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The Sorrowful and the Great is the first comprehensive biography of Tommie Potts’ life and unique artistic process. Written by ITMA’s Seán Potts, Tommie’s grandnephew and son of the late Seán Potts, founder member of The Chieftains, the book charts the course of Tommie’s formative years in the fertile musical environment of his family home; the trauma he endured as a young firefighter surviving the Pearse Street tragedy of 1936; his powerful relationship with the great traditional musicians of county Clare; the story of The Liffey Banks LP; his friendship with Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin and an assessment of his legacy by the contemporary artists who encountered his genius during their lifetime.
Tommie Potts has gone from to obscurity to being a musician whose music will be mandatory listening for generations to come. His is truly a remarkable story.
– Martin Hayes
The Unbroken Music of Heaven is a new book from the Irish Traditional Music Archive (ITMA) presenting a selection of Tommie Potts’ most exemplary arranged melodies and compositions housed in ITMA’s collections, painstakingly transcribed and beautifully annotated by the great violinist and fiddle player Aoife Ní Bhriain, a devotee of Potts’s distinctive music.
