The Mayo News

Lisa Hannnigan to play in Galway City’s newest performance venue


Ciara Moynihan

Lisa Hannigan returns to Galway this December to play the city’s newest performance venue, The Live Lounge at the Radisson Blu Hotel & Spa, on Tuesday, December 8. The Live Lounge is a purpose-built venue with a 1,100-person standing capacity – 6,000 square feet of high-tech, fully equipped, state-of-the-technology in a great space. In short, it should be perfect for showing off Hannigan’s haunting, otherwordly voice to the full.
It’s been a phenomenal year for Hannigan, with her debut album ‘Sea Sew’ going platinum in Ireland. She has also taken America by storm – on her last trip there she performed on the Jay Leno Show and her album was hailed by The New York Times as ‘exquisitely ethereal’. Last May, she also appeared on the BBC’s yardstick of cool, ‘Later … With Jools Holland’. Back home, Hannigan has been nominated for both the Choice Music Prize and for Meteor Best Irish Female and Meteor Best Irish Album.
Hannigan’s love of singing was nurtured in childhood by school plays (yep, you guessed it, she played the fairy on top of the Christmas tree) and in adolescence with singing in choirs and an obsessive taping of songs from the radio.
After hearing a recording of Maria Callas singing the ‘Bell Song’ from Delibe's ‘Lakme’, Hannigan became fixated with the idea of learning how to sing like her. A few years of study later, she realised that her chances of playing a consumptive operatic heroine were severely hampered by both her naturally quiet voice and her insatiable love of cake. The former could be helped by a microphone; the latter could not be helped at all.
A chance meeting with singer/songwriter Damien Rice led to a long period of collaboration and development. Lisa spent the next few years touring the world, meeting musicians, making friends, writing songs, contributing backing vocals on many friends’ records (including the Frames and Mic Christopher), singing with the legendary Herbie Hancock and gradually finding her voice, needing the microphone less and less.
When her collaboration with Damien Rice came to an end after seven years, Lisa was left with a notebook of songs and the desire and confidence to put them onto a record. Gathering a talented band of friends together, including Tom Osander on drums, Shane Fitzsimons on double bass and Donagh Molloy on trumpet, they got to work.
After a few months making demos and working through the arrangements, Lisa and her band, armed with coffee and cake, set off for the Cauldron studios in Dublin and spent 15 days putting them on tape. Starting early in the morning, the band spent their days down in the basement studio, playing glockenspiels and harmoniums, violins and organs, trumpets and guitars, and singing until they were hoarse, emerging in the small hours to stagger home to sleep.
Friends contributions punctuated the long days – Gavin Glass on piano, Lucy Wilkins on violin and Vyvienne Long on cello. Together with engineer Jason Boshoff, Lisa and the band marked off their contributions on a blackboard, until they were left with a record both warm and creaky, sparse and full.
Jason Boshoff then took the record home with him to London where he, Lisa and Tomo mixed it in the Strongroom in the east end. Lisa’s mother, Frances, began knitting in preparation for the cover artwork. After spending a happy month stitching the lyrics onto rough cotton, and picking out the many references to the sea in the lyrics, Lisa appropriately decided to call the album ‘Sea Sew’.
Head along to The Live Lounge on December 8 to have your ears tickled by Hannigan’s beautiful voice as she performs tracks from this long-awaited album – an album that many critics agree sees the singer bloom as she takes her rightful place: Centre stage.
For tickets for Lisa Hannigan at The Live Lounge (€23 each), call the hotel on 091 538300 or Zhivago on 091 509950. Tickets are also available from www.ticketmaster.ie. Doors open at 8pm.

To win tickets to the gig plus a night’s accommodation at
Radisson Blu Hotel, Galway just click here