Released February 2025. Born in Cork 1961 and living in Gaeltacht Mhúscraí, Conal has played the flute since he was small. "The Cork flute player Conal Ó Gráda has carved out a singular voice in traditional music, one which is as solid and as grainy as the wood of the instrument. His is a style that is fully integrated with and idiomatic of the wooden flute, where the rhythm, articulation and interpretation all stem from the interaction between the player and the possibilities of the instrument. His previous solo albums, both highly regarded, focused on traditional tunes, but he has been playing his own compositions for many years now in performances, with the band The Raw Bar Collective, and his music has been featured on the ITMA Saothar showcase. For his new album, Anú Abú, which is released on Raelach Records, Ó Gráda has adopted an approach that has become more common over the past few decades in traditional music, and put together a set comprised only of tunes that he has composed himself. An album of new compositions is always exciting and fresh, and gives the listener a real sense of discovery. At the same time, it asks a lot of the listener, in the sense that these tunes haven’t yet laid down familiar aural grooves in our musical memory, so that our appraisal of processual features of interpretation and performance has to compete with our own internal mapping of the tune. Listening to the Album, it became evident how close an integration there was between Ó Gráda’s flute style and the style of the compositions. The shape of the tunes stem from his style, allowing his punchy and percussive articulation, driving rhythm, and his signature powerful tone to come to the fore. Perhaps even on a more fundamental level, these are always tunes that are built on the ergonomics of the instrument, bringing out the musical shapes and sounds that the flute affords. This is a fine album of new flute music, which is seamless in its knitting together of playing technique and compositional style. While it certainly delivers on its promise of musical discovery, it does so through structures that are totally familiar, as the dance tunes are all very playable – and indeed danceable. It’s also welcome to have a complete set of tunes composed on flute, given how often the figure of ‘composer’ in traditional music is associated with the fiddle and button accordion, and it should be a useful resource for flute players (and others of course) in the years to come. (Review courtesy of Adrian Scahill - The Journal of Music) https://www.conalograda.com/ You can find his Album on Bandcamp. https://conalgrda.bandcamp.com/album/an-ab