Kila

Few Irish acts have grown from a Dublin school into a touring fixture across Europe quite like Kíla, a folk fusion group whose story begins at Coláiste Eoin, an Irish-language secondary school in County Dublin. Built around whistle, bones, bodhrán, uilleann pipes and fiddle, the band has seen its line-up shift over the decades while the core of brothers and friends has endured.

They began busking on Grafton Street in Dublin, and their first paying gig, upstairs in the Baggot Inn, drew an audience of three, one of them the broadcaster Bláthnaid Ní Chofaigh. Their debut recording, Éist, a collection of ten songs by Colm, followed in 1988, the same year as their first festival abroad in Germany. Later work includes Kila & Oki, made with the Ainu-Japanese artist OKI in 2006, and the score for Song of the Sea alongside Bruno Coulais in 2015, which earned an Annie Award nomination. Their score for Arracht won them an IFTA for Best Original Score in 2020.