Martin Hayes and the Common Ground Ensemble

Martin Hayes is a celebrated fiddler and influential figure in Irish traditional music, whose many accolades include the Gradam Ceoil TG4 award for Musician of the Year; Instrumentalist of the Year at both the inaugural RTÉ and BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards; the American Irish Historical Society’s Person of the Year and the Spirit of Ireland award from the Irish Arts Center.

Rooted in the world of traditional Irish music, Hayes has collaborated and performed with musicians from Bill Frisell and Yo-Yo Ma to Sting and Paul Simon. He founded the Irish-American group The Gloaming, whose self-titled debut album won the Meteor Choice Music Prize for Best Irish Album. Their global touring has included multiple annual sold out runs at Dublin’s National Concert Hall as well as performances at London’s Royal Festival Hall and Barbican, The Sydney Opera House and Carnegie Hall. Hayes' long-term creative partnership with Dennis Cahill also saw the duo perform for President Obama at the White House.

With his latest project, the Common Ground Ensemble, Hayes aimed to create an ensemble of musicians from different backgrounds who also have connections to Irish music - the common ground of their name. The line-up emerged to encompass Cormac McCarthy (piano, ‘Cottage Evolution’), Kate Ellis (cello, Artistic Director of Crash Ensemble), Kyle Sanna (guitar, a collaborator with Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile) and Brian Donnellan (bouzouki / harmonium / concertina, and, like Hayes, an alumnus of The Tulla Céilí Band).

The Common Ground Ensemble is the latest stage in Martin Hayes’ life-long musical journey—one that will continue to evolve for years to come.

Photo credit: Michael Roe

Cormac McCarthy is a pianist, composer, arranger and conductor from Cork, Ireland. Noted for a diverse stylistic palette, and equally at home in a variety of genres, his music is said to "defy categorisation" (Lyric FM). In 2010, having completed his Masters degree in composition at the MTU Cork School of Music, Cormac received the prestigious Bill Whelan International Music Bursary, an award earmarked for young Irish composers studying abroad. He spent a number of years living in Chicago, where he completed a masters in jazz studies at DePaul University. 

His compositions and arrangements have been performed and recorded by artists including Phil Woods, Jeff Hamilton, Mick Flannery, Martin Hayes, Andrea Corr, Gavin James, Niamh Regan, Jack O'Rourke, the DePaul Jazz Ensemble, the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, Crash Ensemble, the New Irish Jazz Orchestra and the Cork Opera House Concert Orchestra. A new string quartet commissioned by the National String Quartet Foundation will be premiered as part of a nationwide tour by the Carducci Quartet last autumn. 

As a pianist, he has performed extensively at concert venues, clubs and festivals throughout Europe and the US, sharing the stage/recording studio with artists across a wide musical spectrum, including Peter Washington, Nell Ní Chróinín, Billy Drummond, Liz Carroll, Donal Lunny, the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra. In 2015, Cormac released Cottage Evolution, his debut LP as bandleader, to widespread critical acclaim. He is also a member of Martin Hayes' most recent project, the Common Ground Ensemble. As a conductor, he has led the RTÉ Concert Orchestra and the Cork Opera House Concert Orchestra. 

Cormac continues to be in demand as a composer, arranger and orchestrator in tandem with maintaining an active performance schedule. He lectures in piano, arranging and composition at the MTU Cork School of Music, and is director of the Cork School of Music Jazz Big Band.

Photo credit: Michael Roe

Kate is a versatile musician dedicated to the performance and exploration of all new music. She is cellist and artistic director of Crash Ensemble, Ireland’s leading new music group, and a member of Martin Hayes’ Common Ground Ensemble, Francesco Turrissi’s Taquin Experiments, Yurodny, Ergodos Musicians, and the electro-folk group Fovea Hex. 

Current projects include a creative documentation of 2021 with UK based musician and composer Laura Cannell. Laura and Kate will release new music monthly alongside a commissioned bespoke film. Supported by the Arts Council of England. 

Kate has toured and broadcast in Australia, the USA, Europe and China, performing at Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center, the Canberra International Music Festival, Bang on a Can Marathon (NYC), Town Hall NYC, Shanghai EXPO, Istanbul Akbank Jazz Festival, soundSCAPE festival (Italy), Huddersfield International Contemporary Music Festival, Edinburgh International Festival, Royal Opera House, Barbican Centre, Kings Place (UK), and the National Concert Hall, Dublin. 

