Julie Fowlis, award-winning Gaelic folk singer and musician, brings the first of her special curations as Voices Unwrapped Artist-in-Focus to Kings Place. Allt is a Scots-Irish collaboration between Éamon Doorley, Zoë Conway and John McIntyre, creating new songs inspired by modern and ancient Irish and Scottish Gaelic poems.

Julie, Éamon, Zoë and John present an evening of songs set to a diverse collection of poetry. While there remains a strong living tradition of modern Gaelic poetry in Ireland and Scotland, the composition of the traditional ‘big’ songs has declined within the sphere of traditional arts in both countries. Four musicians who all sing, combine their voices to create a unique and captivating collaborative and personal response.

This project has been inspired by the work of Seán Ó Riada, Peadar Ó Dubhda, Padraigín Ní Uallacháin, Aonghas Dubh MacNeacail and others who breathed new life to Gaelic poetry whilst also renewing and rejuvenating traditional music by adding to its corpus new and fitting ‘traditional’ airs.

This project has been kindly supported by Create Louth and the Arts Council of Ireland. 

Julie Fowlis is a multi-award-winning singer who is deeply influenced by her early upbringing in North Uist, Outer Hebrides. A multiple winner at the Radio 2 Folk Awards, Julie has graced stages around the world, from village halls in the Highlands to Carnegie Hall, New York, The Philharmonie de Paris, the Royal Albert Hall and Shakespeare’s Globe in London.  Touring regularly throughout Europe and the US, her festival performances have included World Festival of Sacred Music in Fez, Morocco.

She sang at the closing ceremony of the Ryder Cup in Chicago in 2012 to a TV audience of 500 million and at the opening ceremony of the Glasgow XX Commonwealth Games in 2014, to a TV audience of over 1 billion people.  Forever to be remembered as the singing voice behind the hit songs in Disney Pixar’s Brave, she was also involved behind the scenes working with Eric Whitacre’s singers in the Dreamworks Animation How To Train Your Dragon 3: The Hidden World in 2018, and collaborated with Norwegian composer Einar Selvik on songs for Assassins Creed Valhalla: Return of the Druids.

Julie also presents for radio and television, and in addition to her two degrees, she was also awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music by Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Éamon Doorley has toured the world in a career spanning over 20 years, with influential Irish band Danú, and more recently alongside Julie. Steeped in traditional music and the Irish language from a young age, and playing both fiddle and bouzouki, Éamon has a natural lyrical feel for accompanying traditional songs and instrumental material.  A fluent speaker and scholar of early and modern Irish, he gained his degree from Trinity College, Dublin, before embarking on performing full-time on stages across the globe. A multi award winner at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, among others, Éamon has performed throughout Europe and extensively in almost every state of the US and Canada.

Zoë Conway, no stranger to the stage, has performed with an impressive list of international artists including Riverdance, Damien Rice, Lou Reed, Nick Cave, Rodrigo y Gabriella to mention but a few.  In contrast to this, she has been an important figure within classical music circles in Ireland and abroad, as her crossover discipline has allowed her the pleasure of appearing as soloist with acclaimed orchestras such as The Irish Chamber Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra and German WDR Symphony Orchestra; pieces recited include her own compositions and works composed for her by world renowned Irish composer, Bill Whelan.

John McIntyre grew up in the Cooley Mountains of north County Louth where he took up guitar at 8 years of age.   He began his career as electric guitarist with the successful indie band, The Revs with whom he performed on many famous stages and festivals including Oxygen, and Slane in Ireland, Reading and Leeds in the UK, and toured extensively in USA, Australia and Europe.  He has worked alongside many world renowned producers, and is now also producing and recording in many genres.  John studied classical guitar and piano for many years, and from early childhood, he was immersed in the songs and traditional dance music of south west Donegal.