West Co. Sligo native, BRÍDÍN, carries on the traditions of unique skills and talents passed down through her family.
She is the fourth generation of her family to play Irish music and plays harp, flute, piano, and dances sean nós.
She has developed her own style influenced by her natural surroundings and rooted in her background in traditional Irish music, and was recently nominated as ‘Best Emerging Artist’ at the RTE Radio 1 Folk Awards.
In February of 2021, Brídín released her debut EP ‘Ocean of Stars’ – a collection of five contemporary folks songs, ‘Wysteria’, ‘Floating’, ‘North West’, ‘Ocean of Stars’ and ‘The Salmon’s Tale, featuring Colm Mac Con Iomaire’.
Brídín was not able to have a normal launch this year, so instead she has pulled out all of the stops out with this virtual EP launch, filmed in the cockpit of the Boeing 767 airplane in Enniscrone, Co. Sligo.
Speaking about how the launch came together, Brídín says
“Dad came up with the idea of having this transport themed glamping village in Enniscrone, which then escalated to him buying the decommissioned airplane. He had to bring it from Shannon Airport up along the west coast of Ireland to Sligo by tug and barge. Thanks to an amazing team of engineers and his determination, the mission was successful and more importantly, he put Sligo on a global platform. I wanted to make the most of our unique venue and decided I wanted to launch my debut EP from the cockpit of this special Boeing 767. This launch is officially the first ever event to take place on our site, which makes us so excited for what’s to come.
It took some time to clean it up and get it ready for the launch, with Ray Forde from EAV Ireland as sound and light engineer, filmed and edited by Ciarán Harte and Stephen Hallinan and my family and friends helping out, it looked really cool and so surreal. We actually would like to use it as a venue again as the sound was so good! My amazing band that performed my set with me on the night; Clare Sands on fiddle, Brian Dillon on keys and Paul Leonard on Drums.
Myself and Clare were writing a track the week before doing up the plane (Iontach a Bheith Beo – Good to be Alive), so she hung around to help me, and she was such a great help scrubbing it up. I was taking videos the whole time we were doing up the plane, just for memories, but decided to include them in ‘Airplane Mode’ for people to really understand the work that was put into this launch and to get a close up look at our amazing stage.
My mam (Aileen), dad (David), Martina, Clare, Eoghan, Matty Tuffy and Sandra Beardshall helped me pull it all together, Matty Tuffy made sure we had electricity in the plane and Ray made it look and feel like a real gig.
My mam is such a talented dress maker, she made me my ‘fairy princess’ jumpsuit that I wore on the night, which will always be so special to me.”
To mark the launch, Brídín has printed a limited number of CD’s of ‘Ocean of Stars’ EP, available to purchase on Bandcamp: https://bridin.bandcamp.com/album/ocean-of-stars-ep
Twitter: @bridin_music
Facebook: @BridinMusic | Instagram: @BridinMusic
