Máire Ní Chathasaigh

Who is Máire Ní Chathasaigh?

Máire Ní Chathasaigh is an Irish harpist and singer. She began playing at only eleven years old, inspired by her family, many of whom are noted musicians from West Cork. She drew heavily on traditional styles, but also created new techniques of ornamentation. She has won the All-Ireland competition at under-fourteen and under-eighteen levels and then, in the mid-1970s, she won the Senior version three years in succession.

Her 1985 The New-Strung Harp was the first harp album to consist of exclusively Irish traditional dance music. Her stylistic innovations made her famous in the Celtic music scene, and she began teaching in continental Europe and in the United States. She has taught for more than fifteen years at Cúirt Chruitireachta, a school in Termonfeckin, County Louth, organized the Irish Harp Society, Cairde na Cruite. Her arrangements have been collected in two books, The Irish Harper Vols. I and II, and she has an honours degree in Celtic Studies from University College Cork. In 1989 she recorded The Living Wood with guitarist Chris Newman; they have worked extensively together as a duo since then.