Marcus Hernon is a flute

Flute

The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...

 player and also a flute maker. He has won two Senior All-Ireland Fleadhs, he has also won a few Junior All-Irelands and a senior Duet with Maeve Donnelly. His band, The Tribes Céilí Band, have never won the All-Ireland Fleadh, but have got numerous first places in the County and Provincial competitions.

Early years

Marcus has been playing since a very young age. Born in Ruisín na Mainíoch, Connemara

Connemara

Connemara is a district in the west of Ireland consisting of a broad peninsula between Killary Harbour and Kilkieran Bay in the west of County Galway.-Overview:...

, Co. Galway, Ireland, Marcus traces his music back to his Granduncle, Peaitín Connelly (Peaitín Pháraic Mháirtín, as he was known locally), in Feenish Island, who used to play the melodeon

Melodeon (organ)

A melodeon is a type of 19th century reed organ with a foot-operated vacuum bellows, and a piano keyboard. It differs from the related harmonium, which uses a pressure bellows. Melodeons were manufactured in the United States sometime after 1812 until the Civil War era...

, a small type of accordion

Accordion

The accordion is a box-shaped musical instrument of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone family, sometimes referred to as a squeezebox. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist....

 with one row of buttons. Feenish is a small island off the coast of Ruisín na Mainíoch. Marcus' mother Nora Hernon was from the island and used to visit frequently, this was the main source of Marcus' music

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

. Every night on the island there used to be a session

Session

-Bureaucracy:*Executive session, a portion of the United States Senate's daily session*Legislative session*Session *Session , a governing body in Presbyterian polity*Court of Session, the supreme civil court of Scotland...

 (these were known as the times), Every time he went to the island, Marcus used to learn a few new tunes. He was lucky in the sense that his older brother, P.J. Hernon, played on the button accordion

Button accordion

A button accordion is a type of accordion on which the melody-side keyboard consists of a series of buttons rather than piano-style keys. There exists a wide variation in keyboard systems, tuning, action and construction of these instruments...

 and was able to give him help whenever he got stuck in a tune. Later on, when he was a little older, his mother used to buy him 78 records of the musicians of the time and even to this day Marcus' repertoire of tunes consists mostly of the tunes he learnt from these records.

Marcus Hernon At The Moment

At the moment Marcus plays most of his gigs in the Connemara area. He has played in a lot of different countries before now, including: Austria, Sweden, Denmark, Portugal, Australia, England, Finland and last Summer he played in the United States of America. He plays most of his gigs these days with Johnny Connelly, a melodeon player who comes from another island called Inis Bearachain.

As well as playing with Johnny, Marcus also plays with Fíghnis (the Irish for Feenish); a band which consists of himself, his brother (P.J.) and Don Stiffe. Don Stiffe plays the guitar and sings, while Marcus and P.J. play the flute and the accordion, respectively. They have recorded one album together called Rabharta (which means Spring Tide in Irish).

He used to play with the Tribes Céilí Band. The Tribes Céilí Band was a traditional Céilí Band with ten members: Yvonne Flynn, Eilish O'Connor, and Áine McGrath on fiddles, Tommy Keane on the uilleann pipes, Jaqueline Mc Carthy on the concertina, Bernie Conneelly on the banjo, P.J. Hernon on the button accordion, Carl Hession on the piano, Benny O'Connor on drums, and Marcus Hernon on the flute. Marcus was the band leader. The Tribes were disbanded in 2008.

Composer

Marcus has also composed music. He composed all of the music on his CD The Grouse In The Heather. He also composed two of the tunes on the CD Rabharta. He has composed 25 tunes all-together so far. Here is a list of the tunes he has composed:

CD-The Grouse In The Heather

• The Grouse In The Heather (Reel)
• The Hunted Pheasant (Reel
• The Snipe In The Marsh (Jig)
• The Curlew's Cry (Jig)
• The Invisible Corncrake (Slow Air)
• The Peeping Plover (Reel)
• The Squeaking Woodcock (Reel)
• The Chattering Stormcock (Hornpipe)
• The Musical Thrush (Hornpipe)
• The Herring Gull (Reel)
• The Diving Gannet (Reel)
• The Golden Plover (Jig)
• The Bobbing Sandpiper (Jig)
• The Linnet's Chorus (Waltz)
• The Beautiful Goldfinch (Waltz)
• The Hovering Kestrel (Reel)
• The Lady's Falcon (Reel)
• The Lonely Bittern (Slow Air)
• The Nesting Goldcrest (Jig)
• The Warbling Robin (Barn-Dance)
• The Kingfisher's Delight (Reel)
• The Dark-eyed Raven (Reel)
• The Barefaced Crow (Reel)

Flute Maker

Marcus also makes the flutes. He makes these flutes in three standard keys

Key (music)

In music theory, the term key is used in many different and sometimes contradictory ways. A common use is to speak of music as being "in" a specific key, such as in the key of C major or in the key of F-sharp. Sometimes the terms "major" or "minor" are appended, as in the key of A minor or in the...

, Dmajor, E^bmajor and B^bmajor. He makes two different types of flute, Pratten (where the upper middle and lower middle are in one piece) and Rudell & Rose (where the upper middle and lower middle are separated by a joint). Marcus uses a few different types of timber in the making of his flutes, depending on what he has in stock, i.e. African Blackwood

African Blackwood

Dalbergia melanoxylon is a flowering plant in the family Fabaceae, native to seasonally dry regions of Africa from Senegal east to Eritrea and south to the Transvaal in South Africa....

 (Black Ebony), Rio Rosewood and Cooktown Ironwood. He also makes the cases for these flutes. the cases are made from Cherrywood

Cherrywood

Cherrywood is one of Dublin's newest suburbs, withhin Loughlinstown, and bordering Rathmichael, to the south east of the city, in the County of Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown...

.

Discography

Name	Label	Format
Floating Crowbar]	GTD	Cassette
Cruaigh Pháraic	GTD	Cassette
Béal A' Mhurlaigh	Gael Linn	CD, Cassette and record
'Feenish Legacy	Feenish Sound	Cassette
The Grouse In The Heather	Feenish Sound	CD
Rabharta	Feenish Sound	CD