Richard Carr’s Manannan mac Lir is not simply an album inspired by a place; it is shaped by lived experience, movement, and listening. Rooted in the rugged west coast of Ireland and expanded through orchestral imagination, the project reflects Carr’s lifelong relationship with nature, improvisation, and cultural memory. Named after Manannán mac Lir, the Irish god of the sea, the work feels fluid and elemental, moving between solitude and scale with quiet authority.
The origins of Manannan mac Lir trace back several years to Carr’s treks along the Dingle and Kerry Ways. During these journeys, he spent nights in small coastal villages, offering improvised solo violin performances in churches and cathedrals. These were not formal concerts but spontaneous exchanges between space, sound, and moment. Carr recorded many of these performances in the field, capturing the natural resonance of sacred architecture and the intimacy of unplanned music-making. That material later formed the foundation of his earlier release, Gray Skies on the Edge.
Rather than leaving the music in its raw form, Carr felt compelled to revisit and reimagine it. Last year, he began scoring selected material for orchestra, expanding the emotional and sonic possibilities without losing the spirit of improvisation. Manannan mac Lir emerged from that process. The recording features Carr on improvised solo violin, joined by the Budapest Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Péter Illényi. The result is a powerful dialogue between freedom and form where the violin moves like water, and the orchestra responds like shifting tides.
Stylistically, the work sits at the intersection of neoclassical composition and spontaneous expression, with subtle nods to Irish musical sensibility rather than overt folkloric gestures. The influence of landscape is palpable. You can hear the vastness of sea horizons, the quiet tension of weather changes, and the spiritual weight of ancient places. It is music that breathes, allowing silence, resonance, and texture to carry as much meaning as melody.
Carr’s background brings depth to this approach. A violinist, composer, improviser, and educator, he holds a Doctorate in Music Education from Columbia University and studied composition with Donald Martino and Jonathan Kramer, alongside violin studies at the New England Conservatory. Over a career spanning more than three decades, he has recorded extensively and collaborated with artists across jazz, experimental, classical, and global music, including Bill Laswell, Fred Frith, Bootsy Collins, The Swans, and the American Contemporary Music Ensemble. His performance history stretches across the US, Europe, Japan, and Mexico.
Equally important is Carr’s life beyond music. An avid hiker and mountaineer, he has traversed mountain ranges from the Alps and Himalayas to the Andes and Darran Mountains. That physical engagement with the natural world informs his compositions deeply. Manannan mac Lir feels like a convergence of these paths: artistic, spiritual, and geographical. As an enduring work, Manannan mac Lir stands as a meditation on movement, memory, and belonging. It does not rush to explain itself. Instead, it invites the listener to enter its current, to drift, reflect, and listen closely, much like standing at the edge of the sea, aware of both its calm and its power.