Colm Mac Con Ionmaire is a core member of The Frames and Oscar winning band The Swell Season.
He is an innovator of such originality he makes fiddle playing sound as though it was invented yesterday.
With ‘The Hare’s Corner,’ his thematic solo album, Mac Con Iomaire has created music so rich and seductive that it recalls everything from Irish pubs to American backwoods bluegrass.
‘The Hare's Corner’was nominated for a 2009 Meteor Award for Best Traditional Folk Album. It highlights the reflective, contemplative side of Ionmaire, giving time and space for his compositions to grow and develop in a seductively enticing and cinematic way.
 
“The playing is delicate. The production polished. The music is remarkably beautiful, a little traditional, a little classical, a little Eastern, a little Turkish, a little North-African, a little soundtrack-like, a little Frames-like, a little Mac Con Iomaire-like and more than anything very Colm-like!”  Colm Ó Snodaigh (Kíla)
 
The Hare's Corner


The phrase ‘The Hare's Corner’ comes from the ancient Irish Custom of at harvest time leaving a corner of a 
field uncut as a refuge for the Hare to escape to (A custom also found among the Mayan Indians).  “
I first heard my father Liam, mention the phrase in a conversation we had about the famous writer and Irish language activist Máirtín Ó Cadhain (O'Kyne). 
Ó Cadhain identified the 'Gaeltachtaí' or 'Irish speaking regions' as being like the Hare's Corner of the Island of Ireland- that had but a temporary reprieve from the reaper's blade. 
Thankfully the linguistic uniqueness of the 'Gaeltacht' still endures.  
But our language is still in jeopardy.

  The Hare has long been associated in Ireland with the Superstitious and the Supernatural and was considered to be the 'Shape-Shifter', the traveller between worlds.  
I was captivated by the metaphor of the ‘Hare's Corner.’  
It represents for me the wild and mysterious source of the many rivers of music and imagination..
The music here on this record are the strange gifts I returned with from my many walks in the long grass!

”  Colm Mac
 
Background
Colm Mac Con Iomaire is from Blackrock, Co. Dublin. He plays violin and sings vocals with the Irish rock group The Frames.  Mac Con Iomaire has been involved with The Frames since 1990 and has been a member of the Swell Season since 2006 (albums "Once" and "Strict Joy").
Previously, Colm was a founding member of Irish folk group Kíla since 1987.  His involvement with Kíla began during his schooldays at Coláiste Eoin, an Irish Language secondary school (Meánscoil) in Co. Dublin, Ireland. It was his interest in the Irish Language that led to The Frames' involvement with the release of two Irish language albums released for Irish charity Concern during Seachtain na Gaeilge. This included an Irish language version of the Burn the Maps track "Locusts" entitled "Lócáistí" on the SnG05 album in 2005 and more recently a song called "Pian agus Ciúnas" in the 2006 album Ceol 06.
 
AUSTRALIAN TOUR DATES – JANUARY 2011
 
Saturday 22            Sutherland Entertainment Centre, Sydney Festival
Sunday 23            Riverside Theatres Parramatta, Sydney Festival           
Tuesday            25            The Famous Spiegletent, Sydney Festival
Wednesday 26            The Famous Spiegletent, Sydney Festival
Thursday 27            The Famous Spiegletent, Sydney Festival
Friday 28            Melbourne Recital Hall, Melbourne