Riverdance (Bill Whelan) - Shane Hennessy

TAB available here: https://www.musicnotes.com/l/3kcW8

Happy St. Patrick's Day Weekend to all my friends, fans, and family all around the world. I have been working on this arrangement for a long time and I'm delighted to be able to present it to you at last! This is one of the most famous, if not the most famous, piece of music ever to come out of Ireland - Riverdance by Bill Whelan.

Written originally for the interval act at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1994, Riverdance spawned into a world-famous production putting Irish music and dance on the world stage like never before.

I am an enormous fan of Bill Whelan's music, and in 2018 I had the good fortune to work with him on a piece called "Educo" composed for guitar, piano, and string quartet. That piece was premiered in October in Dublin City, and it was only after working with Bill that I realised I might be able to arrange his most famous composition for the guitar, and so this arrangement came to be.

There are four guitar tracks in total and I also use a sustain (freeze) pedal to hold the very first chord at the beginning of the video. I try to emulate the sound of the bodhrán (Irish drum) on the body of the guitar in the second section, as well as backing myself during each section of the composition. I also tried to think about how each instrument in the original piece produces its sound. The Uilleann Pipes are a monophonic instrument (disregarding the drone), and so 'standard' guitar fingerings and attack don't serve the melody. I altered my approach to playing these melodies on the guitar to imitate how these different instruments would sound (i.e. no ringing notes and very few open strings).

Catch one of my upcoming live performances!
Full details on https://www.shanehennessy.ie/shows

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