Peter Laban

Forgot to mention he talks briefly about an upcoming recording, all done on two Bass concertinas

Last night RTE aired the first in their art series The Works. In each programme presenter John Kelly talks to a prominent Irish artist. Usually good stuff. Cormac Begley was the subject lat night. Worth a look, if you are into that sort of thing. The Works presents : Cormac Begley Not sure if there are geo limits on viewing. Worth getting your VPN up for though.

In my own experience tunes learned by ear 'stick' better than the ones I picked up from notation. But I do realise the ones learned by ear have often been embedded, assimilated or whatever you want to call it for some time before actually taking them up myself. Similarly Isometimes lift a tune I from a written collection and find immediarely have it, only to find I have been listening to it for some time on recordings without realising it. My experience with (Irish) traditional musicians who only learn by ear suggest the way they retain tunes is different from those who learn from notation: ear learners tend to appraoch a tune as a structure, singling out the important notes and 'hanging' the phrases off them, filling the gaps as it were while sight learners often tend to see a string of notes they have to memorise.

The listings are not reliably maintained and more often than not out of date. I wouldn't bet a night out on them. Best to get local knowledge.

Several astronauts have played flutes in space : Ellen Ochoa, Cady Coleman and Ye Guangfu all had a go on various flutes. So that works.

That looks slightly more basic than the one I have or the ones I have seen. Quite possible John and Pat made them but Joe Ryan was the main producer of that sort of case. I have seen him deliver abatches of them on occasion. My son took away his concertina in it so I can't immediately supply an image. As it , obviously, does in a horizontal hex case.

[quote] I am guessing it would still be the same? In that the concertina ends rest against the case ends? [/quote] Not necessarily, the concertina doesn't stand on its ends and there's a bit of a buffer there that keeps the buttons free from the sides.

It should probably be mentioned there are horizontal hex cases as well. They were particularly prevalent in Ireland during the nineties when it was harder to find concertina cases and these were readily available through Custy's, made for them by fiddleplayer Joe Ryan.

You missed the Concertina Cruinniú at the weekend! More concertinaplayers than you could shake a stick at. In fairness, you would have needed to travel West for it. It was great though.

There's a number of her music images available on ebay, for a bit more than I remember paying. Both etchings and posters/other prints

GD has been at this a very long time : one of her etchings was used as the cover of Seamus Ennis' Phelim Ton Ris Castle LP of the late seventies. She has a whole series of etchings that can be seen as related to (Irish) traditional music, even if the faces of the figures have distinctly German features. I posted these concertina ones to one of the 'concertina in art' thread well over a decade ago. I have a framed original etching of the first image above. Kenny's gallery in Galway had a series of postcards of these and other images as well, I don't know if these are still available (Kennys moved out of their shop a good while ago and are now working out of a warehouse in an industrial estate so not as easy to casually walk in)

[quote]Obviously, what we would really like is to have every concertina player in the world out and about and playing on that day. [/quote] Obviously, that was not what I was looking for. And I will leave it at that as this is probably a whole other discussion.

[quote]FYI, we also have Caitlin nic Gabhann from Ireland who is in her early 30's, and I believe one of our South African players is fairly young. [/quote] I really don't want to pursue this any further and distract from this thread. But it is really a matter of perspective. When you are in your teens or twenties, someone in their thirties doesn't count as 'young' and is not someone you may identify with and, in extention, make the concertina seem like an instrument played by (other) young people. It is probably a problem for the ICA to work out, to find young people who play, get them on board and perhaps present the instrumenty as an option for other young people to take up. As I said, the instrument is in that position in Ireland, it's become extremely popular with young people who play traditional music. And it would be nice, I think, if International Concertina Day would reflect that age profile.

Invite them to play? Show the instrument is for all age groups?

I think it is perhaps a shame there are virtually no young players represented here. All styles and systems but not all ages, by the looks of it. I don't know about anywhere else but here in Ireland there are loads of very fine players in their teens and twenties, it would be nice to see those age groups represented in future iterations of this event.

I stumbled into the brochure for the 10th Concertina Cruinniú yesterday. It seemed soon but then, the last instalment was postpopned because of the pandemic and only took place in September. We can only hope this one will go ahead and we won't be knee deep in Omicron or whatever variant of the virus the future may have thrown at us by then. Concertina Cruiniú 2022 programme

Restrictions were lifted just in time for the Cruinniú to go ahead. Things kicked off last night with Mary MacNamara talking about the East Clare concertinaplayers she knew when growing up. It was a lovely night with some great music by Andrew and Mary MacNamara with Emer Donnellan joining them on concertina. It was great to have live music again, and such lovely stuff too. Unfortunately just now a Very Large tractor and trailerwith a heavy load of gravel couldn't stop coming down the hill on a narrow backroad and virtually took one side off my car so I am stuck at home for the day at least, not a happy person.

It isn't all that uncommon for these things as well as tv work, to just play the same tunes several times, filming from different angles and then mix the results together. We did a Sé mo Laoch for Kitty Hayes long ago and had to play some selections up to five times. And people wonder why people sitting at the bar in some of these TG4 shows look eternally bored by the music. ☺️

A programme for the event has been drawn up : Download programme (PDF)

With hte Covid pandemic far from over many festivals are staging online versions of some events. The Feakle festival will be doing that as well this year, during the first week of August (best check the dates) See http://feaklefestival.ie/#events Concertina wise Martin Hayes & Cormac Begley and Mary Mac and Sorcha Costello should be of interest.

Most 'musical' jokes seem to depend heavily on murdering or taking out of context Very Wellknown Tunes or playing out of time or out of tune. It's a tricky genre.

IMDb usually knows these things but at a quick glance doesn't list music credits: Ha'penny Breeze IMDb

With restrictions expected to lift further the Concertine Cruiníu 2021, which was originally scheduled for early this year will be held in Miltown Malbay, Co Clare during the weekend of 17-19 September 2021. More information soon at concertinacruinniu.ie

The seller just took down the auction.

Not quite a sheng but related enough to give an airing here: the Khaen. There is a guy from Cork who plays Irish music on one, to great effect. He used to come to town and play out in the street, attarcting great interest from the old traditional musicianers.