Elbow Room (solo)
“Seldom does a musician utterly inhabit a tradition while still expressing him or herself with such originality” Siobhán Long, The Irish Times.
Introducing Elbow Room, the autumn 2017 solo release from Danny Diamond, fiddle player with the Irish-Nordic band Slow Moving Clouds. Elbow Room showcases ten fiddle solos, split between new compositions and solo arrangements of traditional tunes.
Diamond’s music draws deeply on the rich lineage of Irish traditional music for inspiration, while in parallel reaching out to find new connections with other art forms.
Poetry and contemporary dance in particular have inspired many of the new compositions on this recording. Echoes of other traditions such as American old-time and Baroque string music can also clearly be heard in Diamond’s distinctively personal and expressive playing style, as can the influence of the great Dublin fiddle player Tommie Potts.
This recording follows Diamond’s recent work with Slow Moving Clouds, which includes collaborations with Bryce Dessner and The National (Sounds from a Safe Harbour, 2017); creating and performing the score for Michael Keegan-Dolan’s acclaimed dance theatre piece Swan Lake / Loch na hEala (Best Production, Irish Theatre Awards 2017), which is currently touring internationally.
Elbow Room incorporates music created and arranged for What To Bring When We Leave (2017), a collaboration with poet Tom French, commissioned by Solstice Arts Centre, Navan. It also builds on Diamond’s recent fiddle projects- his solo debut Fiddle Music (2014), his fiddle duo with Conor Caldwell NORTH (2016)- rounding off a trilogy of classic Irish fiddle albums.