Julie’s orchestral manoeuvres

Galway composer-performer Julie Feeney will be coming to Glór in Ennis on Saturday, October 24 to celebrate the release of her third album, Impossibly Beautiful.

The singer/composer/producer does not believe in doing things by half measures, having taken on all these roles on her second album Pages.
For this album, she even conducted the top-flight full orchestra, which performed them all in one epic six-hour recording session at the Irish Chamber Orchestra Studio in Limerick.
“It was one of the happiest days of my life,” she says, “although I needed a week to recover from it.”
Julie first made her mark on the international music scene after she won the Choice Music Prize with her debut album 13 Songs and she has built on that with the release of her new album. She has been described as a one-woman powerhouse of creative energy and technical expertise.
Julie’s idea was to record the orchestra on its own in one day – effectively the first time she would hear her own compositions – and to let the results stand. There would be no conventional pop instruments or samples or indeed overdubs of any kind added to the original recordings – other than her voice.
“I also wanted to use the instruments as if they were voices and the voices as if they were instruments intertwining in the songs,” she says.
The result is a collection of songs performed with stirring, spellbinding elegance, yet delivered with a strange, almost whimsical sense of fun.
The album is full of characters which are brought to life amid the swirling yet delicate orchestral backdrops and Julie’s haunting lilting voice.
Tickets are available from the Glór box office on 065 6843103. For more information visit www.juliefeeney.com / www.mittens.ie.