April 4, 2008
Patrick Ourceau & Eamon O'Leary - Traditional Irish Dance Tunes and Songs
Friday, April 4, 2008; 8:00 PM
Commodore Barry Club / Irish Center
Carpenter Lane and Emlen Street
Phila., Pa 19119 / (610) 486-2220
Admission: $15, PCG members, $13
At a session, Patrick with his fiddle nearly dances in his seat, both feet tapping out the rhythm, bright eyes full of humor, smiling, winking, ever ready with a warm gesture for newcomers ... Eamon, the essence of understatement and disheveled reserve, his guitar playing and his presence an anchor beneath the flights of melody.
Patrick Ourceau & Eamon O’Leary are both master musicians.
Patrick Ourceau was born in Paris, France in 1967. He first heard traditional Irish music on recordings, liked it instantly and decided it was the music he wanted to play. He is now known as a great fiddler, but it was not his first instrument of choice. “The concertina was tops on my list but it was hard to find one, living in France. And so I decided to go with the fiddle. Maybe one day I’ll still play the concertina.” He started playing at about 12 years of age, and his primary reason for coming to the US in 1989 was to play Irish music in the thriving trad scene in New York City. “I knew of fiddlers there like Andy McGann, Paddy Reynolds, Tony DeMarco and Brian Conway, and I thought it would be really good for me. Why not?” Patrick has since had a fine career in his almost 20 years in the US playing with the noted Clare concertina wizard Gearoid O’hAllmhurain and with button accordionist Paddy O’Brien’s popular trio “Chulrua”. His repertoire is dominated by his preference for the beautifully crafted, sinewy, lyrical music of the East Clare / East Galway tradition. He has become well known in that regional tradition, respected as much in Ireland - where he spent much time at the feet of master fiddlers like Paddy Canny and others - as he is in the United States. Patrick recently left New York and currently resides in Montreal, Canada.
Eamon O’Leary was born in Dublin in 1972. He started playing the guitar in his teens. “I didn’t really come to Irish traditional music until, I suppose, my late teens. It was through friends that I’d made along the way who happened to play, and I just began to soak it up that way”. Eamon didn’t expect to be playing Irish music professionally when he arrived in New York in the late 1980s. “I started hanging out around a café on St. Mark’s Place where we used to play every week. It was an Irish-owned place and the enthusiasm with which they responded to the music was sort of inspiring”. Soon he was playing in sessions around the city with various musicians, including Patrick. Eamon is an outstanding guitar accompanist with a great ear for key and chord changes. He is also an accomplished tenor banjo player with an impressive repertoire.
