Episode 2: Should you play Irish trad music in an orchestra?

In this episode, Hannah Harris discusses her experience of combining classical music and traditional Irish music in a concert. She reflects on the success of the collaboration and explores the factors that contributed to its success. She emphasizes the importance of having musicians who are familiar with both genres and can adapt to different styles. She also highlights the significance of well-crafted arrangements and the ability to go beyond the sheet music to capture the essence of the music. Hannah acknowledges the potential challenges of combining these genres, such as ego clashes and the risk of overshadowing the rhythm players. She concludes that while the combination can work well in certain situations, it should be done in limited quantities to allow each genre to shine on its own.

Links to musicians: Cillian Vallely, David Doocey and Alan Murray

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Episode Transcript:

Welcome back to the second episode of the Find Your Little Podcast. This is Hannah Harris, and today I am really excited to dig into this topic, should classical music and traditional Irish music mix? If you listened to episode one or have heard my story before, I grew up in the classical world. So I was starting with the Suzuki method around age five, I played in school orchestras for middle, high school and college. And I got my bachelor of arts degree at Furman University in music.

But gradually I made the switch over to playing Irish music full time at a professional level. So these days I'm really not playing a whole lot of classical music. So this is going to get into a bit of my past and present experiences and possibly tap into a few questions of identity. So why this topic today? Well, in mid to late April of 2024, I had this fantastic opportunity to play a gig with Cillian Vallely, David Doocey and Alan Murray.

So if you are not familiar with these guys, they are all phenomenal musicians in the Irish traditional music space. Cillian Vallely is an uilleann piper, a Tin Whistle player. He plays with the band Lúnasa. And then David Doocey is a great fiddle player. I want to say he plays concertina as well, although I didn't see him play that while I was interacting with him that weekend, but I know him primarily as a fiddle player. And then Alan Murray plays guitar.

So they're all very, very highly sought after musicians, great talents, and we had this really neat opportunity to collaborate because a bandmate of mine, Anne Harrigan, is the conductor of the Battle Creek Symphony Orchestra and they were doing a Celtic Crossroads concert where a lot of the pieces were arranged by Irish musicians, so Cillian's own brother, Niall Vallely, who happened to be my trad ensemble instructor when I was living over in Cork, studying at University College of Cork. So that was a fun full circle moment to get to play some of Niall's compositions. But Niall had composed a lot of the classical / trad pieces that we were, or arranged a lot of those pieces that we were playing. And a lot of the sets were from the album that Lúnasa recorded with the RTE Orchestra, where it was still the Lúnasa band members playing primarily the melody, but then they had the orchestra backing them up. So we were doing a mix of that.

Sean Davey was another arranger of some of the tunes that we did. So it was a whole concert of pretty much classical and I'll say Celtic because it was, you know, multiple Celtic traditions. So Irish, Scottish, a little bit of Galicia. I don't think we had any Breton music in the particular arrangement, but there was a mix of multiple traditional styles within kind of a larger Celtic umbrella. So that is a topic for another day. That was my master's thesis, so I can always pop into that more. But definitely a lot of the episodes that I'll be talking about here on Find Your Little will be focused more towards traditional Irish music, but in this case for this particular episode, I will be saying Celtic when I'm referring to just kind of the general umbrella genre of all these different styles, so there's a lot that goes into Celtic music and it's not always synonymous with Irish traditional, so just wanted to make sure that I got that out there.

Now, the whole punchline of, you know, the question of this episode, should classical and Celtic mix, is that I actually think we pulled it off very well, and I think in this case it worked, but I do want to do a deeper dive as to why I think that and why this happened, because there are plenty of opportunities and plenty of cases where I think it would not work as well, so I just wanted to do a bit of a deeper dive on my thoughts of this. So again, I thought that this concert was a great concert, it was very, very fun to be a part of and collaborate.

I mean how often are you gonna get to back up Cillian and David and Alan?

So we did pull it off well, and this was with only roughly 48 hours to put it all together. So our first rehearsal together as an orchestra with the soloists was Friday night, and Saturday night was the concert. So we had one three -hour rehearsal on Friday night, and then we had a dress rehearsal on Saturday afternoon, and then we had the concert Saturday evening.

