Mayo musician features on Grammy Award-winning album

Mayo traditional musician Emer Mayock features on the Grammy Award-winning album They’re Calling Me Home by Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi.

Recorded during Covid-19 lockdown in Ireland, the album features Emer on uilleann pipes, flute and whistle.

They’re Calling Me Home won Best Folk Album at the 2022 Grammy Awards, announced on Sunday (April 3).

The Castlebar artist's work made quite the impact too, with the Irish Times saying: “Mayock’s pipes on 'Amazing Grace' are lonesomeness personified.”

Giddens and Turrisi, two expats, found themselves drawn to and comforted by the music of their native and adoptive countries of America, Italy and Ireland, which they recorded at a spare studio on a working farm outside of Dublin.

The result is a 12-song album that speaks to the longing for the comfort of home as well as the metaphorical call 'home' of death. The album track 'Avalon', written by Giddens, Turrisi and Justin Robinson, was also nominated for Best American Roots Song.

Emer Mayock, a native of Ross, Castlebar, learned to play tin whistle at an early age and has since graduated to the flute (her main instrument), fiddle and uilleann pipes, and has previously played on a Grammy-nominated album – Volume 3 by Afro Celt Sound System.