Martin Donnelly's Home Page

Meeting and Working With Martin...

This home page has been created by me, Alastair McIntosh, on my website, for folks who, like myself , have found themselves trying to track down Martin Donnelly for his wonderful musical skills!

I first met Martin at the Green Living Festival at Castle Espie near Belfast in 2004. He played a spellbinding concert. His songs were the music of deep ecology - which is to say, the notion that the human self is ultimately connected to the consciousness of nature. What he did that night set a great tenor for the keynote talk I gave the following day on the theme of Soil and Soul. 

Later, Martin attended a workshop that Verene and I ran for the Sisters at Drumalis in Larne. There were about 30 people there, and we roped him in to compering the ceilidh. It was an old fashioned sort of ceilidh - the best sort, where Martin did a few songs to get it going and then he coaxed something out of everybody else. It takes real skill for a musician to be able to draw the music out of others, but he achieved it. 

The highlight, however, was the next day I was to make a presentation of the ancient Dalriadan text, Sweeney Astray. I got Martin to accompany my presentation with some of the songs he's written. It was so good that we did the same again, making an evening's session of it, in October 2005 for Zero28 at the Irish School of Ecumenics in Belfast. It left us all a bit mindblown, and that's why I'm creating this webpage for him now. This page is therefore a very simple site which will serve to allow others who want to contact him.

Eco-spiritual Music ....

Martin's music is inspired by the land, sea and skies of Ireland. It reveals the link between spirituality and ecological awareness. His first CD is Stone and Light, and Earthbound has just been released from his own publishing arm. When not making music he teaches gardening and environment at the Holywood Steiner School. Stone and Light is available for purchase over the web including audio samples - click this link.

Gigs and Professional Work....

Martin can be professionally contracted  to play concerts, facilitate ceilidh participation and run song-writing workshops. He is also a psychotherapist of 18 years experience, specialising in personal development thorugh transpersonal psychotherapy (i.e. approaches that take spirituality seriously). He is particularly interested in work that integrates music, ecology, spirituality and depth psychology. When I saw him at Castle Espie, he was working with another musician, an accomplished woman fiddler, so it's not necessarily just himself that he can pull together for a session. 

Contacting Martin ....

Martin Donnelly, Flat 5, No. 1 Martello Terrace, Holywood, BT18 9BE, Northern Ireland. Tel: 02890 424607

Updated: 11 October 2005

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