Acclaimed composer to perform in Nenagh
Special show on November 6
Composer and pianist Maccana (Caomhán Maccana) is bringing his original piano music directly to audiences across Ireland this winter with The Unseen Growth of Winter, a 16-date all-island debut tour running from Kerry to Derry, which visits Nenagh Arts Centre on on Friday, November 6.
Among those supporting Maccana ahead of his debut tour is internationally acclaimed Irish composer Patrick Cassidy, whose film credits include The Tree of Life, Kingdom of Heaven, Hannibal and Calvary.
The 70-minute solo concert places a composer, a piano and an audience in the same room as the music is performed by the person who wrote it.
At a time when so much music and entertainment is experienced through screens, streaming and short-form content, The Unseen Growth of Winter offers something deliberately immediate: an evening of original music performed live at the piano.
For younger musicians and piano students, the concerts also offer an opportunity to see an Irish composer performing his own work live, taking music from composition through to performance in front of an audience.
Maccana’s cinematic contemporary piano music draws on Celtic, Eastern and classical traditions, combining strong lyrical melody with a distinctive rhythmic and percussive approach to the instrument.
DEBUT ALBUM
Maccana’s debut tour follows the release of his debut album, Maccana: Live in Lady Guthrie’s Drawing Room, recorded during a 2026 composer residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre on an early twentieth-century Obermeier grand piano.
Recorded live in the drawing room of the early nineteenth-century house, the album retains the natural atmosphere surrounding the performances, with birdsong and other sounds from the grounds becoming part of the recordings.
The album introduces Maccana’s distinctive approach to the piano as both a melodic and percussive instrument. His compositions move between stillness and strongly rhythmic passages, with Eastern rhythmic influences sitting alongside the lyrical qualities of Irish and classical music.
His solo concerts feature entirely original work, including The Rising, Corona, Ven á Mí and Athrú, alongside new compositions written for the tour. Among the works developed during his Tyrone Guthrie Centre residency is Éan, dedicated to Moya Brennan of Clannad.
The album and tour come at the end of a particularly active year for Maccana, who has composed scores for two special 2026 radio productions scheduled for broadcast on Newstalk before the end of the year.
The Demands of the Day: Ireland and Palestine, presented by Declan O’Rourke, is a new radio documentary produced by Maccana, for which he also composed the original music.
The Corona Monologues is a radio drama set during the Covid pandemic, starring Tina Kellegher, Jordanne Jones and Gabrielle Adewusi.
MUSIC FROM THE BORDERLANDS
Born in Enniskillen and raised a mile south of the border in Belturbet, County Cavan, Maccana describes himself as a border artist and composer.
For more than two decades, he has worked across radio, television and film as a producer, writer and composer, with productions involving BBC, RTÉ, TG4 and Newstalk.
In 2025, he received his most recent award at the Celtic Media Festival in Cornwall.
Throughout that period he continued composing, much of it for radio drama and documentary.
Following the death of his father in 2024, Maccana made the decision to place composition and live performance at the centre of his creative work.
TICKET DETAILS
Tickets for the concert are available from Nenagh Arts Centre – tel: 067 34400 or visit nenagharts.com.