áire and Chris have both been working hard on solo albums. Chris's CD Still Getting Away with It, celebrating his 40 years as a professional musician, was released in October 2010. Máire's CD will appear in the autumn of 2011.

IGHLIGHTS of 2009:

FireWire voted Best Celtic Instrumental Album 2009!
FireWire came first in the Best Celtic Instrumental Album category in the 2009 Just Plain Folks Music Awards: the results were announced at the Awards ceremony in Nashville, Tennessee at the end of August. The judges for these indie awards screened over 42,000 albums and 560,000 songs in 93 genres from 163 countries around the world, making these the largest music awards of any kind anywhere. So Máire and Chris were absolutely thrilled!

2009 brought tours in the UK, Ireland and Austria. Concert highlights were an October performance at the Brucknerhaus in Linz, Austria - a concert hall with a wonderful acoustic on the banks of the Danube - as part of Linz's European City of Culture celebrations, and a performance shortly before Christmas at one of Berlin's best-known concert venues, the Passionskirche in the Kreuzberg district.

Festivals included Southwell Folk Festival; Fylde Folk Festival; Cromer Folk Festival; Gower Folk Festival; Devizes Arts Festival; Chiddingly Arts Festival, East Sussex; Rhythms of the World Festival, Hitchin, Hertfordshire; Didmarton Bluegrass Festival; and Irish History Month, Leeds.

In addition, Máire and Chris gave three very enjoyable festival performances as a quartet with Máire's sister, fiddle-player Nollaig Casey and legendary Irish guitarist Arty McGlynn at Celtic Connections, Glasgow, the Kilkenny Arts Festival and the International Festival for Irish Harp, Termonfechin, Co Louth, Ireland.