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Hannah O’Brien is a classical and Irish fiddle player, composer and arranger, based in the Boston area. Learning fiddle primarily from her father Andrew O’Brien, she grew up playing Irish music in her hometown through St. Louis Irish Arts. She has fondly spent summers at the Joe Mooney School, Scoil Acla, and Scoil Éigse learning from fiddle players Liam O’Connor, Gerry Harrington, and Nickie McAuliffe as well as studying with Liz Knowles at the New England Conservatory.
O’Brien is part of an acoustic string duo with musical partner Grant Flick. By merging their influences in Irish, Classical, and American folk idioms, Hannah and Grant aim to rework their own traditional music and give it new expression. The duo’s original music tells a story about people, places, experiences, and events, directly paralleling much of the playing from their upbringings in European and North American fiddling. The duo has released two records, and are the recipients of many grants including the Binkow Chamber Music Grant, Excel Enterprise Fund and the Club Passim Iguana Fund.
A graduate of the University of Michigan School of Music and the New England Conservatory, Hannah regularly plays with ensembles including the Boston Lyric Opera, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Des Moines Metro Opera, and Cape Cod Chamber Orchestra.
