The Chatham resident set the poetry of W.B. Yeats, Samuel Lover and other Irish poets to music on her 2005 CD, "Child and the Autumn Leaf.
" "I built up a modal type of music with the Irish poetry into a New Age type of song," she said. "What I like about Samuel Lover is his rhyming and verses. I like Yeats' poetry for stories.
I spent time looking through the book 'One Thousand Years of Irish Poetry.'" She is a two-time winner of the O'Carolan International Harp and Voice competition and a one-time winner of the All Ireland Harp competition. She also took first place in Gaelic Singing and Harp Instrumental at the annual Irish Festival in New York City.
She will perform Irish folk, drinking, love and contemporary songs and stories, as well as American folk, immigration and contemporary songs and her own original instrumentals and songs, at the Minstrel Coffeehouse in the Morristown Unitarian Fellowship Nov. 10. "A lot of my songs are slow, so I like a lot of slow music," she said.
"I'm not a fiddler and that's more traditional music. I like modal music." O'Donnell grew up in a musical family in Dublin before coming to the States to study concert harp and classical music with concert harpist Leone Paulson at the College of St.
Elizabeth in Convent Station in 1980. "Every summer Leone Paulson came over with her students. She knew Irish harpist Mairin Ni She.
I took summer harp lessons with her with the big concert harps and I just fell in love with it. I asked her if there was any way I could study with her over here," she said. O'Donnell's father played trumpet and fiddle, performing traditional Irish music.
Her grandmother played Aeolian harp, an instrument that involves a recitation of poetry to music. O'Donnell's mother started her daughter on violin and piano before introducing her to Irish harp, an instrument that differs considerably from the big concert harps in classical music. "She taught me how to sing with the harp," she said.
O'Donnell strives for subtlety and emotional expression in her harp playing. She aims to gain an intuitive grasp and understanding of the feeling of a song. As a singer, she focuses on breath control, good diction and the feeling of a song.
"It's basically the same approach I take with my harp playing," she said. "Of course, a sad song, I put across in a softer manner.
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