One of Ireland’s favourite music festivals, The Baltimore Fiddle Fair takes place this year from May 8-11, with musicians from Quebec, Spain, Finland, Scotland, England, USA and from all over Ireland. The Baltimore Fiddle Fair is one of the most loved and respected festivals in the country, famous for its […]
Music
Charlie Magill played a stadium for the first time in his life and musical career in Thomond Park, Limerick last summer. Over 25,000 people watched the band Esmeralda Road – of which he is the guitarist, lead singer, composer and lyricist – as simultaneously the band watched the audience. Like […]
Traditional Irish music is a bit of a miracle. In many other Western European countries, homegrown music with roots that go back centuries (or even millennia) might be played at rural festivals and during cultural celebrations: A reminder of times long gone and largely obsolete. Here in West Cork and […]
There is something about West Cork. It may be the landscape, or the people. It holds a powerful attraction. Katrina O’Kane was well aware of it as a child when, growing up in Belfast, her mother took her “down south” to visit a friend on their beautiful farm in Borlin […]
Jason Ward reviews Maria Doyle Kennedy at Levis’ in Ballydehob Our ideas of places we have never visited are often influenced by how we see them in movies, in books and on TV. My first ideas of life in Ireland were formed by the movie The Commitments. In 1991, I […]
There is a sentence about the singer-songwriter and guitarist Niall Connolly that is very memorable. It’s on his website, www.niallconnolly.com. Part of his Electronic Press Kit (EPK), it is being used over and over again by many of the venues where he plays: “A master storyteller, Niall Connolly is the kind of […]