Brendan Mulvihill, Angelina Carberry and Dan Brouder

The virtuosic fiddle master Brendan Mulvhill is touring to celebrate the release of a mammoth collection of tunes from his late father Martin, the Limerick-born fiddler who taught hundreds of young musicians in New York. He will be joined by tenor banjo ace Angelina Carberry - TG4's Ceoltóir na Bliana (Musician of the Year) winner in 2021 - and button accordion standout Dan Brouder.

(This is part two of a three-part series, the first of which was titled “The Art of Practice” and offered with IAC in March 2022)

Level: Open to all levels of players and open to avid listeners of Irish music too!

Local masters of traditional Irish, bluegrass, and old-time American music come together for New York Trad Fest at the new Irish Arts Center, kicking off a weekend of events all over the city.

The spirit and sound of Altan comes from the deep and rich musical tradition of their native County Donegal in Ireland. The band has been a driving force in the rising popularity of Celtic music around the world for over 35 years. The acoustic ensemble features traditional Irish instrumentation from lead singer and fiddler Mairéad Ní Mhaoniagh, Martin Tourish on button accordion and melodeon, bouzouki player Ciarán Curran, and Dáithí Sproule - one of the pioneers of traditional Irish guitar.

Brooklyn-based fiddler Patrick Mangan made his Broadway debut at age 16 with “Riverdance on Broadway” in 2001 and has since performed with the Grammy award winning Irish dance production and other luminaries of Celtic music in over 30 countries on every continent. He is leading New York’s longest open session. Stop by for some tunes!

Jocelyn Pettit & Ellen Gira, a fiddle & cello duo (originally from BC and Maryland), will be touring through NYC next Wednesday, in support of their new album, All It Brings. With guest guitarist, Brendan Hearn

Liz Knowles who currently performs with the Martin Hayes Quartet, all-female fiddle supergroup String Sisters, and her trio, Open the Door for Three, is giving an online workshop on the art of practice.

This online workshop is open to all instruments and levels, but best suited for intermediate to advanced players.

Mairéad shares tunes and tales from County Donegal, home to one of the richest traditions of fiddle playing in Ireland and the world over. Budding fiddlers will take in tunes by ear in small phrases, and learn history, context, technique, and style through practice of bowing, ornamentation and tone. Intermediate to advanced students welcome.

Hear and learn the ornamental techniques of NYC’s fiddle masters! Tony “Tradfather” DeMarco, called the city’s “central figure of the Irish traditional music scene” by the New York Times, discusses and distills the favorite practices of local greats like Andy McGann, Paddy Reynolds, Michael Coleman, and James Morrison. Improve your fluency in bowing patterns, rolls, grace notes, and finger and bow triplets, and create your own variations.

For intermediate to advanced learners.

Now living in Boston, fiddle player Caitlin grew up in Philadelphia and later lived in New York City, where she gravitated toward the sophisticated Sligo style of fiddling played by Bronx siblings Rose Flanagan and Brian Conway. Will has lived in New York, and in Glasgow, where he earned a master’s degree in traditional music at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. He is a drivingly rhythmic flute player in the north Connaught style, and a thoroughly accomplished uilleann piper.

For any fiddlers, advanced beginners and up, who would like to learn a Scottish tune or two!

Please note that this is not a class for absolute beginners and the tunes are taught traditionally without sheet music.

Official Website: www.JamieLaval.com

The “magnificent” (Irish Times) master fiddlers launch their thought-provoking new album The Fate of Bones, an austere, otherworldly follow-up to their 2014 debut Laghdú. $20

Johnny Gandelsman, Grammy award-winning violinist with celebrated quartet Brooklyn Rider and part of Martin Hayes's 2016 Irish Arts Center residency, performs JS Bach's cello suites, transcribed for violin. Gandelsman’s years of experience working with master musicians from various world traditions (including Bela Fleck, Kayhan Kalhor, and Hayes) injects a refreshing and deeply personal viewpoint to these magnificent works.

The Chieftains are highly recognized for reinventing traditional Irish music on a contemporary and International scale. The Chieftains were formed in Ireland in 1962 by Paddy Moloney, the top traditional folk musician in Ireland and around the world. Their ability to transcend musical boundaries and blend tradition with modern music has notably hailed them as one of the most renowned and revered musical groups to this day.

After more than fifty seven years of making some of the most beautiful music in the world, The Chieftains' music remains as fresh and relevant as when they first began. And now they will bring their music once again on tour to the US in 2020 called, "The Irish Goodbye." What is an Irish Goodbye you may ask? Some say an Irish Goodbye is sneaking out of a party without telling anyone.

Host Mick Moloney and the Green Fields of America are joined by some of the most elemental forces in bluegrass, old-time, and clogging today—Danny Paisley and the Southern Grass, Nora Brown, Stephanie Coleman, and Megan Downes—for a rousing musical fête.

