Peter Laban

There's probably no harm in touching on older instruments like the sheng or mentioning ones most people will know, like the harmonium.

There was a post about this on thesession but this deserves posting here: Aoife Kelly has finally put online the long in the works website documenting the life and music of her grandfather John Kelly. A thorough labour of love and in its own right a wonderful piece of social history.. (pic above: memorial to John Kelly at Kilbaha Pier, close to his birthplace) I have seen Aoife give presentations about the project at the concertina cruinniú and the Willie Clancy Summerschool (see pic below, with family and friends) and it's great to see the project coming to fruition. John was a towering presence when I started learning this music and I must say I am one of many who met the sharp end of his opinions of what was right and wrong. Playing the Teddy Bear's picnic on the pipes was definitely out, no matter how tongue in cheek it was. But it was his playing as a member of Ceoltoiri Chualann, Ceoltoiri Laighan, the Castle Ceiliband or just him playing the concertina, or playing the fiddle in the back of Friel's with Joe Ryan, Bobby Casey and Junior Crehan was always inspiring and he left his mark on generations of musicians. The website: http://johnkellycapelstreet.ie/

I cannot think of one respected Irish player playing a G/D. Full stop. Noel Hill usually says he tried it and found them wholly unsatisfactory for the purpose. The first concertina player to be recorded, William Mullaly, played a D/A system. The current dominant way of playing in Irish music only developed when Paddy Murphy tried to emulate Mullaly's music on a C/G instrument. This in turn was taken up and further developed by Noel Hill, who taught it to almost everybody else. Other systems of playing in the D/G range on C/F instruments existed and remain to be used. Before that time it is well documented that a lot of concertina players played in C (matching the Clarke C whistles) although recordings from the earlier part and middle of the last century also show many playing in D (by whatever means). Some players retained this way of playing on C/G instruments when they moved from the old German concertinas and played in C and F on these C/G. Do I need mention John Naughton and Kitty Hayes in this context? Today we can see many concertina players play the C/G or transposing instruments, playing in D,G, A, C and F (and again their equivalent on transposing instruments). Without any problem or hesitation. And to great effect, players like Mary MacNamara, Claire Keville and the late Dympna O'Sullivan cleverly play(ed) sets of tunes constructed for musical effect that jump between these keys, with tunes normally associated with the keys D and G range placed in for example C or F but surrounded by tunes in their more common keys. There's a lot of possibility and variety out there, if you keep an ear out for it. That's a fair summary isn't it?

Quite a lot of (Irish) concertinaplayers play instruments of various keys C/G, Bf/F, Df/Af etc. It's quite common to use transposing instruments. Begley extended that by using Baritone , bass etc instruments that are not commonly used. [crossposted with the above] I think it's a good idea also to distinguish between different playing/fingering systems, various on and off row systems and the plain playing in various keys on one instrument, as Dana says, there's a lot more going on than just playing in D and G (other than using different keyed (transposing) instruments)

In fairness, with William Mullally and other 'along the row' Irish players in mind (playing in C and F on the C/G), wouldn't a D/A make a lot more sense than a G/D?

Hens' teeth.

Not sure you picked the right forum to ask this. That said, The workshops at Mittenwald used to turn out fiddles with labels like this by the score.

For anyone into that sort of thing: the whole lunchtime recital mentioned above has been put on youtube (not by me). Slightly shaky mobile phone footage but ten tracks or so in all.

You know, there are ways.. Thousands of people play in D on a C/G anglo.

That gets me there, thanks. The first dancer is Stephanie Keane, I think. Saw her dance a few weeks ago. The fiddle player is ofcourse Ciarán Ó Maonaigh. Great dancers, all of them, enjoyed that.

Where's the link then Daniel? I only see the above and 'Edwina Guckian' is the only link in that quote, which leads to her Facebook page, not to any video

Is it just me or is there only a link to Edwina Guckian's facebook page (which can only be viewed if you have a Facebook account)?

