The cream of folk music took to the stage at the Royal Albert Hall on Wednesday (5th of April) for the 18th BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards.

The event celebrates a year of outstanding achievement in the world of folk music with previous award recipients including Joan Baez, Cat Stevens, Billy Bragg, Shirley Collins, Bellowhead, Martin Carthy and Seth Lakeman. Not to mention the previous Irish winners like The Gloaming, Clannad, The Dubliners, Paul Brady, Christy Moore and Martin Hayes.

Daoirí Farrell, an Irish folk/trad musician and singer from Dublin picked up two awards on the night, the only artist to do so, including Best Traditional Track for his track Van Diemen’s Land and the Horizon Award for the best emerging artist on the folk scene.

Farrell was also nominated for Folk Singer of the Year.

You can see Daoirí perform Van Diemen’s Land on the night below:

For this performance, he was accompanied by Tony Byrne (guitar),Paddy Kiernan (banjo), Robbie Walsh (bodhrán), Alec Brown (cello) and Pat Daly (fiddle).

In his speech for the Horizon award, he thanked his family (notably his father for letting him stay up late to listen to The Bothy Band, amongst others, at an early age), his friends and his college buddies (DkIT, Ballyfermot College, UL) – all of whom helped him broaden his musical palette along the way.

When the award was announced, a rather surprised Daoiri had to scramble to put his jacket on to collect his gong. The horizon award is given to artists who push the boundaries of trad music in that year, a special award to win.

Irish folk music is coming in to somewhat of a regeneration of it’s talents. Acts such as Lynched (now Lankum), Ye Vagabonds and The Gloaming are touring internationally while new acts such as Landless (who we tipped as a GoldenPlec’Plec Picks’ for 2017 – read the feature here), Danny Diamond, Lisa O’Neill and more continue to impress.

It’s an exciting time for Irish traditional music and leaders of the pack, such as Daoirí Farrell, are only strengthening that claim.

And just for good measure, he is a stunning video of Daoirí performing ‘Creggan White Hare’: