Scoil Samhraidh Willie Clancy 2025
Sráid na Cathrach, Co. an Chláir, 5ú Iúil - 13ú Iúil.
The 53rd Willie Clancy Summer School, Miltown Malbay, Co. Clare, Ireland.
Saturday 5th July to Sunday 13th July, 2025.
Lectures and Presentations
Venue: Community Centre for all events.
Dé Sathairn 5ú Iúil - Saturday 5th July
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8.00pm - Oscailt Oifigiúil/Official Opening by Kathleen Loughnane, harper, tutor, researcher, author and co-founder of the group Dordán.
8.30pm - Breandán Breathnach Memorial Lecture - 'In Safe Hands: The Role of Clare Musicians in Dublin's Traditional Music Legacy' - presented by Mick O'Connor, musician, collector, music historian and author.
Dé Luain 7ú Iúil - Monday 7th July
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3.00pm - 'The Muckross Music Collection' - presented by Mary Mitchell-Ingoldsby, lecturer in Irish traditional music at University College Cork and manager of the University's Traditional Music Archive.
Dé Máirt 8ú Iúil - Tuesday 8th July
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3.00pm - Presentation: Tommy McCarthy and the London Connections: A Celebration of Irish Traditional Music and Musicians in the city, 1950s to the 1980s.
Dé Céadaoin 9ú Iúil - Wednesday 9th July
3.00pm - 'The Forde and Pigot Collections: Irish Traditional Music on the eve of the Famine' - presented by Nicholas Carolan, founder and former Director of ITMA, with Caitlín Uí Éigeartaigh, co-editor of the recent Forde and Pigot collections.
Déardaoin 10ú Iúil - Thursday 10th July
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2.30pm - Islands of Fiddlers: the Donegal Fiddle Music of Beaver Island, Lake Michigan' - presented by Caoimhín Mac Aoidh, musician, researcher, collector and author.
Dé Sathairn 12ú Iúil - Saturday 12th July
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2.30pm - 'The Four Francis McPeakes and a Century of Irish Traditional Music' - presented by Francis McPeake IV.
Lecture information
Oscailt Oifigiúil / Official Opening by Kathleen Loughnane
From Nenagh, Co. Tipperary, Kathleen Loughnane has lived in Galway since 1982. She began playing the harp at an early age and is highly regarded for her work in arranging traditional Irish dance tunes and airs for the harp, and also for researching the music of Irish harp composers of the 17th and 18th centuries. She was awarded the Dr. Annie Patterson Medal for Composition at the Dublin Feis Ceoil in 1995 for her harp arrangements and was an Irish Music Meteor Award Nominee in 2010. In 1990 she co-founded Dordán, whose mix of Irish and Baroque music has received widespread acclaim. Dordán received the National Entertainment award for traditional music in 1993 and the Bank of Ireland Award in 1995.
Kathleen has six CDs and accompanying books to her credit, Affairs of the Harp, Harping On, Harp to Heart, The Harpers Connellan, and more recently, two books and CDs from the MSS of Patrick O'Neill (1763-1832).
She has taught in Ireland and at major festivals in the US, Japan and throughout Europe. She was invited to play at the World Harp Congress in Dublin in 1995. Her arrangements have appeared in various publications and feature on the Harp Syllabus of The Royal Irish Academy of Music.
Kathleen Loughnane
Photo: Tony Kearns
Breandán Breathnach Memorial Lecture:
'In Safe Hands: The Role of Clare Musicians in Dublin's Traditional Music Legacy'
An illustrated presentation which will include recordings from Clare musicians, including Willie Clancy, Bobby Casey, John Kelly, Joe Ryan, Seán Reid and others who were part of the narrative of traditional music in Dublin as well as live music from descendants of key musicians..
‘In Safe Hands’ traces the history of Irish traditional music in Dublin from the Gaelic Revival (1893) to the 1960s/70s ballad boom. It highlights The Pipers’ Club’s role in preserving uilleann piping, the vital contributions of traditional musicians during the 1916–1923 revolutionary period and the War of Independence, Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann’s founding, and Na Píobairí Uilleann’s impact. Key musicians, cultural challenges, and the global revival of Irish music are also explored.
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Mick O’Connor, from The Liberties, Dublin, is a flute player, researcher, collector, and music historian. A member of the Pipers’ Club and leader of the Castle Céilí Band, he has played a key role in preserving Irish traditional music since the 1960s by collecting tunes, recording, and archiving photos. Over the years, he has been deeply involved in the production and design of LPs, CDs, videos, and books related to Irish music. In the past he has recorded with Seán Keane and Charlie Lennon. In 2008, Mick was the subject of the TG4 television programme Sé Mo Laoch. Honoured with the Gradam Comaoine award in 2017, he remains an influential figure in Irish music.
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This lecture will be presented on Saturday 5th July at 8.30pm.