This orchestra is made up of professional musicians who have played in orchestras before and they know how to prepare and how to come to the table being very much ready to throw it together in such a short period of time. But just to throw that out there that we did have very, very little time to put this all together, all things considered.

Now I have to give a huge shout out to Anne, and not just because she's my friend and my bandmate, but I just think that she really set up the orchestra very, very well. So she armed her orchestra with people who know Irish music. So there are quite a few people in the U .S. in general, but also in the Michigan space, who, you know, they're like me. They have this classical background, so I know that my story of coming from classical to traditional Irish music is not a totally unique story. Maybe the way that I went about it was unique to me, but there's a lot of people that have come to this music from the classical space and probably you listening, you have probably had some sort of similar journey unless you grew up playing traditional music in your household. And so I thought that the way that Anne set up the orchestra was just particularly smart.

She had me and another gal from Michigan and a gal from Minnesota who all play traditional Irish music. We teach traditional Irish music. We play at an advanced level of this music. And we also have that classical music background where we can read music and we can see what's on the page. We know what it's like to be in an orchestra. We know what happens when the concert violinist stands up to tune the orchestra and you know that you clap with your feet when you're clapping.

Lots of things that I had not done for about 10 years and then, you know, suddenly it was like, yeah, that's the thing that we do in orchestra, isn't it? So that was, that was a lot of fun. But Anne had the back of her first violin section just packed with people who play Irish music professionally. And I think that that really helped to tie this in because we had the very strong first section or the front section of the first violins where they're very good classical players. They're great at what they do in following a conductor and playing as part of an orchestra, and so there were great leaders in that space. And then us in the back, we are very familiar with the type of music that we're playing and how to bring the whole style into the piece and the pieces that we're playing. So I think that that was just very, very well put together. The oboe player was also a traditional flute player, so he knew some tunes and knew the style, knew how to do a roll ornament on the oboe.

And there were also a couple of viola players, I believe, who are maybe not playing a whole lot of Irish music, but are familiar with some similar styles, like in the Scandinavian traditions and maybe some old time fiddling as well. So a little bit more of that fiddly crossover or some more traditional crossover there.

So I just really thought that it was smart that there were such strong principal players that, again, are very familiar with being in an orchestra setting and putting these concerts together. They've played in the Battle Creek Symphony Orchestra before, and so they really know their stuff. And then there's equally strong section musicians who are able to play to our strengths of being familiar with the music and follow along with the first stand and just keep everything very cohesive throughout.

Another thing that I thought worked particularly well was the arrangements themselves. So as I mentioned, Niall Vallely was one of the arrangers of a lot of the tunes, and Niall is a very accomplished traditional Irish musician himself on the concertina. And as I know, because I've played with him in the trad ensembles, and it was just very, very, very interesting to play something that he had already composed and put together because when we were in the Trad Ensemble at UCC, this is back in 2016 - 2017, he taught our class. He had already arranged and composed this piece, but he taught it to us all by ear. So we were learning these arrangements section by section. He'd say, you know, Fiddles, you're going to play this line. And then while you're doing that, the flutes are going to do this or the guitar is going to do this. But an accordion is going to play this line. The harp is going to have a solo.

And like he built it from the ground up without any music in front of us. We were just sitting around this big, you know, kind of meeting table in the music building up at UCC and putting together this arrangement that, again, he had already composed it, he had written it, so he knew like where everything was going, but he's teaching it to us by ear. Whereas here I am this, a couple weekends ago, just sitting in the orchestra and I've got his arrangements on the page in front of me and getting to hear how an orchestra would approach his music just from looking at the dots. And it was a very interesting concept to me because I think I definitely grasped what the violins were supposed to do a lot better when Niall was sitting there saying like, okay, do this rhythm, just copy me playing this line, you're gonna play this line.

And seeing it on the page, it was a lot harder to translate until I actually listened to the recording and I'm like, yeah, I recognize that line from this recording or this is fun. You know, the Fiddles get to do this fun line that I loved in the guitar recording of this set. So it was the Morning Nightcap, by the way. For anyone, if you want to go look it up, I'll link to the recording and the show notes for both the orchestra (around 1:50 in the recording) and for the, just the band version from Lunasa.

