Munster Express Online

There was a palpable relief all round now that the music exams are over. Last weekend many of our students sat their music exams at our Music school in Gracedieu. The examining board is the London College of Music who carry out their work in a very professional manner. The exams start at Preliminary stage and go all the way to Diploma in Music which a number of our students have achieved over the years. But we are glad to report that the study and practice tension is over, for the moment anyway.

There is a party of 110 people coming from our twin city of Rochester New York to visit over the May Bank Holiday weekend. As part of their busy itinerary, our traditional group Craobh Nua together with Dunhill Dancers will be performing for them in the Large Room on Thursday May 1. One of the visiting party is Ted McGraw who is the Chairman of the North American Archive of Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann and on May 2 he is going to record our traditional group playing a few tunes so he can broadcast them on his weekly award winning radio show called Irish Party House. This radio programme has been running for many years and has attracted a wide audience, even over here where we can tune in on the Internet.

One of our favourite festivals of the Summer season is the Phil Murphy Weekend that is held in Carraig-on Bannow from 24-27 July .The festival in named after Phil Murphy, a very important Harmonica player, who, together with his sons Pip and John Murphy, brought traditional Harmonica to centre stage and recorded a seminal classic CD called The Trip to Cullenstown, as well as recording a very successful CD with Sligo Fiddle player Kevin Burke.This years festival is packed with goodies, both in the music school, concerts and sessions. More about this next week.

If, like us, you have a weakness for fiddle playing, then you should plan to take in the Baltimore Fiddle festival in west Cork from May 8-11. Some of the key performers will be Scots singer Julie Fowlis, fiddler Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh with Manus Lunny, US fiddler Darol anger with his group Republic of Strings, Martin Hayes and loads more. Great excuse to go to west Cork