The Dartry Céilí Band.

Two very different traditional music festivals are coming up after Easter.

The third annual Clifden Traditional Music Festival in Conamara, Co Galway will take place from the 13 – 15 April. The highlight will be a free outdoor performance on the Saturday night at 7.30pm, given by All-Ireland Champions, the Dartry Céilí Band. Local and visiting musicians, singers and dancers will also take part in the concert.

Celebrated and well established musicians from all over the country will participate in the weekend, including several All-Ireland Champions, such as Maura Walsh, Philip Duffy, Graham Guerin, Gearoid Keating, Padraic Kerins, Josie and Una Canavan, Michael Curran, Chris Maguire, Bernie Conneely, Teresa Ryan, Maud Connolly, Sacra Furey, and Daithí Gormley.

The official opening will be performed by Bill Whelan with a free concert afterwards to give a flavour of what’s to come during the weekend. Workshops in button accordion, concertina, fiddle, and sean-nós dance will take place on Saturday.

clifdentradfest.com

A very different gathering altogether is Cruinniú na bhFliúit (the Flute meeting), an annual festival celebrating the use of the wooden simple system flute in traditional Irish music. Based in Baile Bhuirne, West Cork, the meeting runs this year from Wednesday, 11 – Sunday, 15 April.

According to their website, the classes are the core of the Cruinniú, and ‘unlike in many other cases they are not graded according to ability, in the sense of beginners, intermediate and advanced, but rather each class is a mix of abilities, ages, and backgrounds, where each student takes from the teacher at their own level. The emphasis is not simply on learning tunes, but in trying to introduce students to Irish traditional music as a whole, its repertoire, techniques, and lore.’

This year’s ‘extras’ include lectures by Fintan Vallely and John Wynne, showcase performances by Órlaith McAuliffe and Brendan Mulholland, a public interview with John Wynne by Conal Ó Gráda.

This year there’s a new element, which might catch on: an open mike get-together on the Sunday: ‘The open mike idea is to give the students at the event a chance to perform, solo or in small groups in a friendly, very informal atmosphere,’ as the website says.

‘As well as classes of mixed ability, we have also, from the inception of the Cruinniú, ensured that all students have access to all teachers, so that there are four periods of classes, and each student will have one period with each teacher.

‘We introduced the idea of the Flute Clinic three years ago, and this has proved extremely popular with students. Extra to the normal classes, each student gets a one-on-one period of tuition, which is designed to assess and address their basic performance issues.’

flutemeet.org