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Kíla

Sun 8pm at The Abbey Tavern

Kíla

"One of the most beautifully euphoric live experiences" - BBC World Review
“A scorching live band” - Songlines Magazine
“Kíla have torn up the ruleboo with their wantonly eclectic mix of styles, rrilliant!” - Hot Press Magazine
“ Somehow you get the feeling they lit the fuse for the big bang.” - Bono
“One of Ireland’s greatest live band’s” - RTÉ Radio 1
“There is something truly transcendent about the music of Kíla” - Irish Independent
Spanning 5 decades, Dublin octet Kíla have been vanguards of trad-fusion since they began in 1987. Such is the multi-faceted nature of their music that they’ve performed at Jazz, Rock, Celtic and World Music festivals in 35 countries on 5 continents; They’ve released 20 CDs, co-composed music for 3 Oscar nominated animation films and composed Emmy nominated, IFTA and Greison winning scores.
While rooted in Irish Trad, their music has absorbed influences from a multitude of other genres such as Latin, Reggae, Rock, Classical, Funk, Jazz and World Music in general. They formed in Coláiste Eoin - a school famed for musicians such as Davy Spillane, (Moving Hearts), Liam Ó Maonlaí & Fiachna Ó Braonáin (Hot House Flowers), Cormac Breathnach (Deiseal), Colm Mac Con Iomaire & Dave Odlum (The Frames) etc. On weekend afternoons they’d busk then later on perform at pub sessions, book launches, exhibition openings or political rallies.
Their earliest Ep Groovin’ (1991) and follow up Handel’s Fantasy (1993) demonstrated their gifted musicality. Here their own melodies danced alongside traditional ones, The varying musical atmospheres alongside the contrasting singing styles; of Colm’s full ranged romantic delivery and Ronán’s unique percussive
chant like style blended to form a new yet cohesive musical expression. By the time they released Mind the Gap (1995) their musical creativity was in full bloom and they could boast that it
was the first self-composed album from the Irish Traditional genre. Their follow up Tóg É Go Bog É (1997) attracted huge positive attention and after palying at the WOMEX, convention in Marseilles, the world embraced their unique take on Irish melodic music.
Since then they’ve continued to perform at some of the world’s biggest festivals like the Montreux Jazz Festival (Switzerland), Sziget Festival (Hungary), Celtic Conections (scotland), Festival de Ortigueira (Spain), Glastonbury, Boomtown, Cambridge Folk Festival (England), Globaltica (Poland), KAMWA (Russia) Edmonton Folk festival (Canada), RWMF (Malaysia), WOMAD (New Zealand, Spain, Sicily, Australia), Milwauke Irish Festival (USA),

During those years they continued to release exciting new material to even greater acclaim Lemoande and Buns (2000), Luna Park (2002), Kíla & Oki (2006), Gambler’s Ballet (2007), Soisín (2010), Suas Síos (2014) along with three live albums. In 2009 they were approached by composer Bruno Coulais to work on Cartoon Saloon’s animated feature The Secret of Kells (2010) which was nominated for an Oscar. This colaboration continued on Cartoon Saloon’s next two films - Song of the Sea (2015) and Wolfwalkers (2020) both Oscars nominated and won multiple awards worldwide.
They were awarded an IFTA for their musical score on Tomás Ó Súileabháin’s debut film Arracht (2019) and nominated for an Emmy for Ireland’s Wild River (2018). Crossing The Line’s follow on series Wild Ireland won the prestigious Grierson Award for rest Natural History Documnetary.
Kíla have played with and collaborated with choirs, quartets, opera singers, samba and african style drummers and Irish luminaries such as U2, Sinéad O’Connor, The Dubliners, Shane McGowan, Glen Hansard, & Dónal Lunny, Mary & Dónal Lunny. They’ve recorded with artists such as Indian’s Zakir Hussain, Poland’s Kaya and Japan’s Oki and
even Ronnie Wood from The Rollong Stones’ joined them onstage. Their most recent collaboration is with Paul Frost’s 8 piece brass band of which they have relesed two singles Raise The Road and Cara Liom and expect to release it by next year.
Videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgecWsLTtlU Bandcamp: https://klamusic3.bandcamp.com/track/raise-the-road
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6k029I1nzsw Bandcamp: https://klamusic3.bandcamp.com/track/cara-liom

Tickets €30 incl Booking Fee here:
https://secure.tickets.ie/Listing/EventInformation/45527/k%C3%ADla-abbey-tavern-26-May-2024

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