Thomas McCarthy at Clare Festival of Traditional Singing
Thomas McCarthy. Photograph: Peter Laban.
Having focused on themes such as place and family in recent years, this year’s Clare Festival of Traditional Singing (Féile Amhránaíochta an Chláir), which starts this Friday, 18 November, is subtitled ‘Travellers and Fellow Travellers’ and will feature the inimitable singing of Thomas McCarthy.
Established in 1990 in Ennistymon and overseen for many years by Tom Munnelly, it was revived in 2008 in Spanish Point by his widow Annette Munnelly with the help of a grant from the Arts Council, the hard work of a number of local enthusiasts, and the advice of Annette’s brother and member of An Góilín Jerry O’Reilly. Speaking to the The Journal of Music, Munnelly explained that while the festival is in memory of her husband, they couldn’t reflect that fact in the name ‘because of his threat to come back and haunt me if I ever named anything after him’.
This year’s festival will be launched in the Bellbridge Hotel at 8 pm on Friday by actor and An Góilín singer Michael Collins, and the theme will be established afterwards in a seminar given by Jim Carroll and Pat Mackenzie about collecting songs from travellers in London.
On Saturday at 11 am Kevin Mitchell from Derry and Ellen Mitchell from Glasgow will give a singer’s workshop, and this will be followed at 2pm by an informal singing session in Irish and English, and by a discussion at 4pm, chaired by Anne Clune, entitled ‘A Shared Heritage? – Traveller and Settled’.
The ‘Grand Concert of Traditional Singing’ will start at 8pm, and features the Sean Tyrrell Trio, Mickey Dunne, Tim Dennehy, Martin Collins, Kitty Cassidy, Kevin and Ellen Mitchell, Thomas McCarthy, Antaine Ó Faracháin, Elizabeth Stewart (from Scotland) and Celine O’Leary.
A final farewell singing session will take place in Marrinan’s Pub, Miltown Malbay, on Sunday afternoon.
Published on 17 November 2011