This is a bit of a zombie thread revival but it should perhaps be mentioned Éilís Crean has compiled a book titled 'The Life and Music of Eddie Kelly : the East Galway Tradition as interpreted by Eddie Kelly' that contains all 21 of Kelly's compositions. In 2017 her recording Searbh Siúcra featured her playing these tunes. The book was to be launched at the Feakle Festival on Thursday, I went up only to find there was no launch, without any sort of an explanation apparent. Which was a bit of a disapointment. Someone told me later Crean was delayed in her travel and the launch was postponed. I am hoping to find out more later. While I was in Feakle I landed in a pleasant session with loads of concertina players, presided over by Michael O Raghallaigh and Catherine McEvoy. As I had traveled up I sat in there for a bit, made the trip worthwhile. The book is out there somewhere anyway, if any of the original posters of this thread are still around and interested.

<Never mind, off-topic Sunday morning. thoughts>

Works fine for me in Firefox (68.0.1 (64 bit))

Yes we get to see a few of those played occasionally. Here's one : Anders Trabjerg is another player who likes that sort of thing.

I like to think get to see a fair few nice concertina players and very much so during the past few weeks. Normally I wouldn't bore you with that but today Chris Droney, in his 94th year, his daughter Ann Kirrane, son Francis and daughter in law Aine McGrath did a spot at lunchtime. And the unstoppable Chris Droney deserves a mention. Some snaps :

For the sake of discussion perhaps speed and unmusical/poor playing shouldn't be equated. They can run together but one doesn't follow from the other in the hands of a good player.

One man's 'lively' is the next person's 'breakneck speed'. It's always hard to figure out who is referring to what speed exactly. Some people fall over themselves at speed while others are perfectly relaxed and comfortable at the same speed. And dancers.. in my experience dancers demand speeds higher than those I would perhaps play at when playing to amuse myself. Any opinions on the speed in the video below, clearly a comfortable one for the dancer:

The Rolling Wave RTE, 16 June, Kitty Hayes : https://www.rte.ie/radio/radioplayer/html5/#/radio1/11048700

Well, that probably explains the missed calls from Aoife Nic Cormaic on my phone earlier this week. ?

Well, same here. I was making a way in during the seventies without much of a clue and became more focused and serious once I started the pipes, or got the pipes, in 1979. The quality these gentlemen's music would probably have eluded me (Ronan Browne alludes to that sort of thing in his sleeve notes for the CD). I am sure I heard Paddy Murphy play during the Willie weeks of the early eighties without understanding much of his music and that's probably only one of the players I regret not paying enough attention to when the opportunity was there. I can only be glad a few of that generation were left by the time I did start paying attention, or developed an ear and a degree of appreciation for what I heard and perhaps some understanding of what to listen for. Looking back though, there are a fair few tunes on this CD I knew as doing the rounds at the time. With hindsight, listening to recordings from that time and being familiar with the repertoire of players of that time and place, it's probably safe to say this was a repertoire popular with that group with many tunes breaking out of that circle to become overall classic tunes. Over the past few weeks I have been hearing a fair bit of music, a lot of younger players with whole new repertoires of tunes. I pick up the tunes that appeal to me, the ones that stick easily, but there's a lot of comfort in hearing 'the old tunes' played well and finding new corners in them when revisiting them.

Hard to say isn't it? A good portion of those tunes will come up if you listen to recordings of the time and players of that era so I would venture they were popular. But then again, some would have been popular because these very people played or recorded them. A bit of a chicken and egg situation.

They had a deal at the launch,tenner for one, three for 25. Only got the one though. ? The launch concert was very enjoyable. Actually spotted you walk down O'Connell st just before it Steve (we were having a bit of pre-concert something to eat). LtoR: Geraldine Cotter, Eamonn Cotter, Kieran Hanrahan, Eimear Coughlan, Maeve Donnelly, Francis Cunningham, Ronan Browne, Johnny Kelly, Cathy Potter and invisible in the back row on the right were Gerald Coughlan, Nicky & Ann McAuliffe

There are a few like it going around. What's the thing with the boxers?