Tara Music

Tara Music (formerly known as Tara Records) has been regarded for many years as one of the leading traditional Irish music recording companies. The label was set up by Jack Fitzgerald and John Cook back in the early 1970s.

Their first release was an album called Prosperous by a young Irish Singer 'Christy Moore', at that stage a lowly cult figure. There was quite a gap between that album coming out and anything further being released. Then, in the early eighties, there were two albums from Planxty After The Break' and The Woman I Loved So Well, two solo albums from Christy Moore The Iron Behind the Velvet and Live In Dublin as well as two albums from Clannad Crann Ull and Fuaim, which were followed by the first of numerous albums from a promising new act called Stockton's Wing.

In the late seventies, Tara took a great leap of faith and recorded Shaun Davey's The Brendan Voyage a ground-breaking album which featured uilleann piper Liam O'Flynn as a soloist with a full orchestra. The Brendan Voyage launched Shaun Davey as a contemporary orchestral composer of international standard and led to further commissions for work in a similar vein, several of which - The Pilgrim, Granuaile and The Relief of Derry Symphony, have been released on the Tara label.

Most of Shaun's works feature the vocalist Rita Connolly and the master of Irish piping Liam O'Flynn - both of whom have also recorded numerous solo albums for the Tara label under Shaun's supervision as producer.

The Irish phenomenon that is Riverdance has musical roots that had been developing over many years prior to the first performance of Riverdance at Eurovision song contest in 1994. These roots included musical elements introduced by Andy Irvine who, having returned to Ireland from The Balkans, introduced Eastern European music and time signatures to the group Planxty who then proceeded to record a number of these instrumental tracks. Andy together with Davy Spillane recorded the EastWind album, which was produced by Bill Whelan, possibly the first seeds of what became Riverdance.

Tara Music also released Bill Whelan's first major orchestral work The Seville Suite (and his most recent release The Connemara Suite). While albums such as Davy Spillane's Out of the Air and Pipedreams as well as The Storm by Moving Hearts feature some of the musical elements and instruments that are easily recognizable in their influence on the Riverdance music.

In recent years many the releases on the Tara Music label are self-produced artist recordings whereby Tara Music act as distributor and coordinating press and publicity. Albums by artists such as, Frankie Gavin & De Dannan, The Voice Squad, Zoe Conway, Máirtín O'Connor and Michelle Lally are currently available on the Tara Music label.