Almost twenty years ago Colm Mac Con Iomaire was struggling to describe his early attempts at composition and made a distinction between “tunes’ and “music”. Much of his playing life up to that point had been in the Irish traditional world of “tunes” effectively the dance music which makes up much but by no means all of the instrumental repertoire in Irish traditional music. His father’s people came from the Conamara Gaeltacht and Colm’s family were Irish speakers living in Dublin. The Irish language sean nós unaccompanied singing tradition with its storehouse of ancient and beautiful airs was embedded early on in his musical consciousness. On his mother’s side there was classical instrumental music on the violin and piano and Colm learned to play as a very young child. It was a musical home, one visited by musicians and singers…. a place of naturally occurring opposites …Irish and English, rural and urban, classical and traditional, old and new.