Maccana brings 'Unseen Growth of Winter' to Mullingar Arts Centre
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 debut tour running from Kerry to Derry. The tour began in Listowel on October 14, culminates at St Columb’s Hall in Derry on January 30, 2027, and is at Mullingar Arts Centre on Thursday November 12.
Caomhán has just released his debut album and, after more than two decades working as a producer, writer and composer across radio, television and film for the BBC, RTÉ and others, at the age of 52, he is putting his own music and live performance centre stage for the first time.
It was the death of his father in 2024 that prompted the move to live performance.
The Mullingar Arts Centre concert is an intimate 70-minute solo performance of original piano music. Caomhán says his cinematic contemporary compositions draw on Celtic, Eastern and classical traditions and combine lyrical melody with a distinctive rhythmic and percussive approach to the instrument.
Composer Patrick Cassidy, whose film credits include The Tree of Life, Kingdom of Heaven, Hannibal and Calvary, has said: “There is a real beauty in how rooted Caomhán Maccana’s music is in Irish culture, and it is played with real heart. What he is doing is unique and worthwhile.”
For younger musicians and piano students, the concerts 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 debut album is Maccana: Live in Lady Guthrie’s Drawing Room, recorded during a 2026 composer residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre on an early 20th-century Obermeier grand piano.
Born in Enniskillen and raised in Belturbet, County Cavan, Maccana describes himself as a border artist and composer. Growing up a mile from the border shaped his artistic sensibility: different traditions and perspectives coexist, and there can be many ways of seeing the same thing. His mother had played the organ and led a choir in the local church as he grew up.
Maccana says: “The piano is a percussion instrument, close in spirit to congas. Composition, for me, is a process of uncovering rhythms and melodies that already exist, waiting to be shaped. When certain notes are played in a certain way, a piece begins to call from a distance.”