Máire Breatnach

Máire Breatnach is an Irish fiddle, violin and viola player. She also sings in Irish on some of her albums. Since the early 1990s, she has recorded five solo albums, participated in many collaborations, and developed didactic material for children, mostly in Irish.

Born in Dublin, Máire Breatnach obtained a B.A., B.Mus. and M.A. degrees at UCD, in Dublin where she lectured, as she also did in the College of Music, DIT before starting a freelance career as a performing musician. She later obtained a further M.A., in Ethnomusicology, from the University of Limerick, and a Ph.D. from Dublin City University in 2013.

Breatnach is best known for her fiddle playing, and has been a prolific solo player as well as participating in a number of traditional and neo-traditional groups. She sings in Irish on some of her albums, and her composition Éist was an award-winning single.

She has worked with the bands of Sharon Shannon, Moya Brennan and Mary Black, and features on albums by musicians as diverse as Dolores Keane, Mike Oldfield, Alan Stivell, Bryan Adams, Anúna, Matthias Kießling, Dónal Lunny, Brian Kennedy, Ronan Keating, John Renbourn, The Chieftains and Riverdance. She also played on the Celtic arrangement album Final Fantasy IV: Celtic Moon, and with Yasunori Mitsuda on the arranged soundtrack to Xenogears, titled Creid, as well as featuring on albums by Chiaki Ishikawa and Mimori Yusa. Her collaboration with Thomas Loefke and Norland Wind is recorded on the CDs Norland Wind, Atlantic Driftwood, Northern Isles and Departures.

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