MartinHayes
- Fiddle
About Martin
Praised by the Irish Times as a musician with an “insatiable appetite for adventure”, Martin Hayes is regarded as one of the most significant talents to emerge in the world of Irish traditional music. He is the founder of the musical supergroup The Gloaming, The Common Ground Ensemble, and the Martin Hayes Quartet. He is the artistic director of Masters of Tradition, an annual festival in Cork, Ireland, and a co-curator for the Marble Sessions at the Kilkenny Arts Festival, Ireland.
Martin has performed in venues such as the Barbican, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Philharmonie Cologne, Philharmonie de Paris, Muziekgebouw Amsterdam, and Usher Hall, Edinburgh. He has created collaborations in the classical, folk and contemporary music worlds with musicians such as Bill Frisell, Ricky Skaggs, Jordi Savall, Brooklyn Rider and the Irish Chamber Orchestra, and the RTE Concert Orchestra. He has performed on stage with musicians such as Sting and Paul Simon and has recorded with Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Project.
The 25/26 season sees Martin curate a celebration of Irish traditional music at Cork Opera House; returns to the Belfast International Festival and Concertgebouw Amsterdam; debuts at Rheingau Music Festival and Penn Live Arts with the Martin Hayes Quartet. In spring 2026, Martin Hayes will curate and lead a major Irish music celebration featuring the Common Ground Ensemble, launching at the National Concert Hall in Dublin before embarking on a U.S. tour. The centrepiece of the tour will be a landmark concert at Carnegie Hall on St. Patrick’s Day, inaugurating a new annual tradition in partnership with Carnegie Hall, New York’s Irish Arts Center, and the National Concert Hall. Joined by special guests, the performances will blend traditional Irish music, song, dance, spoken word, and contemporary interpretations of Irish culture. The tour will include stops at Notre Dame, Cleveland, Boston, and Ann Arbor.
Recent highlights include 3 sold-out concerts with the National Symphony Orchestra Dublin where Martin’s album Peggy’s Dream was reimagined for fiddle and orchestra, a tour of the UK with the Martin Hayes Trio, to cities including London, Leeds, Bristol and Manchester; and concerts at Union Chapel in London, The Auckland Arts festival in New Zealand, The Kennedy Center in Washington DC in celebration of the anniversary of Northern Ireland’s Good Friday Agreement, at the Stresa Festival. In 2023, Martin released his first recording with the Common Ground Ensemble entitled “Peggy’s Dream”, which received a 5-star review in the Irish Times.
Growing up in a musical family in rural county Clare, Ireland, in a remote mountainous locality with a rich music tradition, instilled in Martin a deep love, understanding and connection to traditional music.
Contact
For availability and general enquiries:
Kate Sweeney
Tours:
Sorcha Coller
Chiara Fahy-Spada
Representation
Season Highlights
Video
- Playing
Martin Hayes and the Common Ground Ensemble: A St. Patrick’s Day Celebration
Credit: Carnegie Hall
Martin Hayes & The Common Ground Ensemble - NCH Dublin
Credit: National Concert Hall Dublin
Martin Hayes & Kate Ellis live from Parke's Castle
Credit: Other Voices Anam
Martin Hayes, Cormac McCarthy & Brian Donnellan
Credit: Masters of Tradition
The Gloaming - The Sailor's Bonnet
Credit: Other Voices
Martin Hayes - Maids of Feakle
Credit: Aniar TV
Martin Hayes - My Love is in America
Credit: Other Voices Live
Photos
Projects
Martin Hayes and the Common Ground Ensemble: An Irish Celebration
A true celebration of the arts, Irish heritage and the enduring power of cultural exchange.
Learn about this projectProjects
Martin Hayes and the Common Ground Ensemble: An Irish Celebration
A true celebration of the arts, Irish heritage and the enduring power of cultural exchange.
Learn about this project
News
Martin Hayes kicks off Irish Celebration tour including first annual St Patrick’s Day Celebration at Carnegie Hall
Martin Hayes tours Australia
Carnegie Hall announces 2026/27 season
Carnegie Hall 2025/26: 24 AH artists and new annual celebration in co-presentation with Askonas Holt
Askonas Holt welcomes fiddler Martin Hayes
Press
An Irish Celebration Martin Hayes & The Common Ground Ensemble
London, Dublin, and the USAMar 2026To watch Martin Hayes play the Irish fiddle is like watching a man possessed by his music. As his bow flickers across the strings the infectious energy of it spills into the air, through his limbs, and eventually out into the whistling, whooping crowd. His virtuoso repertoire of Irish traditional music spliced with jazz, avant-garde classical, and shimmers of rock filled the venue with an exuberance that made us feel like sycamore leaves spinning in the wind.
- The Arts Desk
- 11 March 2026
Australian Duo Tour With Kyle Sanna
Chatswood Concourse Concert Hall (Sydney) & Melbourne Recital CentreFeb 2026East Clare fiddler Martin Hayes and New York guitarist Kyle Sanna transform the neo-Gothic nave into something between a country kitchen session and a contemplative vigil. This is Hayes’ great structural gift: the juxtaposition of inward-looking airs with increasingly lively jigs and reels that build in layers of excitement, inherited and improvised variation piling upon variation until the foot-tapping becomes irresistible. By the time each set reaches its peak, the stately cathedral feels positively kinetic.
- Limelight Music News and Culture
- 20 February 2026
Like the trumpet-playing of Miles Davis or the voices of Billie Holiday and Jose Carreras, that same feeling is ever present in the great Irish violinist’s sound and phrasing.
- Sydney Morning Herald
- 25 February 2026
★★★★★ For Hayes, melody is the beating heart of this music, and he can shepherd a melody through infinite variations without ever diluting its essence.
- The Age
- 24 February 2026
It’s immediately apparent that Hayes’ playing is so pure, gentle and controlled, all signs of a virtuoso musician. In Martin Hayes’ hands, the fiddle is not merely an instrument but very much a part of his body, the bow an extension of his arm, while his fingers flutter delicately at the other end of the violin’s neck.
- Australian Musician
- 25 February 2026
From rural County Clare, Martin Hayes is a unique and legendary fiddler, a humble artist and an extraordinary performer, who has absorbed the best of all musical genres and traditions.
- Classic Melbourne
- 25 February 2026
Martin Hayes & The Common Ground Ensemble
Vicar Street, DublinOct 2023Hayses’s admission that when a tune is lying around in his head for too long, there’s no knowing what he’s going to do with it, summed up the evening: unpredictable, richly textured, at times delirious and so, so full of heart.
- The Irish Times
- 20 October 2023
Peggy's Dream - album review
Mar 2023An unquenchable affinity with the melody line has defined Martin Hayes’s musical odyssey, along with an insatiable appetite for adventure.
- The Irish Times
- 31 March 2023
Martin Hayes Recital
The Queens Hall, EdinburghMar 2020He outlines its contours, while shaping and re-shaping its content, introducing an element of improvisation, and never losing sight of its form.
- Edinburgh Music Review
- 06 March 2020
Martin Hayes & the Common Ground Ensemble
National Concert Hall, DublinMar 2022This was seven highly skilled and self-assured musicians, drawn from different backgrounds but playing utterly in their element.
