed to him by his father Séamus and were passed to him by masters of the tradition from places like Cúl Aodha, where he lived at a time when the nation seemed to discover its rich heritage through people like Seán Ó’Riada.

Lorcán Mac Mathúna was born in Cork in 1976 into a family with a passion for traditional music and singing. Much of his singing has been passed to him by his father Séamus and were passed to him by masters of the tradition from places like Cúl Aodha, where he lived at a time when the nation seemed to discover its rich heritage through people like Seán Ó’Riada.

The influences on Lorcán’s style have been diverse and all of them deeply personal. Sean Nós is a soulful and emotionally expressive style of music and when it strikes a resonance with the listener it can have a dramatic and revelatory effect. Lorcán’s greatest influences have been such moments and each song he has learned started as a singularly striking performance in some personal encounter with the tradition, such as one beautifully fluid and uplifting rendition (or telling as they say in the Irish tradition) of an Clár Bog Déil in a tiny cramped bar in Mayo. From this he has developed a style empathic with the tradition, which is controlled and exciting and extremely expressive.

Lorcán’s take on Sean-Nós combines an interest in stories with an equally deep appreciation of music. He realises that the music and the stories (the lyrics) of Sean-Nós are entwined inseparably. It is a deeply expressive form of music and it is that expressiveness which Lorcán emphasises when he pushes the conventional boundaries of Sean-Nós. In exploring the potential for this aspect of Sean Nós he has collaborated with traditional, classical, and jazz musicians. Collaborations of these sorts give differing pastiches on which to lay his singing and allow explorations of melody, harmony, and above all, narrative pulse, which give a deeper understanding of the music in Sean Nós and embellish the listener’s appreciation.

This present phase in Lorcán’s musical development brings the Sean Nós style of singing into a new realm; one where the unaccustomed listener can readily recognise the musical quality of the songs without having to “acquire a taste.” To cultivate a taste for these soulful and passionate melodies is a fulfilling journey in itself, but Lorcán’s creations of imaginative and complimentary arrangements and compositions have opened this style of music to the world.