Hayes/Cahill on Fiddle/Guitar at Quick Center for the Arts | Press Releases

Image: Hay and Cahill The dynamic duo of fiddler Martin Hayes and guitarist Dennis Cahill will redefine your concept of excellence and reveal levels of beauty you didn't know existed when they bring their pure, lyrical interpretations of Celtic music to Fairfield University's Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts on Saturday, April 1, at 8 p.m.

Six-time all-Ireland fiddle champion, Hayes is considered the most important individual musician in Ireland today. He has been named Traditional Musician of the Year by Ireland's National Entertainment Awards, Best Traditional Act by the Hot Press/Heineken Rock Awards and Best Musician of 1997 in Ireland.

Hayes began playing the fiddle at age seven. His style of playing comes directly from the older generation of musicians in his native County Clare, a part of Ireland known for its slow lyrical sound, and enhanced by his own personal interpretations. He has worked with musicians from such diverse backgrounds as jazz, classical folk and rock, acquiring greater musical diversity and bringing newness and freshness to traditional music without compromising its essential nature.

Dennis Cahill was born in Chicago to immigrant parents from County Kerry and began studying guitar at age nine. He has developed into one of the most respected and innovative guitar players to arrive on the Irish music scene in years, touring constantly with accomplished and well-known Irish musicians. Not content with just accompanying tunes, he has developed a unique approach to finger picking both traditional and contemporary Irish music, incorporating the ornaments and subtleties used by the various instruments utilized within Irish music.

Of the two musicians Sue Wilson of "Scotland on Sunday" said: "Fiddler Martin Hayes, accompanied by guitarist Dennis Cahill, wielded his bow with such an exquisite balance of sweetness and sinew, delicacy and fire, graveness and mischief you just didn't want him to stop. Not to mention some of the finest fiddle-guitar interplay - Hayes and Cahill wove their strands of melody and rhythm together with breathtaking tightness and precision."

This concert, part of the Quick Center's six-week, multi-event Irish Arts & Letters Festival, is sponsored by the Wild Geese, an Irish-American cultural organization based in Greenwich. Tickets are $25 with discounts for senior, students with identification and groups. For more information, call (203) 254-4010 or toll-free at 1-877-ARTS-396.