But it's this very, very fun accompaniment bit that had kind of stood out to me from even before I knew I was doing this concert. And so when I saw that I was going to get to play that line, I was very, very excited.

So I think that what was so interesting about playing in the concert was that, you know, while I was learning from Niall in person, we were kind of building on a concept. And yes, again, it was kind of already built in place, but we were, we didn't hear that music before we went in. We were just kind of building on a concept as we went. And whereas with the orchestra, we were kind of playing this finished concept. So, you know, we have the music in front of us. We have, okay, there's this way to play it, and there's this recording of this piece, so we had those kind of guide posts to play and guide us as we went.

And one thing that Anne was very clear to communicate with the orchestra at the start of it all was that you're going to have to be getting off of the page to some degree. And I do definitely think that sheet music is a good tool to use when you are learning this music, and I think that it has its place, but I also would agree that at some point you have to put the page aside, you have to really be listening to what's going on in the music.

So it's a bit like a guide, like when you're driving and your GPS, it gets you close-ish to where you need to be. So, especially in a place like Battle Creek, which is a city, you know, I can put the venue address in to where I needed to be, but did I know where the parking lot was? No. So, I had to figure that out on my own. I had to, like, be very spatially aware, looking around, I was like, okay, where can I park? There's no street parking, clearly, right in front of the place where I need to be, so how do I find the closest lot to get there?

So, it's a bit like you can draw that metaphor straight to reading sheet music for Irish music. So it's like, okay, this is like, these are the notes that I should be playing. But the music is not going to tell me exactly how to get there. So to do that, I have to be a little bit more aware, I have to be listening a bit more to what is going on and really start to tap into those senses in order to get to where I need to go.

So one thing that we had to do when we were playing this music is we had to look up. We had to be looking, I was looking at my section leader, I was looking at Anne, I was looking at the soloists, so Cillian, David, and Alan. I would be looking at other sections of the musicians who were playing. And because we're spread out across this huge stage here and it's impossible for me to hear the timpani player at this exact time, like I can't just be closing my eyes and listening for the notes of the timpani because they're going to be slightly delayed. So you have to be looking up and seeing and staying spot on with people. I know that Anne and I do this sometimes in our gigs for our band Trillium because we'll be on opposite sides of the stage and maybe we can't quite hear each other, but we know that we're the only two playing in this particular section. So we got to lock in and we have to be right on with each other. So in many cases, you know, with these other types of gigs, you have a monitor on stage so the band can kind of hear each other a little bit better even if you're standing farther apart. But in this case in the orchestra gig, we were, we had a couple of monitors to hear Cillian, David, and Alan, but we couldn't necessarily hear every single person who was playing. So you really do have to look up and be paying attention to what's going on, making sure that this whole massive unit, this giant undertaking, all the moving parts are moving in conjunction together and staying in time.

So I would say that we did very well at looking up and then also having a little bit of that extra work to really think about the rhythm and the phrasing of the tunes. I was spending a lot of rehearsal time looking more at those elements so that we could really bring that to the finished product. That was definitely a good thing to be able to lock into.

These factors all worked for this particular show for the Battle Creek Symphony Orchestra gig. There were talented musicians who were prepared and flexible in the moments. They knew that they couldn't necessarily trust the sheet music at all times, so they were ready to follow along and not be so glued to what was on the page that they lost sight of what was actually happening in the moment. On the flip side, when you don't have these factors, or dare I say when you have too much of some of these factors, things can go wrong.

And one thing that can go wrong in particular is, I guess, the perceived ego of the orchestra. So classical music can sometimes get a bit of a bad rep for having musicians that are very egotistical. They are like, I'm better than you and all that, you know, talking about just this very talent focused of like you know, the people in the front are the better musicians, and the people in the back are kind of the slackers, you know, just hanging out. And I think this probably comes, it's a concept maybe from high school or middle school orchestra. So again, like very, very young concept. But it still does come into play sometimes. And I don't think it was at this, in this particular orchestra gig at all. So this is just kind of me talking more about just in general what threats could come to a concert like this, a collaboration like this.

