Tag Archives: traditional musician

BY Bríd Costello THE world of traditional music lost one of its staunchest champions with the passing of Patrick Joseph Costello earlier this month. A well-known broadcaster and musician, Pat went by almost as many names as he had passions. Known as Patrick, Paddy, Packie, P, Daddy or Grandad, depending on who he was speaking to at the time, he was a polymath whose breadth of knowledge touched a vast number of subjects ranging from mechanics and information technology to art, poetry and philosophy. And what he didn’t know, he was eager to learn. Born in 1947, in the parish of Moycarkey, County Tipperary, Pat was the firstborn child of Molly and Jerry Costello. He developed a love for music at a very early age and often reminisced about his first instrument – an upturned biscuit tin and a pair of knives. “There was always rhythm. It was never noise,” says his sister Peggy, adding their mother Molly bought Pat …

DYMPNA O’Sullivan of Frure, Lissycasey, was laid to rest last Sunday, after a two-year battle with cancer, which took her life at 49 years. What a difference a year makes. Dympna was preparing to launch her second album, Enriched – Saibhriú, in The Old Ground Hotel, Ennis, during this week last year. The date was November 29, 2014, to be precise. She was excited, proud, and her new album reflected a change in outlook for Dympna O’Sullivan. The album was a statement. Working hard throughout her remission, Dympna was determined to finish the album and enjoy the experience, while she still felt well enough. “This was going to be from the heart,” Dympna’s family explain. Saibhriú features four of Dympna’s compositions. Na Crocáin Árda harks back to her childhood and the freedom she, her brothers and sisters enjoyed playing and running around the fields of Frure. Resilience, Dympna’s poignant slow air, charts her life after diagnosis. It is about the …

  A Connemara builder has been sentenced to seven years in prison with the final three years suspended for ten years for an assault on well-known  Irish traditional musician, Noel Hill. The assault in a pub toilet on St Stephen’s night seven years ago left Mr Hill, a native of Caherea, Lissycasey victim with lifelong injuries. Imposing sentence at Galway Circuit Criminal Court on Thursday, Judge Rory McCabe said this had been a horrible, nasty and vicious attack and noted the consequences for the victim were appalling. Michael Folan(55) from Teach Mór, Lettermullen, Co Galway, had initially pleaded not guilty to a single charge of intentionally or recklessly causing serious harm to Mr Hill(57), contrary to Section 4 of the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997, at Tí Padraig Mairtín Beag in Leitir Mór, Connemara on St Stephen’s Day, 2008, when his trial opened before a jury at Galway Circuit Criminal Court last November. He changed his plea to …