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NEXT Monday will see will see huge numbers of musicians converge on the North Clare village of Corofin for the start of the eleventh Corofin Traditional Festival.
The festival will kick off in Teach Ceoil at 8pm with the official opening and the launch of The Teach Ceoil Concerts, a double CD compilation of highlights of the first 10 years of the festival.
With funding at a premium the organisers hope that sales of the CD will help to secure the festival’s future.
“This is our eleventh year running and we’re a bit tight for funding this year, so we’re about to release a CD of highlights of the past 10 years, all live recordings. It’s a live CD that’ll be launched on the Monday by Minister Jimmy Deenihan. We’re hoping that’ll provide funding for the festival for years to come through sales of it. There are 32 tracks and there are people like Noel Hill, Frankie Gavin, Liam O’Flynn, Sean Keane, a lot of big names. They’ve all done it for free and gave us permission to use the tracks,” said Padraic O’Reilly, who is the festival chairman and was one of its founders.
The festival ends on the following Saturday night and in between there are events at Teach Ceoil, Jimmy Daffys, Bofey Quinns and Crowleys.
According to Padraic, the biggest events of the week will be the concerts on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.
“On the Thursday night we have Dessie O’Halloran, who sings with Sharon Shannon, coming down and doing a concert. He’s being joined by his brother Johnny who is well-known from the All-Ireland Talent Show. They’re from Inishbofin. They’re also joined by Don Stiffe who was also on the All-Ireland Talent Show.
“On Friday night we have the O’Donnells, Colm and Seamus, who are from Sligo, they are well-known flute players and singers. Also we have Alec Finn from De Danann and they’ll be playing with Derek Hickey from Limerick and Marcus Moloney who is also from Limerick but Clare based.
“On the Saturday night we have Kevin Crawford and James Cullinan who’d be well known local acts. Kevin Crawford is the front man of Lúnasa, so he’d be fairly high profile. They have a new CD coming out quite soon so he’ll be promoting that as well.”
He said the festival brings a lot of business to Corofin.
“All the B&Bs around are already full. We will put on over 30 sessions in the pubs over the weekend, we’re paying out to over a hundred musicians and each one would have a number of friends so it does attract thousands to the village. It helps keep the pubs afloat after a quiet January and February.”
