Brian Conway strides out of his office a couple of minutes late, offering an apology. No need; it really was but a minute or two. He wears the armor of his profession: a dark suit of conservative cut. He’s a deputy bureau chief in the county district attorney’s office; if he weren’t dressed like this, something would be amiss. Taxpayers may not have a constitutional right to have those who enforce the law before the bar of justice dress the part, but they certainly expect it.
Conway is 46, but his step is buoyant and, confessing to a city kid’s clipped ways ”“ he’s Bronx born and raised ”“ he trots across the street outside the Westchester County Courthouse a nanosecond ahead of courting a jaywalking summons. “You might not want to follow me,” he says with a laugh.
The smile and the laugh come easily to the prosecutor’s face, which those of another generation might have called “a map of Ireland,” topped in his case by the fair red hair of the Emerald Isle, boyishly askew in the breeze.
Ireland is worth mentioning. Conway has inherited two traits for which the Irish are storied: a facility with the language and a family tradition of fiddle playing.
His father, James, emigrated from County Tyrone in 1948. He died in 1991. His mother, Rose, made the trip from County Tyrone 10 years later and is still with us. James played the fiddle: “He loved music passionately,” Conway says, noting his father befriended legendary County Sligo fiddler Martin Wynne once in America.” This is how it all started.”
And that’s how Conway, beginning at 10, came himself to be a master of Sligo fiddling, recording solo, lending his talent to untold other recordings and touring internationally.
“There’s a lift to it, with an element of Scottish influence,” he says of the Sligo style. “The fiddlers from Sligo were brilliant musicians ”“ whether it was the water, the genes … who knows?” The list includes Michael Coleman, who emigrated here in the early 20th century and whom Conway calls “the most influential Irish fiddle player who ever lived.”
Lunch arrives and Conway digs in. His duties with the Public Integrity Bureau have raised an appetite. He prosecutes public officials and those in some way affiliated with the legal system who have, at least until convicted, allegedly strayed. He offers as nonspecific examples: some police shootings, theft by public employees and misconduct by attorneys. He prosecutes crooked lawyers with the assistance of the state’s Fund for Client Protection. “If I can convince the fund an attorney has stolen money from a client, the fund steps in and reimburses them up to $300,000. And I seek restitution for the fund and incarceration, too.” Before his public integrity work, he prosecuted economic crimes, narcotics cases and rackets with various district attorney bureaus. Too bad for shady barristers and those with their hands in the public cookie jar: “I’m happiest where I am right now.”
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Such work seems a study in incongruity upon learning Conway has played Carnegie Hall and tours Ireland annually. For the past 10 years, has been sawing away Wednesday nights on his 1906 Degani fiddle at his good friend Sean Dunne’s bar and restaurant ”“ Dunne’s ”“ on Shapham Place in White Plains. He has a loyal following and fiddles with the great and near great in the pub’s friendly confines. On Nov. 7, he played with Joanie Madden, “one of the most well-known Irish musicians of her generation and leader of Cherish the Ladies,” an internationally famous female band. In the 1990s, he supervised the traditional Irish music at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on St. Patrick’s Day.
His audiences, both in Ireland and here, tend to be knowledgeable and can include folk-music aficionados. They come to hear jigs (in 6/8 rhythm), reels (in 4/4 rhythm) and hornpipes (also 4/4, though slower than reels).
“There’s a joyfulness and a happiness, a spirit to the music,” he says. “It can elevate the mood of the person playing or the person listening. The joy of the audience is expressed back to us playing. It enhances the quality of the experience playing the music.”
Conway has a solo CD and a second solo effort due next year. A new collaborative effort, “A Tribute to Andy McGann,” is out and so are more than a dozen other records on which his work is featured. “I don’t know how many I’m on,” he says.
He does not track his sales, but says they are in the thousands.
“It’s not something I’ve given a lot of thought to making a living at,” he says. “Maybe when I retire. It’s my thought that if I depend on this music to pay the bills, it will suck the joy out of it.”
And through it all, he has kept alive the family tradition. A divorced father, he has imparted the joy of Sligo fiddling to his daughter, 12-year-old Fiona.
For a sample and a look at the Web presence of what must surely be the county district attorney office’s only international fiddling celebrity, visit www.brianconway.com.
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