“Being at the top of the rankings changed my life”

Image source, PA

January 1, 2024

An Irish pianist whose blend of classical and traditional has topped charts around the world has said his life had been "overwhelmed" by the success.

Jamie Duffy, from County Monaghan, was studying politics in Belfast when he released his first single, Solas.

It is the first most successful song on streaming services by an Irish artist since Hozier's Take Me To Church, with over 60 million streams 'listens on Spotify.

Solas was number one in the Dutch classical charts and in Kazakhstan.

And now the 22-year-old is counting almost a million a month. listeners on Spotify only.

When he was 17, Duffy began working as a pianist at Castle Leslie, a stately home and hotel in Glaslough, his village native.

He continued a family musical legacy, as his grandmother was a DJ on the grounds of one of the very first nightclubs in rural Ireland in the late 1960s.

“It was always there in the background, and then I started playing the piano and doing the notes - it's there that the most serious elements came into play,” he said. .

He also played music in school, while learning to create music himself, he said.< /p>

Duffy's unique sound comes from mixing classical and traditional Irish music, using the tin whistle in many of his pieces.

"It's such a traditional instrument, but the songs I would have played on it really wouldn't have been too traditional," he said. "It would have been more folk.

"I think that's how the clash of genres that I have today as a musician was born - it's like playing these traditional instruments. with different genres, which might not always have been the case with other musicians. »