Irish Trad Music Blog

LOWVILLE — Fans of Irish music dreaming of a green Christmas will want to be in this village Dec. 6 regardless of the snow situation. The touring production "Irish Christmas in America," sponsored by the Lewis County Historical Society, stops that day at the Lowville Academy and Central School auditorium. The show, in its fifth year, includes some of Ireland's top traditional artists, featuring music, dance and stories of seasonal Irish traditions. The production was created five years ago by Oisin Mac Diarmada of the award-winning Irish group Téada. Mr. Mac Diarmada plays fiddle for Téada, which is Irish for "strings." The band focuses on the traditional music of Ireland and was named the Best Young Irish Traditional Act at the inaugural 2009 Ireland Music Awards. Mr. Mac Diarmada, speaking from his home in County Sligo, Ireland, late last week a day before leaving for Mexico, said he saw Irish Christmas in America as a chance to show the diversity of Irish cul...

Like jazz and rock, Celtic music has traditionally been a male-dominated scene. But in 1985, folklorist/musician Mick Moloney had the idea of sponsoring a concert series featuring the finest female Irish traditional musicians. The result was Cherish the Ladies, a band that has become one of the most celebrated Celtic ensembles in the world. They will perform their Christmas program as part of the Kutztown University Performing Artists Series, Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. in Schaeffer Auditorium. Cherish the Ladies will perform a Christmas program Wednesday as part of the Kutztown University Performing Artists Series. The leader, Joanie Madden, born in the Bronx, N.Y., to Irish parents, was the first American to win the senior all-Ireland championship on the tin whistle in 1984. She has played flute and tin whistle with the group since its inception. The rest of the current lineup includes founding member and fellow New Yorker Mary Coogan on guitar; All-Ireland champion Mirella Murray from Co...

Arts Week with Judy Murphy When Pádraig, Éamon and Seán Mulkerrin decided to enter RTÉ’s All-Ireland Talent Show late last year, they did so mostly because it would give them a chance to meet Jacksie, the barman from the comedy series Killanascully. The Mulkerrin Brothers from Inis Mór, never imagined they would walk away with the top prize of €50,000, for their performance of traditional Irish music and dance. But last March that’s exactly what they did; having won the heart of the nation, with the sean-nós dancing of 10-year old Seán receiving a particularly strong response. And this is a band of brothers with more than one string to their bow, as people will find out when the three play the Town Hall Theatre on November 30. The show is part of a short Irish tour being presented by music promoter Vince Power, the man who set up the Mean Fiddler music group in England and a force to be reckoned with in the entertainment business. “People have only seen them on the [RTÉ] talent show, b...

Black 47 brings back 1989 prices for anniversary shows By John Lee Black 47’s NYC shows have been described as “a rite of passage for all New Yorkers.” For the last nine months they have been touring the country, along with recording 13 new songs for Bankers and Gangsters, which will be released in February 2010. But for three consecutive nights they will celebrate their New York City beginnings with 1989 prices of just $10. Along with the new material they will highlight songs from all stages of their sometimes controversial career. “New York was always the center of music for me,” said Kirwan. “New York was Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, The Clancy Brothers, The Velvet Underground, Television, CBGB's, Max's Kansas City. And right from the start with Black 47 we concentrated on creating our own scene. We didn't give a damn about playing anyone else's. Because that's not New York to us.” Black 47 formed in the Bronx in late 1989 and burst onto the American scene in 1993 wi...

Renowned button-accordion player Pat Friel is set to release a new album, ‘Lios-a-Phúca’, this week. The much-anticipated follow-up to ‘The Humours of Westport’ will include reels, jigs, hornpipes and a number of well-known songs, including ‘Moonlight In Mayo’, ‘ These Are My Mountains’. ‘Say You Love Me’ and ‘My Lovely Achill Island Home’, written by Westport musician Lenny Grimes. Pat was first taught how to play the accordion by his mother, Julia, who came from Letterbrock, eight miles west of Westport. His was a musical family, and four of his five brothers also play the box. Pat played occasionally for house dances, especially after the Stations, when the priest said Mass in the house. In the showband era of the 1960s, Pat played the bass guitar in a band called the Frielmen, which played pop and country and Western. Twenty years’ ago, he started the local Comhaltas group and was three times named Connacht Button-Accordion Champion. He went on to form one of the most successful cé...

LEWISBURG, Pa. — The Celtic band Solas will present "A Celtic Solstice Celebration" on Saturday, Dec. 5, at 8 p.m. in the Weis Center for the Performing Arts at Bucknell University. Tickets are $25. Since 1996, Solas has been loudly proclaimed as one of the most popular, influential and exciting Celtic bands ever to emerge from the United States, said Bill Boswell, executive director of the Weis Center. "This performance will be a wonderful way to herald the winter season and the holidays." The band has performed at all the major Celtic and folk festivals, including the legendary National Folk Festival and Milwaukee's Irish Fest as well as the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, Wolf Trap, and Queens Hall in Edinburgh, Scotland. The band's latest release is a live CD and DVD called "Reunion," which celebrates the band's 10th anniversary. Solas comprises Seamus Egan, flute, tenor banjo, mandolin, tin whistle, low whistle, guitars and bodhran (Irish dr...

