bn.com: HIGHLAND CATHEDRAL has more solace than any music I've ever heard.

Phil Coulter: Thank you. I have high regard for it myself. I wanted to make an album that was reaffirming, where music would be inspiring on one hand -- by the lyrical gentleness of it -- yet on the other hand be powerful -- by the use of Irish percussion.

bn: How does this album compare with your earlier ones?

PC: HIGHLAND CATHEDRAL is a logical development from the dozen or so "tranquility" albums I did with Shanachie. My first album, CLASSIC TRANQUILITY, broke a lot of ground here in 1990 because it was an album of Irish songs.

bn: Playing Irish music in Ireland is breaking new ground?

PC: It was a matter of not seeing the woods for the trees. Glorious songs have been in Ireland forever, but a lot of these were so popular they were sung only by drunken men at weddings. They didn't have any regard for the song at all. So, I picked out 14 songs that I had grown up with, songs with great melodies. After 35 years as a songwriter, I appreciate the value of a good melody because I know how hard it is to write one. So I presented them in a new way, with piano, keyboards, strings, and a contemporary rhythm section. I just treated the melody with a bit of dignity and a bit of style.

Well, the most astounded man was me when it became the biggest-selling album ever in the history of the Irish record industry. How, then, to follow up? Popular music is littered with the carcasses of one-hit wonders, and I thought, I don't want to join that happy band! So, I repeated the exercise with SEA OF TRANQUILITY, and it outsold the first! Even today, these are the biggest-selling albums in Ireland.

On HIGHLAND CATHEDRAL, the tunes are mostly newly composed. It's still Irish, still orchestral, yet I've gone a bit further down he road. And I've loved working with Aoife, who does such lovely work on the solo vocals.

bn: You haven't succumbed to electronica?

PC: Most composers and arrangers these days use computer programs and keyboards, but I'm one of those dinosaurs that still writes it down on score paper and still dreams it up in his ear first.

bn: How can you be a producer and keyboard player these days and not know computers? Are you a Luddite?

PC: [laughs] Yes, I am! I even have to ask my daughter to lead me through the steps on the Internet! I remember when synthesizer folks said that the keyboards would replace live musicians, while musicians said that synthesizers were a fad. It's neither, actually, and I use keyboards to weave wonderful textures into live strings and piano, and the wonderfully human, ancient sounds of the Irish instruments.

bn: Some of the tracks on HIGHLAND CATHEDRAL sound like rock solid Lutheran hymns.

PC: I didn't set out to write hymns, but that's how they came out. Whenever I compose, I draw upon the amalgam of my 35 years in the music business. When I reach back for melodies or harmonies or structures, I am not consciously aware of where they come from. The influences that have affected me would be as diverse as Latin plainchant -- I was studying the 16th-century music of Palestrina for my degree at the university -- and then there's my history with popular music and my passion for Irish music.

bn: You lived a long time in London, then returned to Northern Ireland. Did you get embroiled in the political turmoil?

PC: Where I come from in the north of Ireland, I couldn't be anything else but politically aware. While it is a mistake for an entertainer to highjack his position to propound a political platform, I think that as a mature songwriter, one has an obligation look at the issues that affect people. One of the songs that in many ways defined the last 25 years on this island is a song of mine called "The Town I Loved So Well." It's about my hometown and the changes that have been brought about on the landscape -- and indeed on the psyche of the people -- through that whole cycle of violence. And it's become a sort of alternative national anthem here. In December, our national radio station had a listeners' poll for the 100 most popular songs of the century. They wrote in and emailed in -- those who were not Luddites like myself -- and telephoned in. And on January 1st the results were declared: "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas" came in first, "My Way," and then "The Town I Loved So Well." And this was voted on by just ordinary Joes, not by critics.

bn: What's your next project?

PC: I like projects that challenge me, so I'm doing a follow-up album to ROMANTIC THEMES AND CELTIC DREAMS, based on themes by John Field, the Irish classical composer who invented the nocturne form and who predated Chopin. Alison Hood will again be the pianist, and I will add some keyboard textures floating in here and there.

bn: The same Alison Hood who plays cello on HIGHLAND CATHEDRAL?

PC: The same. When the orchestra was tuning up one day, I heard the most wonderful Chopin nocturnes coming from the piano. And I thought: Wait a minute, I'm the one who's supposed to be the piano player in this outfit! And here it was Alison playing. Her first album was received to great acclaim, even called a masterpiece by some critics. So, we are looking forward to repeating the experience.

bn: How do you look back at your pop career?

PC: People say to me, how can you reconcile producing teenybopper groups such as the Bay City Rollers, or writing "Saturday Night" and "The Town I Loved So Well." To me, it's not a problem. You can't ask, what do you prefer, a banana or an elephant? Writing my pop music within the framework of teenybopper music was right on the mark. They are songs I'm very proud of. I would never ever apologize for my period in pop music. But when you get more mature, then you can write songs that unveil a little bit of yourself. Then you're working in a different idiom. You're not gearing those songs to the cash register. There is something else going on -- a different agenda.

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