Manchester artist Emma Sweeney was introduced to Irish music aged seven, taking tin whistle classes under Sligo’s Marian Eagan. At ten years of age she progressed onto the fiddle, taught by Colin Farrell and later, Andy Dinan. Her potential flourished further under the mentorship of Mike McGoldrick, who encouraged and tutored her in whistle and fiddle.
Although Emma’s career is young, she has amassed an abundance of live experience performing alongside a whole raft of revered traditional musicians, including Dick Gaughan, Cara Dillon, Sam Lakeman, Ed Boyd, Luke Daniels, Donald Shaw, Eamon McElholm, Ian Fletcher, Mike McGoldrick, Dezi Donnelly, Andy Dinan, Tony Byrne, Matt Griffin, Mick O’brien, Tiarnán Ó Duinnchinn, Donal Lunny, Martin O’Connor and John Joe Kelly.
A finalist at the prestigious BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award in 2003, Emma’s devotion to music has taken her across Europe and beyond. At the age of eighteen, she travelled to Kolkata, India, where she founded a project teaching the tin whistle to 300 street children and orphans from the city’s slums. Her debut EP, The Other Crossing, released in late 2010, received excellent reviews and airplay, including Mike Harding on BBC Radio 2.
