Mike Fitzmaurice Accoustic Bass, Guitar, Harmony Vocals. Compositions: Siege of Kinsale, Flight to Salamanca, The Red Kite, Glenveagh Medley, The Icy Sidewalk, The 3rd of January, and Margaret's Birthday. With Mick Bolger: Yellow Doll and April. Arrangements: Crooked Jack (Dominic Behan).

Tell us about your early musical life. Did you come from a musical family? Did you have lessons?

      About the age of sixteen I learned my first two guitar chords (yes I was one of those guys playing "down by the river" in the park). I had no formal training. After high school I went to art school where I jammed with friends and did some of my first gigs and eventually graduated with a BFA. At this point I joined a band and earned a subsistence living with gigs and a day job in an art supply store. So at that point all my musical training had come from books and other musicians (mostly from other musicians as I was unable to read standard notation).
      In 1980 I moved to Colorado and within a few years started playing bass. around 1984 I started taking lessons with Frank Carroll at the University of Colorado in Boulder who convinced me to go back to school. So I auditioned, and in 1985 at the tender age of thirty I began my second Bachelors degree, and that is when my formal musical training began.

How did you become interested in Irish Music? What is it that makes that music compelling for you?

      To be fair, it was subbing for Colcannon's previous bass player that got me into the music. I had heard the Chieftains and some of the local folk bands when I lived in New York and played in a Bluegrass band, but it was in Colcannon that I learned about Irish music. Again, it was learning from other musicians, but now I could read standard musical notation so books played a larger role too. Colcannon is a wonderful creative environment in that we all write and we all enjoy working collaboratively.

What sort of music do you mostly listen to for enjoyment?

      That's hard to say, I listen to a variety of music: Jazz, Classical and Modern Orchestra music, Chinese music, Folk, Bluegrass, lots of Local music....

What do you do for fun?

      Full contact Origami.

What kind of books do you read? Anything recently that you'd recommend?

      I recently finished "The History of American Classical Music" by John Warthen Struble. an excellent book but I wouldn't recommend it to just anybody. I would however recommend "The Devils Cup" (by Stewart Lee Allen) to just about anybody especially if you love Good Coffee like I do.

How much does your Bass weigh?

      About 40 pounds

Tell us about Lusanna.

     "Lusanna" is the second piece written for Colcannon and Orchestra, the first being "The Red Kite" which is an instrumental piece in three movements. Lusanna on the other hand contains songs and is through composed (meaning no awkward breaks between movements), and it features the harp. The harp plays as a soloist and with Colcannon and also plays the transitions between sections.
     I enjoy the challenges of writing for such a large ensemble and wanted to write something with vocal parts for Mick so that it would be more like what we do normally ( songs & tunes ), and Mick has always expressed interest in doing spoken word over instrumental music, so we worked with that idea too.
     This piece evolved over a long period of time and some of the themes were written a long time ago and were just waiting around for a home.

Any plans for new orchestra pieces?

     I will try to write another large piece for the band, but I have no idea what it will be yet. In the meantime I'll be trying to get started on some arrangements of songs. We sometimes will do a concert with a Symphony and play one of the larger pieces, and then some songs and tunes ( some by ourselves and some with orchestra ), so I'll be working on more arrangements.

What good books have you read recently?

     I finally finished Henry Fielding's "Tom Jones" and am now in the middle of two books. The first is short but I keep putting it down because it's so disturbing. The book is 9-11 by Noam Chomsky and is basically transcribed interviews from after September 11th. A couple pages of that and I need to escape, and right now I'm escaping into the third book in Philip Pullmans Trilogy " His Dark Materials" I'd been holding these two while I finished Tom Jones which I had started twice before but lost or misplaced during one of my seemingly endless residential moves. Then I came across a copy in a thrift store in Granby and thought, "I must finish that".

What are you listening to these days?

     The Band was just in N.Y.C. performing at a conference and I met up with some old friends as well as making some new friends. Steve Holloway is an amazing jazz drummer and old friend who is also a Bodhrán player, his album "Next Stop Seely Court" shows just how tasteful a player he is.
     I also enjoyed meeting a new friend, Bassist an song writer Ritt Henn whose album "Goin Back" is load with good humorous songs and excellent playing.
     Live performances at the conference were wonderful (Kora player Mamadou Diabate and the Pipa player Wu Man were highlights). At home I've been listening to Fred Hess& Marc Sabatelle "right at Home" The Bill Evans Trio " Sunday at the Village Vanguard" Janet Feder "ICYIMI" and Er Hu Player Jie-Bing Chen "Spirit on two Strings".