IT is ten years since Eimear Quinn released her best selling album ‘O Holy Night’, Eimear’s annual Christmas concert is now synonymous with the festive season. Her tour this December is almost completely sold out with no tickets left for her Dublin and Navan performances.
Eimear will bring her own special rendition of Christmas songs and carols to Limerick next week.
Accompanied by guitar and her string quartet, this intimate and spiritual night is a fan favourite with audiences nationwide making this concert an annual pilgrimage.
Her collection of Christmas music is of course, timeless and Eimear told Limerick Post that her musicians look forward to this tour every year.
“Myself, the girls in the quartet and Robbie on guitar walk into this bubble together. We live and breath and enjoy every single note of it very genuinely from our own hearts. The whole year long we look forward to these concerts. The same audience return every year. We are humbled that our concert is their thing to do at Christmas.”
Eimear Quinn’s ethereal voice takes her audience on journey away from the festive hustle and bustle with seasonal classics ‘Silent Night’, ‘O Come, O Come Emmanuel’ and ‘Little Town of Bethlehem’.
“We all find solace and comfort in this music. The rest of the year we are all charging from one thing to another, the next new thing. At Christmas time we want the familiar.”
Eimear Quinn is probably best known as the winner of the Eurovision song contest in 1996 with Brendan Graham’s ‘The Voice’. The Monaghan based singer/composer has had a busy 2017 so far and has collaborated with songwriter Brendan Graham on a new project due for release in Spring 2018.
The new album could be described as a classical/celtic crossover recording. Accompanied by the RTE Concert Orchestra it features classical music and new compositions written with Brendan Graham.
“It is the sum total of my inspirations and preferences in music and performing over the last decade. It is where Irish music meets classical music with an element of spiritual and ancient music. It is where they all converge. The newly written music has to have a sense of the Irish and the spiritual in it.”
The album is untitled so far and features one special collaboration with John Sheahan (The Dubliners).
“John wrote a stunning piece called ‘PaddyFields’ exploring similarities between Chinese and Irish traditional music. I’ve added sparse lyrics to it with a Chinese theme, recorded with the concert orchestra with stunning arrangement by Gavin Murphy.”
Eimear will be back in the studio in the new year to put the finishing touches to this new album. But for the next few weeks she will tour her Christmas concert winding down close to home in Navan on December 22. After that Eimear will celebrate a traditional magical Christmas with her two daughters aged five and eight at home with family.
“It will be music, films and chat and plenty of food,” she laughs. “There is nothing quite like it.”
Your Christmas season begins right here. Eimear Quinn accompanied by Mamisa String Quartet and Scullion’s Robbie Overson on guitar perform at Belltable on Thursday December 7.
Tickets at www.limetreetheatre.ie
