Neil Ó Lochlainn / flute, double bass
Sam Comerford / saxophone, clarinet
Ultan O’Brien / fiddle, alto fiddle

“Cuar is redefining the possibilities of Irish traditional music and taking it into haunting, imaginatively fertile new terrain” – Ian Patterson, All About Jazz

Cuar is a chamber ensemble playing the music of Neil Ó Lochlainn, flute player, double bassist and composer from Clare, Ireland.

Citing influences as varied as traditional music from Clare, Tommie Potts, Martin Hayes, sean-nós singing and uilleann pipe music on the one hand; and the Karnatak (South Indian) music tradition, composers Morton Feldman, Béla Bartók and downtown jazz on the other, the music disavows the idea of genre to create a boundaryless style rich in melodic detail. The Irish Times has referred to the group as “a beautiful missive from the new post genre frontier”.

The project has released three album to date: Roscanna (2017) a specular suite released on Raelach Records, Umhaill (2022) listed as one of the Irish Times albums of 2022 and Tairseach (2024) which was commissioned by the Solstice Arts centre and composed in response to fiddle player Tommie Potts’ solo album The Liffey Banks. Tairseach (liminal space) explores the outer regions where tradition/innovation, composition/improvisation and form/structure begin to disintegrate.

“Neil has an instinct and a feel for different strands of music that allows him to create uncompromised musical worlds that speak with real depth and authenticity” – Martin Hayes