Music from the Heart

Graham Davy are songwriting duo Patrick O'Keeffe (vocals, guitar and keys) and David Ruth (bass and backing vocals). Their lyrics try to find humour and hope in harsh places. Their style draws on a broad set of influences such as Tame Impala,Blur, David Bowie and The Doors, to name a very few. The duo released two singles this year, garnering the attention of John Barker at 98fm, and becoming featured Irish Artist of the week on Ed Smith’s Song of Praise on Today FM.

Born in Sherwood, Nottingham, United Kingdom and mentored by the late blues legend, John Lee Hooker, and Benny Gallagher of Gallagher & Lyle,  Andrea Black has worked with industry renowned artists like Narada Michael Walden to appearing on stage in Frankfurt with Skatman John to an audience of 350,000. Highlights include writing and performing songs for the launch of The Mazda MX5 sports car in Japan playing Glastonbury, representing the UK in Romania, opening for Eric Burdon in San Francisco, apart from her long list of acting credits. To highlight her early creativity her paintings were hung in The Royal Academy of Art when she was eleven. Andrea is just as at home on stage as in the studio, and has inspired audiences in some of the UK’s leading venues including, Bush Hall, Jazz Café and The Purcell Rooms at The Queen Elizabeth Hall. With 9 previous albums to her credit, her music continues to inspire audiences around the Globe defining her as a cross-genre artist with a unique and distinct style on piano and guitar, woven by her unmistakable dynamic vocals.Her collaborations and solo albums show a prolific body of work that continues to flow and evolve through musicianship and expressive spirit.

We all know Ireland is a well containing diverse talents. There are some we are familiar with, others are less known although they deserve wider audience. This is the case of Jamie McDonald, a singer/songwriter from Carlow who is now based in Sofia, Bulgaria. Jamie sings with such a contagious passion and energy that would even awake the dead, as they say. His career spans 3 decades and 10 albums.

Born and raised in Co. Kilkenny, Ireland, Ali Comerford started playing and studying classical music at the age of 4. After obtaining a Masters of Violin Performance from London's Royal College of Music, she relocated to New York, completing a Masters of Music in Viola Performance at the Manhattan School of Music on scholarship. Ali’s journey in music has seen her grace the likes of New York’s Carnegie Hall, London’s Royal Albert Hall and Dublin’s National Concert Hall. She has toured the world with Lincoln Center Stage, playing sold out shows around Australia, New Zealand and the United States. After years as a freelance musician for various string ensembles and chamber orchestras in New York, January 2020 saw Ali come home to her native Jenkinstown in Co. Kilkenny. Faced with her biggest stretch of free time in 14 years, Ali used her artistry to process and bring closure to the various ups and downs oflife she experienced during her time traveling the world with her craft.

In the midst of a global pandemic, and what we can only call a crushing year for so many, four musicians got together to kill some time by making music. It had been their passion individually for decades. And with what felt like never-ending lockdowns, the one thing they had was time. With diverse experience and backgrounds in folk, rock, hip hop and reggae, the music started to take shape, and Kandemic was born. With everything going on in the world, it became clear from the very start that Kandemic had a lot to say and a story to tell. As one lockdown was followed by another, the band kept writing and recording music. And six months and thousands of cans of beer later, Kandemic realised they had an album in their hands and a message from far beyond the stars. Rock, punk, hip hop and reggae, and swapping between English and Italian languages, Kandemic's sound picks from the past and sets out to make something new. Band members from Helsinki, Milan, Rome and Venice now call Dublin their home.

Strange Boy is a 1000-year-old poet channeling through the body of a young man from Limerick. With hard-hitting, thought-provoking lyrics, Strange Boy’s unique mastery of flow renders him one of the most important rappers of our time. With genius and poetry, Strange Boy paints a living picture of the raw truth country’s youth - Waiting. Unfiltered and nuanced, it's a slow scene of the rapper's inner life and the lives of those in his community. Strange Boy combines hip-hop and Irish traditional music, the old and new cultural influences dominant in this country. The music was composed and produced by Enda Gallery in Kilfenora, Co. Clare during lockdown. A master of multitudes of genres, Enda also releases music under his own name, and is currently writing and producing debut albums for not only Strange Boy, but also Tolü Makay and Willzee.

We must first make our way into the wilderness through the deep, dense Scandinavian forest before we come across A Choir of Ghosts. There you can find him singing his energetic, modern and longing folk songs.A Choir of Ghosts' musical foundation is: A solid ground consisting of a reminiscence of Kurt Cobain, covered with the water, the sun and the air of bands like The Tallest Man On Earth and the Hollow Coves, which give you a feeling of various shades of nostalgia. A Choir of Ghosts has had a few singles since 2016 - "Morning Light" currently has over 1.4 million streams on Spotify, and the trend is rising - and released an EP that received international media coverage and carried him across the borders of the Swedish wilderness, among others on extensive tours through Central Europe. With the release of his widely acclaimed debut album “An Ounce of Gold” in April 2020, the Swede by choice was once again able to secure euphoric international press praise. After a spring European tour that was canceled due to Covid-19, “Oceans” is the second musical sign of life from A Choir of Ghosts.

Self-taught multi-instrumentalist An Early Bird releases his new single „Under My Skin“, a fantastic Indie Folk anthem about the power of love. "Love grows underneath the skin just like a flower coming out from the ground. Love is so powerful that it creates a bond even between those who apparently living on different planets." - An Early Bird Growing up in Naples, South of Italy, Stefano De Stefano (this is the name behind the project) cut his teeth on the Italian music circuit with a local band before going solo: the debut album „Of Ghosts & Marvels“ was released in October 2018 followedby the EP „In Depths“ in September 2019. An Early Bird has been touring extensively across Europe sharing stages alongside artists like Joshua Radin, Jake Bugg, S. Carey, Stu Larsen, Grant-Lee Phillips and Dan Owen.

The Jonah Medal take a nose-dive into confessional 70’s Lennon via the folk- rock of the Waterboys with their new single ‘From M to M’. Continuing his theme ofreflection, Bjorn Baillie continues to write sketches of a 40-something life through the lens of family,friendship and fatherhood. About the song Ballie says “The last single ‘Septembering’ was about that journey as a couple from early days straight through to family and all that brings. This song is like the impatient foot-tap of midlife - eager to keep pushing and creating”. Recorded in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles and Nick Cave’s studio in Brighton, this song sounds like a lost-70’s classic with an instantly memorable piano intro and life-affirming lyric. Founded in Brighton, UK in 2020, The Jonah Medal began as a creative mission for Baillie to challenge his own forward musical progression, turn backwards and deeply inwards, and embrace the familiar.