Ren and Rob: Traditional Irish Music: POSTPONED

Postponed until further notice.

Traditional Irish Music played on the Fiddle Wooden Flute and Guitar.

Rob Zielinski and Rennie Pearson first started playing music together during lockdown in Golden Bay. They both share a passion for traditional Irish music and have been immersed in it for many years. They formed a duo and have just finished their first South Island tour. Their music ranges from live’ly jigs and reels, haunting slow airs and original compositions, with the stories behind each tune playing a large part of their performance. Rob is well known for his lyrical style of fiddle playing, and is complimented by Rennie’s rhythmic guitar and earthy wooden flute playing.

Rob grew up in Perth, Western Australia where he learnt to play by ear from Irish immigrants Sean Doherty and later Mick Doherty (no relation). Sean from Co Mayo has been the mainstay of Irish music for many years. Mick, RIP, came from a long line of travelling fiddle players, storytellers and tinsmiths from Donegal. His uncle Johnny Doherty was featured on the RTE Documentary The Fiddler On The Road. At age seventeen Rob moved to Ireland and spent fourteen years on the west coast, learning and immersing himself in the music of the older players. He met and played with musicians including P.J. and Martin Hayes, Joe Bane, Bobby Casey, and was ten years with one of his most loved mentors Andy Davey, master of the Sligo style.
Rob taught at the Galway School of Traditional Irish Music for three years and in the year 2000 he won Ireland’s Michael Coleman Traditional Fiddle Player of the Year Award. He has toured in both the USA and Europe and recently was guest soloist with the Perth Chamber Orchestra.
In 2013 Rob and Mick Doherty recorded their debut album ‘Out West’ released by the National Library of Australia to preserve the musical legacy of Mick’s family. In 2018 he released his first solo recording, a collection of recordings made over the past twenty years. He is now concentrating on composition and is about to release ‘The Torbay Suite’, a fifty minute original piece inspired by the Torbay inlet near where he lives on Western Australia's remote south coast.

Rennie has been in love with traditional music since he was a child. Influenced by his parents playing it to him even before he was born. At eight years old, he began playing the flute and later started going to Irish sessions in Wellington, where he learned the music by ear. He has played with and learned from many wooden flute players in New Zealand and spent a year apprenticing with Chris Norman in the east coast of Canada, from whom he was first inspired to pick up the flute. Rennie also specializes in backing up tunes on guitar in open DADGAD tuning, providing a rhythmic harmony that allows the melody to shine.