And I think that there are still situations where there are musicians in the classical space where they are not okay with not having the solo or they are still thinking in terms of better is forward, worse is back. And what was different in this professional orchestral setting, which I really hadn't played a whole lot of professional orchestras, mostly just school orchestras, and even in college they say like it's not talent based but you kind of look at it and you're like, yeah, actually I think I like the way that these people play better than the people that are sat in the back. So, you know, it was to some degree always in the back of your head that that was a concept. But as I said before, in this case, we all brought our strengths to the orchestra.

So I think that what you want to do when you are in this orchestral setting is you want the back of your section to be those people that know how to look up, that know how to be really locking in with the rhythm. They're very, very strong players. They know how to follow strongly. And then they also know how to do their stuff so that they can keep up and be, you know, extra in the moment. So I really do think that that is more of a way that one should approach orchestral settings.

So whether you are, you know, in high school or middle school, and you're, you're kind of disappointed that you didn't get first chair or first stand, or you're sitting towards the back and you feel like you're not as valued, I think that the back of the orchestra actually does have a very, very important role. And I don't think that I don't think that all orchestras are built where it's the stronger players in the front and the weaker players in the back.

I think that a good orchestra really does have a strong set of players with a certain set of skills at the front. So, you know, if there's a solo where there's a lot of high notes or very technical skilled things that you have to do, then of course you probably want your first stand to be able to carry out those skills. But the first stand is also really needs to be good at counting and keeping in time, so especially in this concert there were a lot of times where the fiddles were sitting out for, you know, 32, 64, 78 bars, however many, and you have to be able to count, you have to know what the different rhythms are, you have to be able to follow, you can't always rely on the conductor to bring you in because the conductor is having to help the entire rest of the orchestra, so there's always a chance that they'll miss your intro.

So if you can make it easier on the conductor and really know when you're coming in and you know, if they happen to cue you, then great, then you're, you know, you're on the same page, but that's really a strength of the first stand is being able to count. I would say I think all of us were able to count pretty well in this past, in this past gig, but that is something that I would say is more a good skill for the first stand, whereas the stands behind the first, they also need to be able to follow what they're doing.

They still should be able to count, but it's not quite as much pressure to be on because you're not necessarily leading the section. But you also have to be very good, again, at looking up and staying with everybody.

Another factor that could potentially go wrong in this case with this type of music is that the orchestra is essentially a giant backer here. So the Irish music is very much melody focused. It is focused on the tune itself and bringing the tune across. The tune is the most important part. And in many cases, there's plenty of jokes out there, which, you know, they talk about, you know, one bar on per session or one guitar player per session. And a lot of places that adhere to that because they are so melody focused. And so sometimes this can get a little bit of a conflict if you have more than one rhythm player, more than one backer, and it's just too much, it's just too much overwhelming of the melody itself and it's kind of getting lost into something that Irish music might not necessarily be.

And so when you're in the situation where you have the melody being the forefront, I mean, we always kind of talk about, you know, the first violin section versus the second violin section where the first violins tend to have the melody more often and the seconds might have more harmonies and they don't have the melody quite as much. Of course, it depends on what arrangement you're doing or what piece.

And so when you are working with a type of tradition where the melody is what is most important, that also runs the risk of making everybody else not feel very important. And sometimes, you know, it's good to be humble. It's always good to be humble. But you got to be careful in these situations because I think that you run the risk of making your rhythm players feel like they're not needed, they're not necessarily, they're just kind of like taking up space and if they don't have the melody then what they're doing doesn't matter. So again, I don't think that necessarily there's anything wrong with that.

So one thing to be mindful of when you're playing this type of music where it's very melody focused, the melody is very important, is you don't want to run the risk of making your rhythm players feel insignificant or unimportant, like they don't have some part to play. Like the reason why we play this music is because we love it and we want something to do, we want to have a part of it. So there's a risk that you take of isolating those musicians and I think if there's too many situations where the only music that you're ever playing is okay you are backing the soloist or you're backing the melody but you never get the melody you always have to have the you know the lowly accompaniment part or whatever you want to call it.

