When is a violin not a violin? Sounds like a trick question but the answer is simple. When it’s a fiddle.
Call the instrument of someone who plays in an orchestra a fiddle and you might get a stern look. Not so with Irish musician Martin Hayes. He plays the violin but, in his hands, it’s definitely a fiddle.
In fact, the 63-year-old is described in the publicity blurb for his upcoming Australian tour as a “virtuosic Irish fiddler” – and he is, to be sure.
He starts his Australian tour at the Perth Festival on February 18 and winds up at Brisbane Powerhouse on February 26, so it’s a bit of a whirlwind visit by this renowned fiddler.
“I suppose you could call violin players fiddlers,” he muses when I broach the subject of musical instrument terminology with him by phone. “There are not a lot of fiddlers in the orchestra, even though they all have fiddles. I call mine a violin when I’m on the airplane, though.” Fancy.
His is a much-loved instrument that dates to the late 1700s or the early 1800s, he’s not sure.
He is to the fiddle what Miles Davis was to the trumpet or Jimi Hendrix to the electric guitar
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“It could be German or it could be Italian,” he says. “I got it in Chicago. I had a fiddle I was not happy with so I went to a shop and a guy put this fiddle in my hand. I asked if I could swap my fiddle for this one.”
Long story short, he did. It was, he says, obviously meant to be.
Hayes is one of the most significant talents in Irish traditional music and is grounded in the music he grew up with in East County Clare. He is to the fiddle what Miles Davis was to the trumpet or Jimi Hendrix to the electric guitar according to the Irish Times.
His soulful interpretations of traditional Irish music are recognised the world over for their exquisite musicality and irresistible rhythm. He is the founder of the musical supergroup The Gloaming (with whom he tours international), The Common Ground Ensemble and The Martin Hayes Quartet. He has played for President Obama at The White House in 2011 and has performed with musicians such as Jordi Savall, Sting and Paul Simon. He’s recorded with yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project.
Since he’s Irish I cannot help mentioning my favourite Irish musician, Van Morrison. “I had lunch with Van a couple of weeks ago,” he says.
Stunned silence my end for a few moments while I take that in. As a teenager in the 1970s Van Morrison was a god to me. From what I have read of him, though, he can be a bit grumpy and I mention this.
“I don’t find him grumpy at all,” Hayes says. “He is not a bundle of laughs either, though. But he’s going well … although I have more hair.
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“I did a version of his Moondance to mark Van’s 75th birthday. That was during the pandemic. It was just me playing it on my fiddle at home during lockdown. I did not think he would even watch it on YouTube, but he loved it.”
On this Australian tour Martin Hayes will be accompanied by Kyle Sanna. Hailed by The New Yorker as a “first rate” and “versatile” musician guitarist and composer, Sanna performs traditional Irish music as well as jazz and improvised music, composing for ensembles and producing recordings for many artists. Sanna has collaborated with and performed alongside modern virtuosos such as Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer, and with some of the greatest living interpreters of the Irish tradition.
Together Hayes and Sanna will transform long-revered melodies into pathways for profound emotional experiences. Fostering connection between melody and human spirit, Hayes strips away musical pretence, revealing how traditional tunes can become vehicles for personal revelation.
He is something of a yarn spinner and I am a sucker for an Irish brogue as are many Australians. (Our Irish roots run deep here, something Hayes is only too aware of.)
“I do some storytelling in my show,” he says. “But I never know what I am going to say. I tend to go off on tangents. It is not scripted at all. It is all spontaneous.”
He plays to “create joy, if possible, from communion and connection”.
“Those things are very important,” he says. “There is an act of surrender in the making of music and it’s about trying to get to the other side of one’s ego.”
That’s where the magic happens. But while his intent is serious it is also about fun.
“If I’m not enjoying myself something’s off,” he says.
The good news is he is intending to enjoy himself Down Under yet again (he’s been here a few times) and that enjoyment will, no doubt, be infectious.
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