The Band

 CRAN are a unique group in the Irish folk-music world with their own highly-individualistic approach and a bewildering array of styles and repertoire. Each member of the trio already had international reputations in their own fields before the band was formed. Desi Wilkinson had become a major force in the field of Irish flute-playing, both at home and abroad; Sean Corcoran was known internationally as one of the leading singers in the Hiberno-English and Gaelic traditions and also as a researcher and teacher; Ronan Browne had not only carved out a name for himself as one of the leading lights among the younger generation of uilleann pipers - he was already giving master-classes on the instrument in Europe and the U.S.A.

CRAN's concert performances are a dazzling display of technical virtuosity combined with fun and humour, banter and stories. The core of their repertoire is their native Irish material - bubbling dance music or haunting slow airs on flute and pipes, and vocals ranging from the highly-ornamented sean-nós songs of Connemara to the rollicking port a'bhéil or mouth music of Donegal. Their Hiberno-English song repertoire (songs from Ireland in English) covers the entire gamut from the old story-telling "long ballads" to lively comic songs of "pure divilment and rascality". They also include material from the related Scots-Gaelic tradition and from the other Atlantic Celts, the Bretons.