William Kennedy Piping Festival
The 28th edition of the William Kennedy Piping Festival will take place in Armagh City over the weekend of 17-20 November 2022. After the uncertainty of recent years, the festival is delighted to present a full programme of concerts, sessions, workshops, and lectures right across the city, and looks forward to welcoming visitors and friends - new and old - to the ecclesiastical capital once again.
Programme highlights include an exciting new project entitled ‘inB’ which features Scottish pipers Brìghde Chaimbeul and Fin Moore along with uilleann pipers Louise Mulcahy and Tiarnán Ó Duinnchinn, all playing pipes pitched in ‘B’. Former Moving Hearts and Riverdance piper Declan Masterson will make his first visit to the festival, while Armagh Pipers Club alumni Jarlath Henderson and Cillian Vallely make welcome visits home – the latter performing a specially commissioned new body of work along with the world-famous Fidelio Trio. The international dimension of the festival is further enhanced by 14-piece Portuguese band Orquestra de Foles, Lampetròn Trio from Northern Italy, Anxo Lorenzo from Galicia in north-west Spain, Joey Abarta from the USA, and Scottish pipers Rory Campbell and Alana MacInnes.
Other acts confirmed include the Dunne family – Mickey, Niamh and Bríd – from county Limerick; Paddi Benson, Grace Lemon and James Patrick Gavin from London; Aaron O’Hagan and Luke Ward from Belfast; and local highland piper Brendan Murphy.
The annual festival lecture will be delivered by acclaimed piper/cellist/composer Neil Martin, on the topic of the "Uilleann Pipes in a Western Art-Music Tradition".
The festival also presents the newly retitled Mark Donnelly Piping Academy which remembers the great piper – one of Armagh Pipers Club’s first students and subsequently principal piping tutor. The academy is an immersive uilleann piping course with tuition from leading players, as well as instrument maintenance classes, lectures and discussions.
Further information and booking from www.wkpf.org. The William Kennedy Piping Festival is organised by Armagh Pipers Club with funding assistance from Armagh City, Banbridge, and Craigavon Borough Council, and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.