Tag Archives: traditional music

By Róisín O’Sullivan St Joseph’s Secondary School, Spanish Point Highly commended, senior Clare Champion Short Story Competition EVERY year, a boisterous gaggle of grandchildren gather in one place in order to prove their dedication to their grandmother. Many are young, too young to understand that what they will be doing is something that will be forever engraved in their memories. They will learn skills only taught to those worthy of such high regard. Some will falter and give up, yet the majority, goaded on by their proud parents, will master their skills and become true and noble glass collectors. Each year in July, for the Willie Clancy Week festival, every bar, restaurant and street corner in Miltown Malbay transforms into a bustling atmospheric cauldron of instruments, musicians and nameless voices singing songs of old. The week brings thousands of people of every age to the normally quiet town. It is this week that my grandmother’s pub renews its youth and …

by Peter O’Connell THE first staging of the National Concertina Convention (Consairtín) will be held in Ennis this weekend.  The festival directors are concertina player and teacher Tim Collins along with Áine Hensey, who is also very involved in the traditional arts in Clare. “It’s a new music festival on the music landscape of Clare,” Tim said. “It’s about capturing the colossal interest in the instrument, not just in Clare anymore. In the last 20 or 30 years the concertina has become a very popular instrument right across the country and beyond. “Áine Hensey and I felt that the time was right to bring an international festival to Ennis that would capture the interest in the instrument. We have a broad weekend planned including a mixture of teaching and a lot of performances,” he added. The festival will be officially opened by Jurgen Suttner on Friday at 7.30pm in the Old Ground Hotel. “There are lectures as well each day …