'Under the Stairs' album launch at The Corner House

Two Cork musicians will launch their album of traditional music this weekend in the warm and atmospheric surroundings of one of the city’s finest hostelries.

Uilleann piper Eoin Ó Riabhaigh and fiddler Johnny McCarthy play every Thursday evening from 6pm to 8pm under the stairs in The Corner House on Coburg Street, and, fittingly, the title of their album is ‘Under the Stairs’.

Described as “a fiddle and pipe album with some flute and a self-composed song from Johnny’s pen”, ‘Under the Stairs’ owes its existence to the weekly session in The Corner House, which began in 2015 with Eoin Ó Riabhaigh and Harry Bradley, and when the latter relocated to Belfast, his replacement was Ó Riabhaigh’s old friend Johnny McCarthy.

“We’ve been playing since we were kids really,” Mr McCarthy told The Echo. “Eoin’s father would have been the head man at the Cork Pipers’ Club, Micheál Ó Riabhaigh, so Eoin would have followed the family tradition there.” Despite the name, the Pipers’ Club featured more than just pipes, and Mr McCarthy played the flute.

“We grew up playing on Saturday nights with the big session there, but then we drifted away and we played with different people, but then in the last few years we’ve come back together again and it’s amazing that because of having played together as kids we kind of gelled,” he said.

“We decided to put this album together, and I’m playing predominantly fiddle on it, with some flute, but mostly fiddle and pipes, with some guests. We have Pad Ahern on guitar, Herring he’s known as, my son Cormac McCarthy is playing piano on it, Garry O’Briain on bouzouki, Macdara Ó Faoláin, he’s also on bouzouki, that’s the lineup.

“A lot of the tunes are tunes we would have played down through the years, but then there are also some newly composed tunes on it as well, by both of us,” he said.

Described as “sweet music with gentle lift and beautiful balance between the reed and the string”, ‘Under the Stairs’ launches at 6pm on Saturday 9 December in The Corner House, Coburg Street, Cork.