This workshop is geared towards upper-intermediate and advanced players, and will focus on how to add ornamentation and embellishment to familiar Irish tunes in the New York Sligo style. No advanced registration is required, and the cost per person is $40 (ideally bring cash day-of).

Don’t miss the chance to hear Grammy Award-winning fiddler king Mark O’Connor, "one of the most talented and imaginative artists working in music — any music — today." (LA Times) He and his partner, Maggie O'Connor, are joined, for the first time, by the “independent-minded,” genre-bending PUBLIQuartet, recently the Quartet in Residence at the Met Museum and a 2020 Grammy nominee. (New York Times) Sparks are sure to fly. FREE ADMISSION

Program

Antonín Dvořák / PUBLIQuartet - Improvisations on String Quartet No. 12 in F Major ("American")
Mark O’Connor — Selections from String Quartet No. 3 (“Old Time”)
Traditional bluegrass and folk music improvisations

The spirit and sound of Altan comes from the deep and rich musical tradition of their native County Donegal in Ireland. The band has been a driving force in the rising popularity of Celtic music around the world for over 35 years. The acoustic ensemble features traditional Irish instrumentation from lead singer and fiddler Mairéad Ní Mhaoniagh, Martin Tourish on button accordion and melodeon, bouzouki player Ciarán Curran, and Dáithí Sproule - one of the pioneers of traditional Irish guitar.

his group workshop on playing for contras will happen Sunday 2/23, at Michiko Studios in midtown.

We warmly encourage emerging players unfamiliar with contra to drop in and check it out. This would be a great introduction to CDNY's house band, the Contrapolitans, a great way to get up and running in the contra world alongside some lovely and welcome people. It's also a great way to network as far as starting your own band!

Bring an instrument and/or voice, a recording device, and a sense of fun!

Feel free to share with your networks. Admission is free; donations to the organizer to help defray a bit of the event might be welcome.

Margie and John are leaders of the vibrant Irish traditional music community in Pearl River, New York, where they are indispensable teachers, performers and organizers. Their teenage son John Paul is an up-and-coming star on both fiddle and tenor banjo. Most often heard as dance musicians (“The Pride of Moyvane”), this concert will give them a welcome chance to play for a purely listening audience. They will be joined by another Pearl River standout, Kieran Flanagan, at the piano.

Based in western Massachusetts, New Leaf is a trio composed of button accordionist John Tabb, fiddler Kira Jewett and singer/multi-instrumentalist Adam Braunschweig. John inherited his musical bent from his father. Kira, a classically trained violinist, embraced Irish traditional style with tutelage from Brian Conway. Adam provides the vocals and also plays guitar, tenor banjo, harmonica and other instruments. $15

Flute/tin whistle player and singer Shannon and fiddler George are both American-born musicians based in Boston, that most Irish of American cities. Both play with polished facility and gorgeous tone, and both share a passion for genuinely traditional style. Guitar backing from acclaimed Québec guitarist Yann, a member of the trio Genticorum. $15

The Irish super-group! An evening hosted by Lúnasa’s renowned MC & teller of tall stories, Kevin Crawford. Featuring guest singers, together creating a musical, spoken word and entertainment tapestry that takes the audience back to the band’s Irish homeland in the days leading up to Christmas

Band Members:  Kevin Crawford - flutes/whistles & bodhran, Cillian Vallely - uilleann Pipes & whistles, Sean Smyth - fiddle , Colin Farrell - fiddle , Trevor Hutchinson - bass, Ed Boyd - guitar

Workshop: Fiddle and Flute @ 4:00-5:30. $30

Concert: @ 7:30: $20

Please email phil_weir@hotmail.com to sign up for workshops.

Bring your instruments! We will have a session to follow the concert for musicians.

Dublin-born Ivan Goff is one of the foremost Irish pipers and flute players of our time, with a stellar resume of recordings, performances and collaborations.

Katie Linnane grew up in Pearl River, New York, where her mother Kathy was a leading Irish music teacher. Blessed with a great talent, technique and taste, she is herself now one of the top Irish fiddlers in the US.

Great fiddling including Tony DeMarco, Brian Conway, Andy Stein, Rhys Jones, Calum Pasqua, and more!

Featuring virtuoso players, such as Hanneke Cassel and Lissa Schnekenburger, Childsplay presents musical styles ranging from classical violin music to various styles of traditional fiddle music. All of the fiddles are made by violinmaker Bob Childs - thus Childsplay!

Flute player Siobhán grew up in a musical family in O’Callaghan’s Mills, County Clare. Her fiddling husband Willie, though born in New Jersey, is very much on the same musical wavelength. A former student of County Limerick fiddler Martin Mulvihill,he absorbed much of his repertoire and style from the late, great east Galway flute player Mike Rafferty, with whom he made an acclaimed recording called The New Broom. $15