Mick O'Connor
Photo: Tony Kearns
'The Muckross Music Collection'
This lecture explores the Muckross Music Collection which was made over a ten-year period from 1980 to 1990 in county Kerry and just over the border in Cork and Limerick. It will examine some of the music collected, the areas visited, and the themes that arose within the collection. It will outline the technology and methodologies used by the collectors plus funding sources for the collection. The Muckross Music Collection was instigated and overseen by the then manager of Muckross House, Mr. Edmond (Ned) Myers, who was greatly aided by Dr. Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin of University College Cork. Other people who helped included Fr. Pat Ahern of Siamsa Tíre, Tom Munnelly of University College Dublin, and Tony Perrott of Audio Visual Services, UCC.
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Mary Mitchell-Ingoldsby is a lecturer in Irish traditional music at University College Cork where she also manages the Traditional Music Archive and is curator and co-editor of the Ó Riada Memorial Lecture Series. An experienced and skilled uilleann piper, she has been teaching and performing for many years in Ireland, Europe and America and has broadcast widely. She has published extensively in the area of Irish traditional music, especially on uilleann piping, music collections and collectors, and on education in Irish traditional music.
Mary Mitchell-Ingoldsby
Photo: Claire Keogh
This lecture will be presented on Monday 7th July at 3pm.
Presentation: 'Tommy McCarthy and the London Connections'
A celebration of Irish Traditional Music and musicians in the city, 1950s to the 1980s
Tommy McCarthy
Photo: Tony Kearns
Members of the McCarthy family, friends and colleagues will share memories of the people, music and events of those days in London. Illustrated by archive photos, audio and video recordings, film documentaries, and live music.
Tommy McCarthy was born in 1929 in Shyan, near Kilmihil, in West Clare. From an early age he showed an aptitude for picking up music very quickly. Starting on whistle, he afterwards began to learn the concertina from his neighbour, a noted player named Mick 'Stack' Ryan, and soon became a fine concertina player. Kilmihil and surrounds eventually became noted for its concertina tradition and Tommy and other musicians like Sonny Murray, Solus Lillis, Bernard O'Sullivan, Tommy McMahon and Tom Carey were the great exponents of that musical heritage.
He purchased a set of uilleann pipes from Leo Rowsome in 1950 and became equally proficient on that instrument. All his life he was committed to promoting the art and craft of uilleann piping and was at the first meeting of Na Piobairí Uilleann at Bettystown, Co. Meath, in 1968. When he moved to London in 1952 he found work as a carpenter and later, in 1980, was co-founder of the London Pipers Club, an important hub for the transmission of piping in Britain. London was then a vibrant place for Irish traditional music and he mixed with many of the big names on the music circuit of the day. Roger Sherlock, Bobby Casey, Paddy Taylor, Raymond Roland, Brendan Mulkere, Martin Byrnes, Brendan McGlinchey, P.J.Crotty and many more were resident in the city at the time and contributed to the dynamism of Irish culture in the capital.
Irish traditional musicians usually confined their playing to the Irish pubs, clubs, and centres but Tommy also played the folk club circuit, then a popular attraction for folk /traditional performers and audiences in the 1960s and 70s. In this way he extended his musical connections and became involved in a range of recordings outside of the Irish traditional music ambit. He contributed to albums by Horslips and Kate Bush and his whistle playing featured on the backing music to the song The Lion Sleeps Tonight by the group Tight Fit, which hit No 1 on the UK pop charts for seven weeks in the mid-1980s. He was involved in the music for the long -running production of The Playboy of the Western World at the National Theatre, provided music for the films Three Wishes for Jamie and Young Guns, and, with his family, performed regularly with the Chieftains when they presented concerts in London.
All of his family inherited his diverse musical skills and they regularly played as a family throughout the UK and the USA in the 1970s and 80s. The family kept in contact with home, visiting several times a year and re-connecting with musicians, family and friends. Eventually he and his wife, Kathleen, returned to West Clare in 1991 and settled in Miltown Malbay. Their daughters, Bernadette, Marion and Jacqueline and their families, also moved back to Ireland, settling in Clare and Galway, and their son, Tommy, moved to Boston. In Miltown he taught concertina at the Willie Clancy Summer School and, in 1996, performed at three of the formal recitals at the school - tin whistle, uilleann pipes and concertina - a tour de force of musical versatility. During the 1990s he and his family performed at numerous events all over Clare and the rest of the country and each year he performed in the US with his son, Tommy.
With Eamon McGivney, Junior Crehan and Michael Tubridy, he recorded three albums of Clare Set Dance music for Larry Lynch's book Set Dances of Ireland: Tradition and Evolution (published 1989) and provided music for Out of the Heavens in Showers, a play by John Doorty, based on the life of Micho Russell, the renowned North Clare musician.
Tommy McCarthy died in 2000 and his life and times are documented in Ken Lynam's documentary film Handing Down the Tunes which premiered in Clare in 2007.
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Note: For a comprehensive study of Irish traditional music in London see Dr Reg Hall, A Few Tunes of Good Music: A History of Irish Music and Dance in London, 1800-1980 (2016)
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This Scoil Samhraidh Willie Clancy Presentation will recall a world now past which has become an important part of the narrative of Irish traditional music; it will take place on Tuesday 8th July at 3pm.
