Tallaght · 2026
Dúchas na Dothra
Tallaght viewed through the River Dodder.
- Year
- 2026
- Location
- Tallaght
- Ensemble
- National Folk Orchestra of Ireland
- Role
- Composed · Arranged · Conducted by Tom Doorley
A portrait of Tallaght in which the River Dodder becomes a witness to landscape, community, memory and change.
The story
Dúchas na Dothra begins with the idea that a river remembers differently. The Dodder passes through a landscape transformed by settlement, industry, housing, roads and generations of ordinary life, holding older and newer Tallaght within the same course.
The work brings those layers into conversation through traditional music, original composition, song and narration. Rather than treating local history as a sequence of dates, it listens for the relationship between people and the place they have inherited and remade.
The music
The music moves between intimate melodic material and the scale of a large traditional orchestra. Existing musical language is not set apart from new composition; both belong to a continuous act of remembering and imagining.
Recurring ideas give the river a structural presence while contrasting textures allow different human stories to emerge around it.
People
Presented with the National Folk Orchestra of Ireland, narrator Peter Coonan and singer Michaela Keenaghan.