Peter Laban

RTE broadcast a program by Paula Carroll featuring three characters of Clare music, Mary Ellen Curtin, Tommy Browne and Des Mulkere. Both Mary Ellen and Tommy play the concertina. Downloads here or, separately: Mary Ellen Curtin Tommy Browne Des Mulkere

Ken Lynam spent eight years preparing and making this film. He met Tom in London learning the pipes from him and started the project as an investigation in the transmission of tunes and music in general. When Tom was diagnosed with cancer he became the focus of the documentary. Only two shoots were done with Tom present, the film was still in preparation at the time. One bit was done in the house of Tommy Keane and Tom's daughter Jacqueline, the other at Tom's homeplace when visiting his brother. This was the day before he left for Lourdes, where he died the next day. Through archive material and friends and family reminiscing the film builds a lovely sensitively painted portrait of it's subject and doing so manages to capture the humour and personality of Tom just brilliantly. It's a loving and moving portrait of a great man. A few tears were shed at it's first showing. I saw the film at it première on sept 13 2008. Watch it if you can. Highly recommended.

Steve hauled out a part of 'the collection' The ones in the photographs are a mouthblown predecessor/prototype by Wheatstone and the very first Wheatstone attempt at concertina. There was an array of other instruments on display.

It would.

This weeks Come West.. had one lovely concertina duet by Ella Mae Dwyer and her daughter.

No doubt. I think they're fine to achieve a particular effect. As a violin replacement, not so much.

Stroh violin actually. The early Irish musicians like Michael Coleman had to use those for the early 78 rpms. By all reports they hated them. A friend of mine had one, they look like a great gizmo but their tone is awful.

They called it the Roossian fiddle because of the balalaika shape I am told anyway. Michael Dinan has been making them for a long time. The first time I saw one was during the eighties when one was displayed as one of the kind Bobby Casey started on. The same display also had 'John Kelly's Hat'. You may remember it.

double post, sorry

sorry, trigger happy

On another -locked- thread we briefly talked about 'the Russian/box fiddle'. I had in mind when I mentioned it. Michael Dinan is playing one of these, of his own make. I couldn't find the clip at the time, as it turns out now the clip had Michael's name misspelled. Here it is, belated and all.

The unfortunate thing, as I recall, is that the explanation/translation of Caher Rua-Redhaired Charles appears in the sleeve notes of the Glackin lp. They were written by Séamus Ennis, who, you'd expect, knew/should have known better. The Caher=Cathall never worked for me. Caher is commonly used here for ringforts so the Red Fort can be a local landmark, if you know the locality the tune originates in.

Nearly, it was Johnny Moynihan, who took 'Tripping up the Stairs' along from Tony Hall's to De Dannan shortly after.

It IS a great listening adventure. Between the internet and everything else though I sometimes think there's almost too much to listen to. So it's important to pick the right stuff and really listen to it. I sometimes think I was better off during the eighties when I had maybe a dozen tapes and a bunch of lps but knew every note on them. Now I have a veritable archive but have loads of stuff I have heard maybe once or twice. And I won't even touch o nthe abundance of CDs available, I bought three this year. Today I still find I can recall many tunes I learned from those early tapes (I mentioned the one above) while I have trouble remembering I learned a tune last week (I will have the tune when prompted, the problem is remembering I have it at all). That may be age kicking in though.

Lovely stuff. I happened to sail into that first tune yesterday while scrounging around the corners of my brain for old repertoire. Caher Rua it was called at the time, by some. Paddy Glackin recorded that under that name didn't he?

They had a shot at it though with the box/'russian' fiddles and the brass ones

That lp was also (re-issued as?) Outlet solp 1041. Mine is dated 1980 As for the other example, I don't know now...

Although written for pipers, you'll find this article useful.

He was talking about playing for a good bit and doing the air concertina all through that, I have a sequence of six or seven of them. It was hard to resist. He did all his set pieces: how he was left in the concertina room at Wheatstone's to pick an instrument. Waking up to find the Ballinakill asleep in the van outside his gate (after a gig) and getting them in for breakfast, the threshing stories. He was on great form.

The battle there is keeping the microphones out, and not covering instruments, hands or sticking in to faces, as much as possible The photographs are part of an archival project: sound, image and video recordings of all official events at the school.

You can safely assume repeated first and second parts for AABB. DDKK has me stumped.

hehe, yes we did. Found a whole batch of them just now, for some of them I even have soundtracks, if'd look through the tapes. But you're right about it being '85, not sure about the weather on the day though although it probably was damp enough. I remember it sunny and warm too though. I remember you asking Liam if he wanted a photo of a jig or a reel for your avatar pic. And you took off the watch for it. Oops, I meant to edit this into the last post.

hehe, yes we did. Found a whole batch of them just now, for some of them I even have soundtracks, if'd look through the tapes. But you're right about it being '85, not sure about the weather on the day though although it probably was damp enough. I remember it sunny and warm too though.