Kate has collaborated with, commissioned, premiered, and recorded works by numerous Irish and International composers, including Steve Reich, David Lang, Michael Gordon, Nico Muhly and Donnacha Dennehy, and continues to push musical boundaries performing with a diverse range of musicians including Bobby McFerrin, Rhiannon Giddens, Martin Hayes, Iarla O Lionaird, Gavin Friday, and Karan Casey. 

From 2011-2014 Kate was musician in residence at the Cork Opera House and co-curated a festival marking the 75th birthday year of Steve Reich, who said of Kate’s playing “she has my unbounded admiration.”

Photo credit: Michael Roe

Hailed as a “first rate, versatile musician” by the New Yorker, guitarist and composer Kyle Sanna is on the move: performing traditional Irish music as well as jazz and improvised music, composing for ensembles, and producing recordings for other artists. 

He has collaborated with and performed alongside modern virtuosos Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer, and with some of the greatest living interpreters of the Irish tradition including Liz Carroll, Seamus Egan, and Martin Hayes. 

Sanna’s music has been described as “unconventionally beautiful” by WNYC’s New Sounds and Sound Check host John Schaefer, and has been performed at venues across the globe: the Bach House in Eisenach, Germany, Oman’s Royal Opera House, Sydney’s ABC studios, Taipei’s National Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall, and many points between. 

His “ruminative and shape-shifting” (San Francisco Chronicle) work for string quartet, “Sequence for Minor White,” won First Prize in the 2018 Charlotte New Music Festival composition competition. Sanna was a finalist in the 2019 and 2020 Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra Call for Scores and in Texas A&M University’s Fresh Minds Festival. He has received commissions from Brooklyn Rider, the Knights, Palaver Strings, Beta Collide, and flutist Alex Sopp. 

Kyle Sanna has arranged music for Béla Fleck, Jan Vogler, Anne-Sofie Von Otter, Martin Hayes, and for Yo-Yo Ma on two Grammy-winning albums: 2010’s Songs of Joy and Peace and 2016’s Sing Me Home with Silkroad. His arrangements have appeared on the Colbert Report, NPR’s Performance Today, and on the Sony Classical, Sony Masterworks, and Naïve labels. 

Sanna studied music at the University of Oregon and the Université Lumière Lyon II in France. He is a member of Kinan Azmeh’s CityBand, the Seamus Egan Project, Martin Hayes and the Common Ground Ensemble, Peter Apfelbaum’s Sparkler, Ground Patrol, We the Gleaners, a duo with violinist Dana Lyn, and regularly performs in the Broadway production of Hadestown. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Photo credit: Michael Roe

Via ourconcertslive.ie 

Brian Donnellan is an accomplished concertina, bouzouki, harmonium and piano player who hails from an East Clare family steeped in traditional Irish music. He is a member of the renowned Tulla Céilí Band and the newly established quintet, Martin Hayes and the Common Ground Ensemble. Brian has performed at many national and international festivals including Scoil Samhraidh Willie Clancy and the Feakle Festival as well as concerts in London, New York, and the National Concert Hall, Dublin.

Photo credit: Michael Roe

Nora Brown plays old-time traditional music with a particular interest in eastern Kentucky and Tennessee banjo playing. Along with the banjo and guitar she also sings traditional unaccompanied ballads from southeast Appalachia and beyond.

She has played at numerous venues and festivals including TED Salon in NYC, NPR’s Tiny Desk, Joe’s Pub, the Floyd Radio Show, Brooklyn Folk Festival, Oldtone Roots Music Festival, Irvington Folk Festival, Blue Ox Festival in WI, Mountain Song Festival in NC, and has had multiple month-long residencies at famed Barbès in Brooklyn NY. She has been featured in a variety of podcasts including WNYC’s Dolly Parton’s America along with NPR’s Weekend Edition and All Songs Considered and Apple Music has placed her on the American Best Songs, New In Acoustic.

