Aistear

Evidence that Aisling Lyons is the finest young Irish harpist at work today comes in the eight-time All-Ireland champion’s debut on disc, Aistear (Journey). Steeped in a tradition largely drawn from her deep-rooted County Clare heritage, Lyons shows herself alert to contemporary developments elsewhere, her bright, beautiful, singing harp emerging out of ambient landscapes of shoreline-lapping waves in the opening pairing of John McEvoy’s ‘On the Edge’ and her self-penned ‘Martha’s Hop Jig’, and from within midsummer birdsong in the lovely and loving ‘Tune for Dad’, written for her father shortly before his death. Accompanying herself with equally expressive dexterity on concertina, and with occasional support from guitarists Seán Lyons and Jens Kommnick, Fergal Scahill’s fiddle and viola, the pulsing bodhrán and double-bass of Dermot Sheedy and Paul O’Driscoll, the result, pristinely recorded by Martin O’Malley, is a recital of gossamer delicacy and delight. There’s sprightly humour, too, in the portrait of Lyons’ sleeping dog, ‘Buster’s Dreams’, and alert nimbleness of Kevin Jones’ ‘Itchy Fingers’, coupled with the glistening glamour of the Turlough O’Carolan-credited ‘Cremonea’. Lead single, ‘Buíochas’ (Thanks), tributes Lyons’ alma mater, the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance in Limerick, album closer ‘Raindrops/Dnaza Guairena’ deftly pairing Cormac Breathnach’s onomatopoeic reverie with a sparkling Paraguayan polka.