Varo Announce To Play National Concert Hall Show
By Featuring special guests from The World That I Knew
⭐⭐⭐⭐ “A collective triumph” – MOJO
⭐⭐⭐⭐ “a tremendous collection…” – RTÉ Radio 1, Arena
Album of the week – RTÉ Radio 1
Praise for ‘The World That I Knew’
“Outstanding… a new-school all-star affair”
– Will Hermes (Rolling Stone, NYT, Pitchfork)
“Yes, it’s a who’s who, but that in itself isn’t what makes The World That I Knew so great. Rather, it’s what Varo coax out of their collaborators that counts – the way that Azconaga and Breschi’s own playing and singing interweaves with that of their collaborators.”
– The Quietus
“Taken together, these 10 tracks ferment brilliantly, with exceptional virtuosity and raw folk inflections.” – Hot Press (8.5 / 10)
Irish traditional and folk duo VARO have announced a headline show at The National Concert Hall as part of Metronome Festival on Thursday, 16 October 2025, featuring special guests from their acclaimed new album, The World That I Knew.
Tickets are available here.
The highly anticipated performance will see them joined by singer-songwriter Niamh Bury, multi-instrumentalist Anna Mieke, artist-composer Branwen, and acclaimed artists John Francis Flynn, Alannah Thornburgh (ALFI) and Junior Brother, plus support from multi-instrumental sound artist Méabh McKenna.
Album The World That I Knew, which was five years in the making, was highly anticipated due to VARO’s reputation in Dublin’s live trad and folk music scene, and also to the exceptional list of musicians featuring, which reads like a who’s who of important figures in Ireland’s contemporary folk and trad sene: Ian Lynch (Lankum), John Francis Flynn, Anna Mieke, Alannah Thornburgh, Junior Brother, Slow Moving Clouds, Niamh Bury, Inni-K, Ruth Clinton and Cormac MacDiarmada (Poor Creature), Lemoncello and Branwen.
The first single from The World That I Knew in (‘Red Robin feat. Alannah Thornburgh’ – Listen Here, Watch Video Here), captured the attention of music fans worldwide, with tastemakers like Bob Boilen (founder of NPR Music’s All Songs Considered and Tiny Desk Concerts) playing the single on his WOWD Takoma Radio show and adding it to his NPR Music Spotify Playlist; Music and culture writer Will Hermes (The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Uncut, etc.) making it his Song of the Day, former fRoots editor Ian Anderson featuring the single on his renowned Podwireless show and UK folk music site KLOF.
The second single to be released from the album, ‘Green Grows The Laurel’, featured John Francis Flynn (Listen here | Watch here) saw VARO quintuple their radio impacts, earning airplay on many stations across Ireland and abroad; the single stayed on RTÉ Radio 1’s coveted ‘Radio 1 Recommends’ list for three weeks running.
Media attention for the album has been extensive, with nationwide coverage in The Irish Times, The Thin Air, Nialler9, Golden Plec, Hot Press and more, alongside international coverage in Americana UK (UK), KLOF (UK), Frontview Magazine (Belgium) and Grateful Web (USA).
Connect with VARO
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About Varo
“VARO is the name of a river that, centuries ago, used to represent the border between France and Italy, then went from being more French to more Italian, floating through nationalities… like the two of us, coming from two different countries and finding ourselves falling in love with the Irish music and its culture”
– Lucie Azconaga and Consuelo Nerea Breschi (VARO)
VARO are Dublin-based singers and fiddle players Lucie Azconaga (from France) and Consuelo Nerea Breschi (from Italy) who perform Irish traditional songs and tunes with arrangement influences from the Folk, Baroque and Classical traditions, weaving around the melodies with harmonies, drones and countermelody.
The duo met in 2015 having moved to Dublin to pursue their love for Irish traditional music, and immediately started a fruitful collaboration. They travelled to Ireland along different musical paths, Lucie from jazz, classical music, and French folk, Consuelo from Irish trad, folk, and world music.
Over the years they have had the pleasure of working in various projects such as Landless, Lisa O’ Neill’s Band, Ye Vagabonds, AlaSourCe and The Nomadic Piano Project. Their eponymous debut album was released in January 2020 to great critical acclaim. (LISTEN HERE)
Since then, they have performed at numerous venues and festivals around the country and abroad, including Tradition Now at the NCH, Quiet Lights Festival, St.Patrick’s Festival, Dún Laoghaire Folk Festival, Trad Fest, Tonn Nua (Berlin), Fête de la Musique (CCI, Paris), and for productions such as the Late Late Show on RTE, or TG4’s Samhlú, hosted by Tommy Tiernan.
In 2020, with a worldwide pandemic changing everything, VARO set out to create a meaningful project related to the challenges the world was experiencing. Along with 11 exceptional musical collaborators, Lucie and Consuelo carefully chose ten songs, all written between thirty and three hundred years ago, that reflect the connection between our recent lived experience and our cultural heritage.
“Through the passage of time, political, social and cultural contexts vary, the core of people’s experiences and feelings remain the same. Loneliness, heartbreak, racism, the importance of human connection, criticism of social and political context, homesickness, are universal themes. These themes are coextensive, not only nowadays but with the rich heritage of traditional music,” explain VARO.
The result of this collaborative project is VARO’s latest album, The World That I Knew, featuring 11 of Ireland’s most exceptionally talented and recognised trad and folk musicians: Ian Lynch (Lankum), John Francis Flynn, Anna Mieke, Alannah Thornburgh, Junior Brother, Slow Moving Clouds, Niamh Bury, Inni-K, Ruth Clinton and Cormac MacDiarmada (Poor Creature), Lemoncello and Branwen.
Through a patchwork of music, stories and personalities, The World That I Knew illustrates the timeless continuity of the human experience, using material written in the past to reflect the thoughts and feelings of people nowadays.
The album was produced by John ‘Spud’ Murphy (Lankum, Black Midi, Goat Girl, ØXN).