Flute-player Conor Byrne had a special reason to be at the Frankie Kennedy Winter School in Donegal - Frankie Kennedy, Altan's flute player who died from cancer in 1994, had been a mentor to him, writes Victoria White

Muscians came from far and wide to remember Frankie Kennedy, Altan's flute-player. He was only three months dead when the first Winter School took place in his name in the Lakeside Centre, under Errigal in Co Donegal in 1994. The young flute-player, Conor Byrne, had a special reason to be there - Frankie Kennedy had been a mentor to him.

When Byrne was 10, he spent a summer holiday in Bunbeg, Co Donegal, with his mother. The holiday was proving something of a damp squib - literally - when Byrne's mother had the happy thought of asking Frankie Kennedy to come and give her son a few lessons on the flute.

Much later, Byrne was planning to buy his own flute and Frankie Kennedy recommended the man who made his one, Chris Wilkes.

"We met in town," remembers Byrne. "He gave me a go of his flute and I loved it. Frankie organised for me to get one." Byrne still plays it.

Back to that session in the Lakeside Centre in 1994 and Byrne - then only 22 - is in the grip of fear. He is invited into the circle of players by Frankie's widow, fiddler Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh, and he is so scared he gets his uncle, Luka Bloom, to play with him.

Then Mairéad invites in a gorgeous teenager from Belfast, the fiddler, Méabh O'Hare: "I just remember hearing her playing for the first time. She was a fantastic player."

She was and is, and in 2000 she was TG4's Young Musician of the Year. Soon she and Byrne were making sweet music together on fiddle and flute, but also in their personal life. It's tempting to see in their partnership a ghost of the Frankie Kennedy/Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh combination - and why not?

O'Hare finished her music studies in UCC last year and she and Byrne have settled in Dublin to try to forge a musical career together. Central to this project is their Music Network tour, which tours to 14 venues around the country from January 14th.

Then they plan to record an album of traditional and new music, which, back at the Winter School, Byrne as a tutor, they are finding time to discuss. "We were just walking the beach talking about it," says Byrne.

It is to this combined musical identity that Byrne seems to give most of his energy. He is a bit chary of discussing his début solo album, Wind Dancer, which was released in 1998.

"In hindsight, I probably wasn't ready for it, to be honest with you," he says.

"If I had an opportunity to do it now, I'd do it differently. I'm very anxious to do an album with Méabh."

Inevitably, Byrne got a lot of attention because he is the grandson of the singer, Nancy Moore, the nephew of Christy and Barry (Luka Bloom) and the son of the traditional singer, Eilish. Both Christy and Luka featured on the album, which may have been a mistake in that it encouraged the promotion of Byrne less for himself than for his relations. But as he tells it, it happened organically - "Luka and myself are more like brothers. We used to do everything together."

What he really regrets is having sung on the album, even though it was just a brief burst of Louis Armstrong. "It was, 'here's the next generation of singers in the Moore family'," says Byrne. "We did The Late Late Show and I was more or less told to sing."

HE explains: "People do expect me to sing, and to be perfectly honest, I find that very hard to deal with. I have always focused on playing instruments. I feel myself I don't sing, although a lot of people say I do sing." Byrne obviously is of the next generation of Byrne singers - it's just that he chooses to sing from the mouth of an instrument. In fact, each generation of Moore musicians has put a new twist on the story, and Byrne is no different: Nancy Moore was an operatic singer, while Christy, Barry and Eilish sang traditional and folk-rock.

It's an interesting evolution, going in the opposite direction to that which one would expect - but that would be assuming that there is something "native" about picking up a flute and playing traditional music. In fact, Byrne agrees he owes that to his mother's conscious decision to send him to an Irish-language school in Inchicore, where a whistle was pressed into his tiny fingers; and the urban cultural movement which was the Folk Revival, in which Eilish Moore's son was steeped.

"I remember sleeping upstairs at the Meeting Place in Dorset Street," he says. "I'd be sleeping upstairs and there'd be members of the Bothys playing downstairs."

It was a blast of the pipes which really woke him up. He heard Liam O'Floinn playing in Timedance, a Eurovision interval act, and started begging his mother for a set. He was only seven and they would have clutched him like an octopus - she made him wait until he was 10. The love of the flute came later, and was intensified in the late 1980s by Altan's first album and Matt Molloy's Stone Steps.

He and O'Hare have teamed up with guitarist Gary Ralston and singer Andrew Murray for the Music Network Tour, and also to form a band, Dorian. Andrew Murray, now, is someone who he feels does sing. "I swear to God, I was in Castleisland a few years ago and the noise was fierce and the place was full of smoke and suddenly this man started singing and the whole place went quiet. The style of singing would draw you."

PLAYING together seems the only way forward for Byrne and O'Hare, personally, as well as musically. "There was a time Méabh was away in Germany playing with North Cregg and I went mental," admits Byrne. "We just decided, this has got to work. We have been writing a lot of music together, traditional and bluegrass."

Can he write music? He clarifies: "We get together and make up tunes."

He has given up his day job running The Shelter traditional club in Vicar Street because he wants to succeed as a musician. "I really enjoy playing with Méabh. The music is there. It's just a question of making it happen. This Music Network tour is very important."

The Music Network Best of Irish Tour goes to Blanchardstown, Skerries, Cork, Ashbourne, Dublin, Cahir, Tralee, Galway, Clifden, Castlebar, Kilkenny, Keadue, Mullingar and Virginia. Information: 01-6719429.