Niall & Cillian Vallely - Callan Bridge

Niall and Cillian’s album, ‘Callan Bridge’, was released by the Nashville-based company Compass Records in early October 2002 and is now being re-released by Crow Valley Music.

It was recorded over several months on two continents during those intervals when the brothers’ tour itineraries made it possible for them to get to the studio. Practice time was limited, but years of playing together have given Niall and Cillian a near-telepathic musical understanding, as demonstrated by the extraordinary note-for-note synchronicity achieved in their duet selections. They were also helped out by some of their friends, who happen to be among the best and most innovative in the business: for the Philadelphia recordings U.S.-based guitarists Donal Clancy and John Doyle; and for the sessions in Ireland younger brother Caoimhín Vallely on the piano and Armagh guitarist Paul Meehan. Six original tunes by Niall are balanced by a number of pieces unearthed from old manuscript collections. The boys from Armagh play these melodies, which for decades existed only as fading dots on forgotten pages, not as antiquarian curiosities but with a vigorous virtuosity that brings them fully to life and affirms the unbroken continuity of the Irish musical tradition.

"This is drawing room grandeur mixed with muscular belly punches to the solar plexus...Glorious." The Irish Times

"...brilliant...a recording that bristles with vigour and clearly inherited musicality." The Herald