Although born in Dublin, Moya (Máire) Brennan is as Donegal as they come. At the age of two she was brought back to Donegal by her father, Leo Brennan, a band leader, and mother, Babba, nee Duggan, a music teacher from Gweedore. Theirs was a very close-knit family in an Irish-speaking community and grandfather Hugh Duggan was a local teacher with a store and an appreciation of folkore and songs.
Máire was the eldest of the children. After her came Ciarán, Pól, Deirdre, Leon, Olive, Eithne, Bartley and Bridín.
While attended the Ursuline Convent in Sligo, where she learned to play the harp, she made her first television appearance, in 1970. As a young girl she learned ballet and won feis medals for singing and Irish dancing. In fact she was only 12 years of age when she accompanied her father’s Slieve Foy band to Scotland where she performed on stage in Glasgow and Edinburgh in her Irish dance costume.
With the showband era coming to an end in the 1960s, her father bought a disused pub and renamed it Leo’s Tavern. At the time Máire was 16. Leo would perform on stage and Máire would join him for a song or two. Gradually the other children also took to the stage.
Her first break as a singing artist came when the family won the talent contest at the Letterkenny Folk Festival in 1970. They had to pick a name and came upon Clannad as an abbreviation of “Clan as Dobhar.” The band started to pick up dates around Ireland and travelled to Brittany in 1972.
In the following year Máire Brennan and the band received more exposure in Ireland when they performed on TV in the Eurovision Song Contest. They also recorded an album for Gael-linn made up mostly of their own arrangements of songs in Irish. Máire was the singer and the arrangements were handled by brothers Pól and Ciarán.
She qualified as a teacher from the Royal Irish Academy of Music and taught at a school in Falcarragh, also in the Donegal Gaeltacht. Around this time she started collected local songs with her brother Ciarán.

Following
The band recorded another album for Gael-linn and completed their first tour of Germany where they built up their core following over the succeeding years and from where they expanded into other European countries. The band went fully professional. Fachtna O’Kelly, later to manage the Boomtown Rats, came on board as did engineer Nicky Ryan.
They continued on the road to success over the ensuing years, turning out albums now for the record giant RCA. In 1979 younger sister Eithne came on board on keyboards and vocals. In 1983 Eithne announced that she was going on a solo career, changing her stage name to Enya and taking Nicky Ryan with her. She was replaced by Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill, also from Donegal and formerly with the Bothy Band.
Shortly after, the band had a major breakthrough with their theme music for Harry’s Game which brought them before bigger audiences and led to more TV work, including the series Robin of Sherwood for which they won a Bafta award. The band also collaborated with Bono of U2 to produce a song for their Macalla album titled In a Lifetime. All this meant they were attracting a wider audience and gaining a footing in the USA and Australia.

Song-writing
At the end of 1989 Pól left the group and Máire took on song-writing, something she hadn’t up to then taken seriously as the brothers did the song-writing. She contributed three songs to the 1990 album Anam. She also recorded a song with Robert Plant.
Come the 1990s Máire had a new confidence. She was to marry photographer Tim Jarvis, with whom she has two children, Aisling and Paul. (She had previously been married to a Dublin musician). She released her first solo album, Máire in 1992, followed up by Misty Eyed Adventures in 1994, and appeared on The Jay Leno Show. She recorded a duet with Shane McGowan for the film Circle of Friends while Clannad continued to pick up more film work. In 1998 she released her third solo album Perfect Time which explored Celtic Christianity. Meanwhile Clannad won a Grammy award in the ‘Best New Age’ album category.
In autumn 2000 she published her autobiography The Other Side of the Rainbow. In it she reveals a happy close-knit family upbringing. But her adult life, up to the time she met Tim Jarvis, was scarred by unlucky romances, emotional naivety,  failed marriage and excessive drinking and drug-taking. She also states that she has found new strength in the God of her youth.
After a ten year gap, Clannad reformed in 2008 and they continue to perform together.

Discography

Heart Strings, Moya Brennan, 2008
Signature, Moya Brennan, 2006
Two Horizons, Moya Brennan, 2003
Whisper to the Wild Water, Máire Brennan, 2000
Perfect Time, Máire Brennan, 1998
Misty Eyed Adventures, Máire Brennan, 1994
Máire, Máire Brennan, 1992
Biography
The Other Side of the Rainbow, by Máire Brennan with Angela Little,
Hodder & Stoughton, 2000. ISBN 0 340 75612 8.