Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Irish in Haddenham

Yesterday evening was the twice monthly meeting of the Irish session at the Rose and Thistle in Haddenham, Bucks.
It is unlike a normal session. It takes place in the back room of the pub so there are only the musicians in the room.
In the first half of the evening we try out more obscure Irish jigs, reels, polkas and hornpipes collected by Tony Blay. This is more of a workshop session led by Tony. The tunes are arranged into sets and rehearsed so that they become part of the group repertoire.
The second half of the evening is more in the traditional session style with different musicians playing Irish tunes and others joining in.


There is a good variety of Irish folk instruments played at the session: fiddle, whistle, flute, concertina, accordion, banjo, mandolin guitar and bodhran.
Pictured above are Dave, me and Penny.


Pictured above - Tony and Tim.
There are fourteen members of the group with about 8-10 attending at any one session.



Bruce
The session takes place on the 2nd and 4th Tuesday of each month starting at 8.15

1 comment:

Rob Windstrel Watson said...

It looks like a good session :-)

I have to confess that I'm not so keen on sessions away from the public eye (even if it is just one deaf regular in the corner asleep over his pint). However, the flexibility it gives to be able to experiment and enlarge a groups repertoire is a definite plus.

Thanks for your visit to mine and keep up the good work with your interesting blog about folk music and folk sessions.