'The Forde and Pigot Collections - Irish Traditional Music on the eve of the Famine'
Two great manuscript collections of Irish traditional music were compiled in the 1840s, one in Munster, London and Connacht by William Forde (1797–1850), a professional classical musician, one in Dublin by John Edward Pigot (1822–71), an accomplished amateur musician. The thousands of melodies they contain provide unrivalled insights into the music as it existed before the devastation caused by the Great Famine.
Nicholas Carolan is Director Emeritus of the Irish Traditional Music Archive (ITMA) of which he was founder-director 1987–2015. With Caitlín Uí Éigeartaigh he has edited recent editions of the Forde and Pigot collections for ITMA.
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This lecture will be presented on Wednesday 9th July at 3pm.
Nicholas Carolan
'Island of Fiddlers - the Donegal Fiddle Music of Beaver Island, Lake Michigan'
Islands of Fiddlers is an illustrated presentation which tells the story of the post-Famine emigrants from The Rosses and Arranmore Island of northwest County Donegal. Having left severely harsh conditions at home, they eventually found themselves settled on Beaver Island in the upper reaches of Lake Michigan in the Great Lakes. The isolation of their new island home meant that life continued on much in the same way as it had back in Donegal. Subsistence farming and fishing were familiar forms of work. The Irish language remained spoken up until the 1960s. With more than fifteen Rosses born fiddlers amongst the original settlers, Donegal fiddle music was the entertainment soundscape of the community with tunes and versions from the mid-1800s. Patrick Bonner (1882 - 1973) was a first generation islander and from a very early age enthusiastically pursued the repertoire and style of the older generation of Donegal fiddlers. He was recorded from the 1930s to the 1960s leaving a legacy of more than 100 tunes documented by the renowned collectors Alan Lomax and Professor Ivan Walton as well as island neighbours. While Patrick Bonner’s music is of great interest to traditional Irish fiddlers today, the parallels of his musical life with that of his contemporaries, Néillidh Ó Baoighill and Danny O’Donnell almost 5,000 miles away in the Rosses are astounding.
Caoimhín Mac Aoidh is a fiddler and piper who has for more than half a century collected, studied and documented fiddle music from the northern counties, in particular, County Donegal. He has written a number of books and collections on Donegal fiddle music as well as numerous articles on more general aspects of traditional Irish fiddle playing. He has performed and broadcast widely and is in demand as a fiddle teacher. His latest published work, co-authored with noted Michigan fiddler Glenn Hendrix, presents the music and story of Patrick Bonner, a first generation Beaver Islander in Lake Michigan of Rosses, County Donegal, parentage who made learning and playing the fiddle music of his many Donegal born mentors a life’s passion.
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This lecture will be presented on Thursday 10th July at 2.30pm.
Caoimhín Mac Aoidh
'The Four Francis McPeakes and a Century of Irish Traditional Music'
This is the story of the renowned musical family from Belfast and their unique position in Irish music, illustrated by audio recordings, film clips, archive photos and live music.
Since 1904 the McPeake Family have shaped the sound of Irish music, with four generations of Francis McPeakes at the heart of this enduring legacy. From the streets of Belfast to international stages, their influence spans traditional song, original compositions - including Will Ye Go Lassie Go aka Wild Mountain Thyme - a rich heritage of uilleann piping and an unmatched legacy of traditional music tuition. This engaging lecture by Francis McPeake IV will blend history and live musical performances, offering an intimate look at how the McPeakes have preserved and evolved the tradition of Irish music for over 100 years.
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McPEAKE are an Irish-folk-rock band from Belfast. McPEAKE’s music nods to the past generations of the iconic McPeake Family but has journeyed now to new territory and created their own sound....
The four generations of the McPeake Family have been whispered as ‘folk-royalty.’ Their beloved song Wild Mountain Thyme has been on the lips of music lovers across the globe. This hauntingly beautiful folk anthem has been covered by music superstars such as Ed Sheeran, Glen Frey (The Eagles), Rod Stewart and Bob Dylan, to name but a very few.
Francis McPeake I penned ‘Wild Mountain Thyme’ Francis McPeake II influenced Van Morrison, Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan; Francis McPeake III taught John Lennon the Uilleann Pipes; and now Francis McPeake IV has formed the new band McPEAKE which appeared in the EMMY Award-winning PBS Special “Music of Ireland....”
Francis McPeake IV on McPeake
"---If you listen to recordings from the 20s and 30s, it's completely different to listen to the same tunes played in the 50s or 70s. That's because each individual musician can only play the music as they feel it in that time. That musician could play that tune completely different within his own lifetime because of the music that is influencing him.
We, as a band, are no different. I cannot perform the music the way the McPeake Family did in the 60s. I don't believe they could have performed it how my grandfather performed it in the 40s, or how my great-grandfather performed it in 1915..."
(Francis McPeake IV interview with Casey Phillips, Chattanooga Times Free Press, 2-9-2011)
This lecture will be presented on Saturday 12th July at 2.30pm.
Francis McPeake III and Francis McPeake IV
Photo: Tony Kearns