Méabh O’Hare

Belfast born Méabh O’Hare, first took up the fiddle while attending Bunscoil Phobail Feirste, Andersonstown. She went on to study with Monica Smith, who taught fiddle classes with the renowned McPeake family in Belfast, and subsequently, for five years, took lessons with the legendary fiddle Maestro Sean Maguire. In her late teens she was greatly influenced by many musicians from Belfast such as Andy Dixon, Davey Maguire, Bernie Stocks and many more great player who were playing around the city. At this time she was also interested in the Donegal fiddle style and she visit many of the fiddle festivals in and around the county. With a move to Cork and music studies at UCC she collaborated with many young musicians including the 17 fiddles and piano group "Fiddle Sticks" lead by Liz Doherty, with whom she recorded Racked in the Rectory (1999). While living in Cork she immersed herself in the local session scene and played with many of the local musicians such as Christy Leahy, Johnny Neville, Caoimhine Valley, Mick Daly, Aiden Coffey and many more and a general good time was had. For a short period, she played and recorded with the Dublin based band ‘Providence’ . She also played and toured with Dublin based flute player Conor Byrne and recorded an album entitled Bavan. In 2000 she received the TG4 Young Traditional Musician of the Year were the award ceremony and concert was broadcast live on TG4 from the Cork Opera House. In recent years Méabh has moved back to her home town Belfast and began focusing on a career in Television. She firstly presented the traditional music series Banish Misfortune on RTE before deciding to concentrate on directing and producing traditional music programmes. She now runs her own production company with her father Seán called Sonas Productions and this year they have a number of projects to be broadcast in Autumn on BBC and TG4