North (duo)

NORTH is an ongoing collaboration between Belfast-born fiddle players Danny Diamond & Conor Caldwell, exploring and re-creating their shared heritage of northern music and song. Their debut duo album, NORTH (2016) was released to critical and popular acclaim, and nominated for Traditional Album of The Year in The Irish Times.

Danny Diamond is one of the leading  Irish traditional musicians of his  generation. Through his work as a performer, composer, archivist and sound engineer, Danny has contributed on multiple fronts to the revitalisation and reimagining of Irish music and song. Drawing on his family's deep, cross-community cultural lineage in the north of Ireland, along with influences from other traditions across the north Atlantic, his fiddle playing is a unique and powerful voice in Irish music.

Danny currently combines international touring with Teac Damsa's multi award-winning dance theatre show Swan Lake /Loch na hEala along with a range of collaborations and solo projects.

His past projects include the acclaimed Irish traditional band Mórga (2008-2017), with whom he recorded two albums and toured extensively; and the experimental Irish/Nordic trio Slow Moving Clouds (2014-2018), with whom he released two albums and created the score for Teac Damsa's Swan Lake / Loch na hEala.

Conor Caldwell is a traditional fiddler and composer from Belfast. His music takes a contemporary approach whilst remaining reflective of his roots in the Donegal and Northern fiddle tradition. Exploring the capabilities of the fiddle and through the use of electronics he creates music that is spacious with harmonies and accompaniment sympathetic to the old and original tunes he plays.

Aside from his solo work, he plays in a duo project with fellow fiddler Danny Diamond, with whom he released the critically acclaimed album NORTH in 2016, nominated by the Irish Times in its Best Traditional category for 2016 and described by Musical Traditions as ‘an impressive, highly-enjoyable and illuminating achievement’. He has also toured as a member of Craobh Rua since 2009, performing across Europe and the USA.