I think that there's of course it's great to be humble it's great to be okay with you know not always having to be the melody and actually I really do enjoy playing more kind of backing arrangements just on the fiddle. It's a lot of fun to kind of see all the different parts that you can play. Of course, I love playing melody anytime I can, but it's, it is definitely something that I think about a lot where it's a fine line and something I would love to talk to more people about as well and I'm sure I will here on the podcast, but you do have to be careful about how your rhythm players are feeling like it because people that don't enjoy music that they're playing aren't going to really create good music. They're not going to be creating something that the audience wants to listen to because that feeling will come across. So you have to be really careful when you are organizing this collaboration, when you have these opportunities that your people have enough to do and that they all feel like they are part of this moving part.

So I think that maybe in the case of a classical music arrangement where the orchestra is again just kind of a giant backer and they don't necessarily, they might have the melody here and there but they don't have it a whole lot and it's not really focused on them. Like I think that that's okay for one concert max and then maybe even within that concert like having something that's more the orchestral section, the orchestra, don't know why I said orchestral section, but the orchestra gets to show its stuff, it gets to do its chops, it's pretty much that's, it's an orchestra part of the concert. And then also having those arrangements, those concertos where the orchestra is more backing the soloist. I think it's good to have that mix where everybody definitely feels like they're bringing something to the table when they're playing a part.

And then the last sort of pitfall that I'll cover here in the case of combining classical and traditional Irish music is that you can get into a situation where you're unable to get up off of the page. So it really, you know, if you get sucked into the notes and you're just following exactly what you're seeing in front of you, you definitely run the risk of losing the life and the soul of the tunes. So not everything that is strictly written in rhythms in the music is going to be exactly what you should play. I remember when Anne was looking at some of the bowings for one of the tunes we were playing, she was like, this is not going to work. I need to rewrite this entire thing and make it look more like something you'd find off thesession.org instead of what you would, instead of what we're looking at, because it was definitely not written like any role I would ever play, or just the rhythm was just so odd. So I was like, yes, this is a jig, but it's not written like a jig sort of thing. So you have to be definitely very, very careful when you are looking at the music that you don't get lost into what is on the page and you're able to get yourself up off of it. You need to hear the rhythms for that extra translation layer. So like I said, when I was practicing this music before the concert and before the rehearsals, when I was just practicing on my own here at home, I would listen to the recordings and that was really what allowed me to understand what was happening on the page.

I wouldn't say I'm ever like the strongest sight reader when it comes to music like I have to be able to hear it. I'm very much a audio and kinetic learner. So I have to listen to it in order to understand what I'm seeing. And then I also have to play through it in order to really make it stick. So just just looking at it alone is not going to not going to make it sink in. It's probably not going to sound that good if I try to play what I'm looking at and I don't hear how it's supposed to sound.

So just that's how that's how I approach learning for sure. I know there's definitely other, other methods and more people that might be more visually visually strong. So a lot better sight readers, but at least in my case, I think that I needed to hear those rhythms and I'm sure a lot of other people do as well in order to actually make what you're seeing come across in your playing.

So to wrap this episode up with my overall thoughts on combining classical and Celtic, this can be and was done well in certain situations. I think that limited quantities is best, so as I was saying, I don't think that you should have... I think that the most you should have is one concert with this particular style of playing. You need to have concerts where the orchestra's getting to do its thing. You need to have concerts where the traditional music players get to do their thing.

So it's okay as an occasional collaboration. So again, let the orchestras shine in their art form with what they do best. Let the trad players not stress about following a page and just doing their thing, getting to communicate with one another and really leading into their strong suit as well. So personally, I don't mind playing these types of shows and I would totally do it again. And I might enjoy it more if I was one of the soloists as opposed to one of the backers, but I definitely enjoyed my particular experience here with getting to play in this orchestra. So I would absolutely do it again. I would not want to do it all the time because I'm definitely more of a trad player at heart myself. So put me in a room with two or three other musicians and let us just like have a great time communicating riffing off of one another on stage. And that is that is my happy place for performing.

I would be really curious to hear what your thoughts are on combining classical and Celtic music as well, so please do come share over in our free podcast community.

I'll have links to Cillian and David and Alan's work because they are all phenomenal musicians and I definitely want you to hear more of them if you have not heard them before. So I will chat with you over in our free forum and I will be back in your ears next Thursday for another episode.