Donal Corcoran (Ireland)
Guitar, vocals
Donal is a singer-songwriter from County Kildare in Ireland. He
performed his first professional gig on the bass at the age of 15. Donal moved to
Nice in 1994 and started playing guitar at local bars along the French Riviera as a
solo musician, as well as in various bands and line-ups performing different styles
of music, from rock and pop to country and Irish music. Donal, highly sought-after
for his mastery of the guitar, is also a skilled banjo, mandolin and ukulele player
and was a founding member of the legendary Nice rock band, Whiskey Finger,
along with well-known bassist, Ian Smith, award-winning Scottish drummer, Stuart Richie and London Essentials founder, Ben Matthews. Donal has become well-known in Morocco, with a regular residency at Casablanca’s only Irish pub, at the
Hotel East-West, where he has played since 2011. Since forming Trada in 2016,
playing traditional Irish music and Donal’s own original compositions, with flute
player, Neil Gerstenberg, and violinist, Clare Catchpole, the band has developed a
following along the French Riviera, as well as over the border in Italy.
Clare Catchpole (England)
Violin, viola, mandolin and vocals
Clare Catchpole grew up in Suffolk, England where she started playing the violin at an early age. Her musical studies took her to the University of York, London then to Ireland where she completed an MA in Classical String Performance at the University of Limerick. Alongside performing in string quartets and orchestras she has also arranged music for multimedia performances, improvised live incidental music for silent film and whilst living in Prague she collaborated with actors in devising and performing musical theatre shows.
After returning to London she worked for several years at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and Barbican Centre where amongst many other artistic projects and events she coordinated, she co-founded and played the mandolin in a 20 piece folk band, The Stamp Collective, led by Joe Broughton and Paloma Trigas of the Urban Folk Quartet. They performed at various prestigious London venues and UK festivals. In 2014 Clare left London to continue her musical life in Nice, France.
Neil Gerstenberg (Scotland)
Neil plays whistles, flutes and saxophones. He has performed concerts with many jazz groups at clubs, pubs, festivals and private events in in the UK, France, Russia and China for over 20 years, and has toured or recorded with some of the best musicians in Europe and beyond including David Sanborn (CD “Home” with Synopsis in 1998) , Thierry Maillard (3 CDs) Jean-Marc Jafet (1 CD). Neil is now focusing on traditional flutes and whistles playing mostly with Trada, but also with other traditional and jazz projects in which the musicians freely mix Celtic and jazz sounds, harmony, melody and rhythm.