Nora teaches both in-person and online banjo classes and workshops. She has taught at the Ashokan Center’s long standing old-time camp known as Southern Week in Olivebridge, NY, and currently teaches workshops through the Handmade Music School in Floyd, VA and the Jalopy School of Music in Brooklyn, NY. Nora continues to travel and learn from old masters and has taken regular trips to Eastern Kentucky studying under the late master banjo player and former coal miner Lee Sexton and master banjo player and historian George Gibson. 

Nora has won numerous banjo and folk song competitions at various fiddler conventions including the Clifftop Appalachian String Band Music Festival and Grayson County Old-time and Bluegrass Fiddlers Convention.

In September 2021 Jalopy Records released Nora’s second album, Sidetrack My Engine, recorded in an underground cellar and pressed by United Record Pressing in Nashville. The album is only available on limited edition 10” white vinyl and digital formats. Sidetrack My Engine landed #6 on the Billboard Bluegrass Charts the first week of its release. 

Photo credit: Benton Brown

Stephanie Coleman is an old-time fiddler, banjo player, and singer based in Brooklyn, NY. Originally from Chicago, Stephanie was first exposed to the fiddle as a child through her father, a fiddler himself. For more than two decades, she has immersed herself in Appalachian and Midwestern styles of old-time fiddling, exploring both the craft and the rich history behind the music. She spent several years touring with the acclaimed string band Uncle Earl and has collaborated with countless notable musicians, including banjo virtuoso Adam Hurt, avant-garde fiddler Cleek Schrey, and singer/songwriter Kristin Andreassen. Stephanie has performed and taught at festivals and workshops throughout the United States, Europe, and Australia and remains a regular award winner in the renowned contest at the Appalachian String Band Festival in Clifftop, West Virginia. Most recently, she appeared in HBO’s Crashing starring comedian Pete Holmes and played fiddle in the score to Radiolab’s nine-part series Dolly Parton’s America.

A guitarist, songwriter, and troubadour of many genres, Jefferson Hamer has spent the greater part of three decades searching for a song to sing. His early career was based in the Rocky Mountains, with long tours across the American West playing acoustic guitar, tenor banjo, and Telecaster. Resettled in New York City in 2008, he immersed in traditional Irish music, playing guitar accompaniment and singing at sessions Swift's, Brass Monkey, and 11th St. Bar, resulting in a lasting collaboration with Eamon O'Leary as The Murphy Beds. Jefferson's songwriting and lead guitar work is featured on the self-produced record Alameda, and continues in collaboration with Boston-based Session Americana. Most recently, Jefferson's electric guitar and harmony vocals support Sarah Jarosz on her Grammy-nominated album Blue Heron Suite.

For this performance at Irish Arts Center, Jefferson will be joined by bassist Rob Jost, who has performed and recorded with Björk, Imogen Heap, Jesse Harris, the Saturday Night Live band, and the Sesame Street Band.

Rob Jost is a bass player in Brooklyn. He has played in countless ensembles, including the Kevin Hays New Day Trio, Tony Scherr Trio, Joe Fiedler Quintet and Elysian Fields, and has recorded/performed with Bjork, Imogen Heap, Father John Misty, and the Saturday Night Live house band. For the past 12 years he has performed on all new episodes of Sesame Street as part of the show’s recording band, and is currently the bassist for Broadway’s Dear Evan Hansen.

A violinist/fiddler, pianist and enthusiastic bass player, Dana Lyn has performed at Lincoln Center, Carnegie and Town Halls, the Beacon Theater, and BAM, as well as dive bars the world over. As a composer, she has received commissions from the Apple Hill and Brooklyn Rider String Quartets, the National Arts Council of Ireland, Palaver Strings, A Far Cry, and line upon line. Also a visual artist, she has created stop-motion animations for performance artist Taylor Mac, children’s artist Elena Moon Park, and acclaimed jazz musicians Ben Goldberg, Brian Drye, and Mike McGinnis. Dana’s own projects include her septet Mother Octopus and collaborations with actor Vincent D’Onofrio, guitarist Kyle Sanna, and poet Louis de Paor. Dana was a 2017 resident-artist at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, an awardee of the 2018 American Composers Forum Create Commission, a recipient of the 2020 NYFA Women’s Fund Award, and a Sundance Composer Lab Fellow in 2021.