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For over 35 years, singer Mary Black has been a dominant presence in Irish music, both at home and abroad. She has shared stages, tv shows and recording studios with some of the most revered performers of her time. She has also played a frontline role in bringing Irish music, past and present, to an increasingly appreciative and ever-growing global audience. The San Francisco Chronicle has described her as "One of the best interpretative singers around".To the acclaim and awards Mary has received over the years from both the public and the critics must also be added the esteem she has generated from her fellow artists.\\xa0 Indeed, many of them have recorded and performed live with her, including Emmylou Harris, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Joan Baez and Van Morrison, not to mention a host of Irish traditional musicians and singers. Along the way she has also recorded and performed with her siblings in The Black Family and with her highly successful sister Frances.Coming from an intensely musical family, with her mother a fine singer and her father an entertaining fiddle player, Mary first came to the music public\\u2019s attention in the late \\u201870s as a member of the group General Humbert with whom she recorded and toured. In 1983 she teamed up with guitarist/producer Declan Sinnott (later to become Christy Moore\\u2019s musical sidekick) and released her eponymously-named debut solo album. It reached No. 4 in the Irish Charts and is ranked among the best Irish albums of the early 1980\'s.\\xa0 It won her the Irish Independent Arts Award for Music, the first in a staggering sequence of awards that continue to come her way.She was named Entertainer of the Year in 1986 and Best Female Artist in 1987 and 1988.But her popularity reached a new level with the release of the pioneering album No Frontiers in 1989. It generated triple-platinum sales as Mary\'s reputation began spreading far beyond her native shores to Europe, Australia, Japan and the USA, thanks to her superb stage shows and the success of her recordings in those markets. Babes in the Wood came in 1991, arriving in the Irish charts in the No 1 slot, and was followed by two sell-out shows at London\\u2019s prestigious Royal Albert Hall.\\xa0 Her UK concerts prompted hugely positive reviews from The Guardian, The Times and The Telegraph. She was also featured on the cover of the US music trade Bible Billboard which described her as "a firm favorite to join the heavy-hitting ranks of such Irish artists as Enya, Sin\\xe9ad O\\u2019Connor and Clannad\'s M\\xe1ire Brennan in the international marketplace.\\u201d They were right.In 2002 Mary was the subject of the revealing documentary Still Believing. It celebrated her extraordinary life in music, tracing her progress from her birthplace in Dublin\\u2019s inner city on a journey that has seen her conquer the musical world. Its recording was followed by a video of Mary and her band filmed on the final night of a triumphant week-long run at the Olympia Theatre in Dublin \\u2013 one of Mary\\u2019s favourite venues. 2008 marked the 25th anniversary of Mary\'s first solo album, and to celebrate the momentous occasion Mary released a special compilation double album 25 Years/25 Songs. It featured a personal, hand-picked selection of gems spanning Mary\'s career and it still serves as a testament to the extraordinary range and quality of both her vocal prowess and her astute song selection. Mary recorded two brand new songs for the project, and the album went straight to No. 1 in the Irish charts, where it remained for a staggering five weeks, spending over seven months in the Irish top 40!