Moya Brennan – the voice of Clannad – heads to Bexhill’s De La Warr Pavilion

“I haven't done a solo tour since 2018-2019,” Moya says. “We took on the Clannad farewell in 2020 and because of the pandemic the farewell took forever! We finally finished last year. But it was brilliant actually. It was really, really enjoyable. My son and daughter were on the stage with us and it was just really nice. And when people said ‘Is this really going to be the last tour?’ the fact is that I love my brothers to death but I've been on stage with them for more than 50 years! And people looked at me and they understood. But really it was just great to make a decision about something like that. We did a short German tour in 2019 and during that tour we looked at each other and we just thought let's have one big last hurrah. We were all doing different things and it's nice to be able to get the chance to do those other things now. I couldn’t do my own solo work while Clannad were still out there.”

The lovely thing is that the farewell tour, however long it took, has left a lovely warm feeling, Moya says: “You look back at what we have achieved, the 19 albums and the soundtracks for movies and TV shows, and for a small family band that started off singing Gaelic songs, you look back and you realise it was an amazing journey that never in our wildest dreams could we ever have imagined would happen.”

Now Moya can enjoy her solo career with her own band. She is delighted to have daughter Aisling and son Paul in her band along with harpist Cormac De Barra and fiddle player Cathal O’Currain.

“My own tour is very relaxed. I've got my harp player who's been with me for nearly 20 years and it's a really nice vibe. I've got my son and my daughter and it's very compact and very nice and just much more laidback with a lot less stress than when you are playing the bigger venues.”

Accompanying the tour is her ninth solo album. Voices & Harps IV, her fourth collaboration with Cormac De Barra, pays tribute to legendary Irish harpist and singer, Mary O’Hara.

“It is my tribute to a woman who was a sensation in the 50s and 60s. She was right up there. She was playing the Carnegie Hall and Sydney Opera House and the Royal Albert Hall, this woman up there with a harp and singing, and she did a lot of songs that are really well known today. It was her that made Lord of the Dance prominent in the 1950s.

“And she is still alive. She is 89. We went down to see her. She heard about what we were doing. I'd never met her and it was just wonderful to see her. She is a very tall woman and very, very beautiful. We were supposed to be there for an hour and a half, and four and a half hours we spent having the most wonderful time.”