By Sean P. Feeny This month a trio of three young Donegal fiddle players who are continuing to push the boundaries of Irish traditional music are releasing their first album together. Fidíl began as a duo with Aidan O'Donnell and Ciaran Ó Maonaigh taking the Irish music world by storm with their 2008 self-titled debut album. Having used modern technology to create a unique, multi-layered fiddle sound on their album, the two musicians soon brought in fellow Donegal fiddle player, Damien McGeehan, to recreate that sound in a live environment. Aidan, who is Limerick County Council's current Artist-In-Residence at lectures at the University of Limerick (UL), said it has been an eventful year since the Dunkineely native and Ciaran from Gaoth Dobhair launched their debut album last summer. "The core idea behind our first album was to record the sound of two fiddles as a duet playing the traditional Donegal music, but with a difference. "Rather than using conventional tradit...

SIOBHÁN LONG Button Factory, Dublin As an antidote to this winter of our discontent, the inaugural date of the Button Factory County Sessions, in front of a large and expectant crowd, hinted at great escapes to come. Taking its lead from the renowned Harcourt Hotel sessions of old, these County Sessions celebrate local musical accents, and judging by the volume of punters who turned up for this celebration of Co Tipperary, there’s a voracious public appetite for good traditional music played in a hospitable venue. Flute-player, film-maker and entrepreneur Conor Byrne gently coaxed his brainchild, the County Sessions, into existence, playing a short solo set and then cracking the bottle off the stern by way of his uncle, Christy Moore. Negotiating an affectionate ramble through a short set that included The Galtee Mountain Boy , Christy was in fine form, relaxed enough to exploit the bantering potential of the odd lyrical slip, and in his element when embroiled in picaresque and adventu...

2008 All-Ireland under 18 fiddle champion Dylan Foley and accordionist Blaithín Loughran are joined by Céitlin Finlay on banjo for a set of reels, including "Dr. Gilbert's" and "The Ash Plant". More info and videos at http://comhaltas.ie iTunes podcast at http://tinyurl.com/comhaltas

From A History of Irish Music by William H. Grattan Flood Chapter IV THE construction of the old Irish scales has afforded a wide field for the most conflicting theories. Even Dr. Sullivan, in his critical introduction to O'Curry, says that the Irish scales were "manifold, and often apparently quite arbitrary, so that the principles upon which they proceed are sometimes incomprehensible to us." Dr. James C. Culwick would have us believe that the Irish scales numbered 15, and he compares our old "gapped" scales to those of the Chinese, Russians, and Zuni Indians. Father Bewerunge, the most recent authority on this subject, only admits four modes namely, Doh, Ray, Soh and Lah.[1] From a long and careful study of some thousands of our ancient melodies, I have arrived at the conclusion that the old Irish scale was pentatonic, proceeding as follows: C D EG AC. By making each note in this first mode a tonic, or keynote, we naturally form four other modes--and thus we ...

A high school in rural Ireland will soon have a direct, high-speed, high-definition video link to researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, allowing students to look through Tech’s million-dollar electron microscope and take classes from top scientists. “For our students to be able to interact directly with researchers in Georgia, remotely control technology such as telescopes and powerful microscopes will be hugely exciting and motivational for our students and teachers,” Joe Varley, a science teacher at Killina Secondary School, 10 miles from Tullamore, Ireland, told GlobalAtlanta in an e-mail interview. Classes with Tech researchers via video will start in January, said Jeff Evans, deputy director and principal research engineer with the Georgia Tech Research Institute. Tech is offering the classes through a program called Direct to Discovery. Tech currently offers the program in about 90 Georgia school systems. Killina will be the first overseas school to part...

It’s not easy to sum up Shaskeen’s 39 years of music making and entertainment, but listening to the trad band’s new CD ‘Walking Up Town’, it is clear that they are going to be leading the way for quite a while yet. Like many Irish traditional musicians, Shaskeen has been caught up in the whirlwind of the set-dancing era, and their last four albums were comprised of music for the sets. Now they are making a change to concert-style performances. ‘Walking Up Town’ – remarkably, the band’s 15th album – marks a return to their original musical formula. It’s an album ‘for listening to’, and it features a generous collection of jigs, reels, waltzes, polkas, barn dances and songs. The title tune is an American ‘breakdown’, a fun rag-style tune. It’s probably the best summing up the band could ask for. It is hard to beat well-seasoned musicians, and the members of Shaskeen are as experienced as they are skilful. The band has maintained the same ethos over its many years of making music – and th...