Digging in with the Gang

Once again, you remain anonymous...

 We were having so much fun working on our tunes that I forgot to take a photo of you! Thank you so much for coming out to work on the tunes. Welcome to our new friend Charlotte and her mom Jeanmarie! We enjoyed having you there - hope to see you in May!

As to last night's fun? We played Gentle Maiden. I guess I ought to put a sound clip of that up, eh? Then we went over Joe Bane's Barndance. I think we need to pick that one apart a bit. We'll plan on that for next month. Then we went over our set of jigs and our reels (thank you Paul for demonstration the difference between hornpipes and reels!). Patrick sent these YouTube links for the set of jigs: this by Martin Hayes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrwWNP1a42M; and this link I sent you before by the Tulla Ceili Band: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO4ETP0il5I

Don't you  think it really  helped to dig deep into Joe Bane's Reel last night? It's such a fun tune, but it doesn't sound anything like it looks on the page, does it?

Even though Gentle Maiden isn't really a new tune to the session repertoire, it's new to almost all of us at the session these days. I'm glad we went over it - if you're curious, you can find the sheet music in the dropbox/google drive folders. We didn't get to our new tunes, so we'll be working on those for next month: the Miller of Dronagh and Anne Walshe's Reel. I'll be posting the sheet music and sound clips later today. 

Speaking of the mysterious Anne Walshe, I did a little more poking around, and I found this about herself: https://thesession.org/discussions/22263. Apparently the tune was recorded on a 1960 Leitrim Ceili Band album that includes Joe Burke on accordion and the amazing Paddy Carty on flute (I'll try to find a clip of Paddy - his playing is just lovely). (https://thesession.org/recordings/3513). Of course, no one has posted the tune yet - I will be doing that over the weekend in the hopes that someone will be able to shed some light on its origins.

Some of you have expressed interest in scheduling an additional monthly session to get together to play tunes and keep the momentum going. I'll be sending out a survey shortly to gather information - join the Email List if you are interested in being a part of the extra session group. And always remember that the Comhaltas Slow Session on the third Sunday is a great option for getting new tunes, having fun playing together and meeting great people. (www.albanycce.com for info.)

Keep on playing the tunes! Enjoy the sunshine! See you soon,

Hilary

Who is Anne Walshe?

I'm pretty sure she's not St. Anne...

The Red Fox and the Grey Goose All Across His Back...
(from The Bestiary of Anne Walshe (Copenhagen, Kongelige
Bibliotek Gl. kgl. Saml. 1633 4˚) circle 1400-25)

And she probably isn't the Anne Walshe of the medieval "Bestiary of Anne Walshe", but maybe...? I looked high and low for information on where the tune came from, but can't find anything. Do you know? Let me know in the comments below,

or come tonight and tell us in person!

That's right - it's Slow Session time again at Old Songs. Wednesday evening, April 20th, from 7:30-9:00 p.m., Old Songs will be transformed into a little Irish community hall. We'll be sharing tunes and chat.  I look forward to hearing about what you've been up to since last month, and to playing our  Spring tunes we've been working on.

If we have new visitors tonight, we'll pick tunes off of the CCE lists (see the tunes pages for info) to start the evening, and then (or if you'd rather), we'll get right into working on our learning tunes for Spring 2016.

See you tonight!

Hilary

Interesting Article

Hadn't thought about the origins of the Irish in a while...

This is an interesting article from the Daily Gazette. I haven't really had time to digest it yet, but I thought you might like to read it for yourself. Thank you Nancy for sharing!

http://www.dailygazette.com/news/2016/mar/17/bones-found-under-pub-irish/?dgzrg

Cheers,

Hilary

Thank You!

Thank you to those who came out to the Curragh gig yesterday!

Curragh & Friends at The Hangar in Troy, NY

Thanks so much to all our friends who came to see the band play at The Hangar. It was our first outing on St. Patrick's Day in years as Curragh. Our good friend Ray Wall from Broken String Band came up at the end to help us out with our closing set. 

Kind of cool because Broken String Band will be performing a set at Caffe Lena's folkathon on April 29, followed by the Saratoga Pan-Celtic Players leading a trad session! Hope you can make it to that.

And by the way, I'm hoping all our other musician friends had good gigs...

Maybe we'll see some of you tonight at Lawson & Doyle's participation in the Performance School of the Arts open house tonight at 1505 Route 9, Clifton Park, NY 12065 from 7:30 to 9:00 p.m. (Free. Open to the public).

Cheers!