All festival events were presented through our new festival website, designed by Jason Cooke Karve, co. Waterford. Richard Begley Events provided tech. support for our live events. All live events were recorded, and are accessible for ticket-holders to view until year end along with the pre-recorded concerts and talks.
We are delighted to report that our first online festival was a great success. Feedback from session surveys was overwhelmingly positive, with 85% of responses rating the content of the festival ‘very high quality’ and an additional 13% rating it ‘high quality’.
Talk to an Irish Music Master
2.00–3.00 p.m. daily
These relaxed, interview-style sessions with Pádraic Keane, pipes; Ciarán Ó Gealbháin, sean-nós song; and Breda Keville, fiddle, allowed festivalgoers to talk to a recognised master in the living Irish tradition, to question them about their background, training, influences, style, and opinions on what is important in performing traditional music well. Contact with their deep, embedded knowledge, and ingrained style, as living Irish music masters, adds to our festival’s Historically Informed Performance approach. These masters provided fascinating, inspiring insights, and demonstrated with scintillating performances of the music closest to their hearts.
Lifetime Achievement Award
Mon 26.07.21
Our HHSI Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, Ann Heymann, delighted us with anecdotes and insights into her trailblazing work to revive the early Irish harp. Ann’s students, friends, colleagues, and family joined in this special event to express their congratulations and gratitude for her many years of superlative, dedicated work.
Online Tea Rooms
3.00–3.30 and 4.45–5.15 daily
To encourage interaction and build community, we hosted live online ‘tea break’ rooms between festival events. These were very popular, as attendees grabbed a ‘cuppa’ and chatted with new friends and old, often delving deeper into music and topics encountered during the festival.
Players’ Sessions
3.30–4.45 daily
Four live hands-on sessions ran simultaneously each day:
Sylvia Crawford offered sessions for players new to early Irish harp, as well as those wanting to refresh and update their technique, drawing on her in-depth study of the first tunes traditionally taught by the eighteenth-century harpers, and presented in her new book.
- Eibhlís Ní Ríordáin worked on 17th- and 18th-century harp songs.
- Siobhán Armstrong taught 18th-century repertoire, incorporating significant discoveries made in the course of her recent PhD research.
- James Ruff presented 17th- and 18th-century Scottish vocal and instrumental repertoire.
- Making her Scoil debut, Carolin Margraf presented on performance-practice approaches to medieval Irish plainchant melodies, and medieval modes.
- Andrew Lawrence-King worked with players on historically informed rhythm and emotion as they relate to the music and time period of Carolan.
All of these sessions represented cutting-edge research, and were very well received by participants who, because all of the sessions were recorded, can go back multiple times as they practice the music and techniques presented in each.