Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill

Early years

Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill was raised in Kells, County Meath. Her paternal grandparents moved there from the Rann na Feirste Gaeltacht of Donegal in the 1930s.

Tríona is from a prominent musical family. Her paternal aunt, Neillí, contributed nearly 300 folk songs to the folklore collection of University College Dublin. Together with her brother, Mícheál Ó Domhnaill, younger sister Maighread Ní Dhomhnaill, and multi-instrumentalist Dáithí Sproule, Ní Dhomhnaill first attracted attention with their folk group, Skara Brae, that specialised in songs sung in Gaelic, many sourced from the Rann na Feirste area where their father's family originated.

The Bothy Band

When bouzouki player Dónal Lunny left the Irish folk band Planxty in 1975 and launched a new record label called Mulligan, one of his first projects was to form a band to accompany accordion player Tony MacMahon on a series of shows for Irish National Radio. Along with uilleann pipe player Paddy Keenan, flute and whistle player Matt Molloy, and fiddle player Paddy Glackin, Ní Dhomhnaill and her brother became charter members. Initially named Seachtar (which is Irish Gaelic for "seven people"), the group changed its name to the Bothy Band after the departure of MacMahon.

As the Bothy Band, the group played its first concert on 2 February 1975, at Trinity College, Dublin. Although they were together for only three years, the Bothy Band were one of the first bands to bring the musical traditions of Ireland up to contemporary standards. While the group experienced numerous personnel changes, Ní Dhomhnaill and her brother Micheal were still members when the Bothy Band's final album, Afterhours, was recorded during a concert performance at the Palais des Arts in Paris in 1978. A second live album, Live in Concert, recorded by the BBC in London at the Paris Theatre in July 1976 and Kilburn National Theatre in July 1978, was released in 1995.

Career in the United States

By the time the Bothy Band disbanded in 1979, Ní Dhomhnaill had been persuaded by singer/songwriter Mike Cross to emigrate to Chapel Hill, North Carolina in the United States. Ní Dhomhnaill soon assembled a new band of North American musicians, Touchstone, that initially rehearsed in Cross's home. Touchstone's two albums, The New Land (1982) and Jealousy (1984), combined songs sung in Gaelic, original singer/songwriter tunes, and traditional folk songs from the United States and Nova Scotia.

Relocating to Portland, Oregon, in the mid-1980s, Ní Dhomhnaill was reunited with her brother Mícheál, who had emigrated to the area from Ireland a few years before. Together with the Cunningham brothers, Johnny and Phil, formerly with the Scottish group Silly Wizard, they toured and recorded two albums as Relativity. They also collaborated with Billy Oskay and Brian Dunning, later replaced by Johnny Cunningham, in a Celtic-tinged new age group, Nightnoise.

Discography

Solo albums

With Skara Brae

With Clannad

With The Bothy Band

With Touchstone

With Relativity

With Nightnoise

With Maighread Ní Dhomhnaill

With other artists

Compilations