Emer’s concert marks striking debut album

Emer O Flaherty started playing piano at the age of seven and she loved it. “But I realised at 12, I needed to be portable so I took up flute,” she says with a laugh. Whistle was a natural progression from flute, and Emer, who also plays organ and is in the process of acquiring a harp, later added concertina to her list of portable instruments.

She stepped back from music for a time while she was studying Law and French at UCG, but the former marketing manager with An Taibhdhearc Theatre, who is also a talented singer-songwriter, says she was never destined for a career in law.

And as she returns to Galway City on Thursday, March 12, for the launch of her debut album, Go dtí seo, it’s clear that music is where Emer’s passion lies.

It was through song and verse that the Ennis woman developed her grá for Irish, when she was still a child.

Her Conamara-born father Pádraig, who was originally from Ros a Mhíl, was a teacher in St Flannan’s College and had a creative approach to sharing his mother tongue.

“Through songs and reciting poems, he got me to love it,” she says.

Pádraig died when Emer was 14 and “I promised myself I wouldn’t lose it”, she says simply about the language and her connection with her father.

She didn’t and most of the songs on this album are trí Ghaeilge.

There’s a mix original songs, sean-nós arrangements and instrumental pieces, with the traditional Cúirt Bhaile Nua and Amhrán na Leabhar reflecting Emer’s sean-nós roots. In her own compositions, nature and her gift of observation are to the fore.

Her song Grian Dhubh celebrates the magic of murmurations while Ag gearradh romham is about a bird that must start singing extra early so he can be heard before traffic builds up. Stáisiún Traenach is the story of someone observing passengers in a train station.

Go dtí seo also features two slow airs, Neilí Bheag and the lullaby Suantraí.

Pictured: Emer O'Flaherty from Ennis learned her Irish from her late father who was from Ros a' Mhíl.