Teaching flute in the week following Easter at the Coolea flute gathering; participation in the Saturday concert.
Calendar of Events
Conference at Emory University, Atlanta, USA
“Making Connections: The Celtic Roots of Southern Culture”. A Conference at Emory University, Atlanta.
Speaking on the transfer of music from recreational to political repertoires, and from Scotland, via Ireland to the USA. Performance with flute and song in the course of the three day conference.
Féile John McGrath, Westport, Co. Mayo
Speaking on songs and singing at the festival dedicated to tunes composer John McGrath from Co. Mayo who spent most of his life in the USA.
North Atlantic Fiddle Convention at University of Ulster, Derry city
Organisation of the academic conference which is part of the NAFCO biannual gathering, being held in the course of a music performance programme in counties Derry and Donegal. www.nafco12.com
North Atlantic Fiddle Organisation Convention 2012
Fintan Vallely appointed co-ordinator of “The Ultimate Fiddle Fleadh”
Five days of music and dance in the City of Derry and in county Donegal between 27 June and 1 July, 2012.
The North Atlantic Fiddle Convention 2012 (NAFCo 2012) will be presenting its most ambitious and groundbreaking festival of music and dance yet. It will showcase world class fiddle players and dancers from countries around the North Atlantic seaboard including Ireland, Canada, Norway, Wales, Denmark, Sweden, Spain and Scotland,
Scoil Samhraidh Willie Clancy
Teaching flute for the week during the summer school.
Catskills Irish Music Week, New York
Teaching flute for the week and launching the Companion mid week
Tocane, France, launch concert for The Companion
Concert presentation for the launch of the Companion in the Perigord region of France. In the church in the village of Tocane St. Apre.
From amateur professional to professional amateur… reflections on the Traditional singing genre
“A Changing Traditional Landscape : The Folklore, Song and Music of Ireland” - symposium in the Princess Grace Library, Monaco, September 2012.
Session title: Connecting the Dots: Identifying Key Changes and Developments in Irish Music, Song and Folklore in Recent Times
Paper:
From amateur professional to professional amateur … reflections on the Traditional singing genre.
Traditional song forms in Ireland have ceased to have popular functional relevance and (as with dance) have been supplanted, via media, by global-style Rock and Pop (much of which in Ireland is of Irish composition). Traditional song as such has by now been set aside by the onetime subalterns, and has itself become subaltern to that which is merely ‘popular’. It is now typically best articulated by aesthetically committed specialists, for many of whom it is a ‘genre’, an artistic life’s pursuit, and for some a profession. The latter, as paid artistes often draw on the ‘the fireside’ to authenticate their studied art, the inverse of the unpaid specialism of céilí-house singers prior to the revival period. This paper explores such crisis questions as thrown up by revival: what is ‘the community’? Are we merely extending the shelf-life of redundant cultural fashions by preserving them in a syrup of 18th century, Enlightenment philosophy? How can we be certain that it is all – artistically – ‘worth it’?