Sliabh Luachra Music Trail

The Sliabh Luachra Music Trail will add to the year round programme of events with an exciting, new initiative that has just been announced.

The Sliabh Luachra Young Musicians’ Award is a new annual award that aims to recognize the achievement and support the further musical development of talented young traditional musicians. Applications will be invited from young musicians between 16 and 23.  The competition is now open and the winner will be announced at the Sliabh Luachra Young Musicians Awards ceremony in October. Please click here for guidelines and application form.

The Con Curtin Music Festival takes place from the 27th – 29th of June with a vast array of musicians performing the finest of traditional music from Sliabh Luachra and around the country. The festival kicks off with Friday night’s Gala Concert featuring Naomh Ide Ceili Band (Munster Champions) and De Dannan. The concert takes place at 8pm in the Brosna Hall.

The workshops begin on Saturday morning at 11am in the national school. There will be tutors for a variety of instruments including banjo, concertina, fiddle, accordion, flute, singing and sean nos dance. At 2.30pm there will be a concert in the hall featuring a selection of workshop participants and At 4pm all accordion players are invited to take part in the Aneas O’Connell Memorial Trophy. A traditional mass will take place in the church 8pm and this is proceeded by a house session in the Ciss kitshen which will feature some of her finest Sliabh Luachra musicians including Donal O’Connor, Nicky McAuliffe, Ann McAuliffe, Mary Crowley and John Connolly. This event is sponsiored by the Sliabh Luachra Music Trail.

 On Sunday there will be street busking from 2pm followed by a Ceili with Taylors Cross ceili band and a singing session in Flanagans Bar at 5pm. Of course, there’ll be music sessions throughout the village overt he course of the weekend.

www.concurtin.com.

Plenty of events coming up this month on the SLMT. Regular sessions taking place in Scully’s on Monday night, Bruach na Carraige on Tuesdays and The Fairfield Tevern (Doyles Bar), Knocknagree on Wednesdays. And, of course, at the end of this month we have the Con Curtin Music Fest which takes place in various venues throughout Brosna on June 27th – 29th  http://concurtin.com/ Keep an eye on the site for the programme of events which will be available shortly and includes sessions, concerts, workshops and a whole lot more.

There are lots of things in store for the coming months including master classes and a young musician award. Details of each will be announced shortly so keep an eye on our news section.

A new folk club has been launched in Ceann Toirc (Kanturk) called The Knotted Chord Folk Club and is running monthly sessions. You can expect some of the finest traditional and folk musicians including; Jackie Daly, Matt Cranitch, Geraldine O’Callaghan, Ciaran Ruby and many more….

Castleisland musician & singer P.J.Teahan Killarney-based accordion player Mick Culloty, from Scartaglen, have very kindly offered their services and will perform a concert of dance music and songs at the clubs present HQ at Corkery’s Bar on Wednesday, May 28th at 9pm.  Both musicians are steeped in the music of Sliabh Luachra and have played  all over Ireland and further afield over the past many years.  The two boys play regularily in Castleisland and locality and this is a great opportunity to hear them play together in concert.

 

The website www.mosesbridgemusic.com posts full details of all events.

 

For those of you you don’t know, Saturday May 17th is World Fiddle Day and there are special events taking place throughout the Sliabh Luachra from Castelisland to Newemarket. See our events page for more info…

Also check out the video the gang in Scully’s put together here

http://worldfiddleday.com/

Congratualtions to Mr. Nicholas Carolan and all the staff at the Irish Traditional Music Archive which recently received an Award of Excellence from the International Association of Music Libraries (UK & Ireland).

The Award celebrates institutional and individual excellence, and acknowledges ‘activity in music libraries which demonstrates sustained good work and good practice with the potential to be adopted and adapted by others’. It is presented every two years. The nominations for this year’s awards were judged by a panel of experts from both the music and library worlds, chaired by Professor Jan Smaczny of Queen’s University, Belfast.

ITMA is the only Irish institutional award winner of the year, and it was joined on the day by British libraries which included the British Library Music Collections, the Library of Cardiff University, the Library of the Royal Northern College of Music, and the Library of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

In its observations on ITMA, the judging panel said that its service was ‘particularly commended for the very wide-ranging collection which is of national and international significance, its contribution to Europeana, the sizeable staff with broad and appropriate skills, the collection’s open accessibility which is clearly widely regarded as a model for such repositories, and the strong and attractive website’

For further information, see http://www.iaml.info/iaml-uk-irl/news/excellence_2014.pdf and www.itma.ie, or contact ITMA at +353-(0)1-6619699.

The 13th Annual Maurice O’Keeffe Festival Weekend will wrap up this afternoon with a ceili in the Ballydesmond Community Centre featuring the Striolan Ceili Band.

2-5pm

As has been the case for the past few years, Bruach na Carriage Heritage Centre in Rockchapel, Co. Cork will host a a weekly session this July and August. You can expect an intimate concert with some of the region’s finest young musicians followed by an open session. More information will be available closer to the day but click here for a sample of some music and dance.

The Irish Traditional Music Archive is a fantastic resource for those researching the music of Sliabh Luachra or Traditional Irish Music in general. They recently published  77 interactive music scores which were written by Pádraig O’Keeffe for fiddle pupils, and donated to ITMA by Paud Collins from Knockacur, Knocknagoshel, Co Kerry.

To view these scores, please click here

The popular RTE Radio 1  trad and folk show, The Rolling Wave, will include a feature on the Sliabh Luachra Music Trail on the show this Sunday, April 13th. Presenter and producer, Peter Browne attended the launch of ther Music Trial in Ballydesmond last month where he got a chance to speak to musicians and organisers and learn a little more about the project.

Tune in to Radio 1 this, and every Sunday at 10pm.

http://www.rte.ie/radio1/the-rolling-wave/