Same mail I posted on the uilleann list:
Mick and Caoimhín’s pipes and fiddle workshops & concert this weekend in
Copenhagen was a big success, and much appreciated. Danish piper Morten Holm set the whole thing up, and made an enjoyable weekend for us. My girlfriend took part in the fiddle class, and was very pleased with Caoimhín’s teaching, and found, as we all did, both Mick and Caoimhín to be both inspiring musicians and teachers. During the evening there was a belated St. Patrick’s night concert and Mick & Caoimhín started the night off. It was a joy to hear them playing live, all was not well with the sound system though as the lighting was somehow interfering and a buzzing noise could be heard through the speakers. This was not a problem for us listening out in the audience, but irritating for Mick & Caoimhín I’d imagine. Caoimhín remarked later that he had difficulty in hearing Mick up on stage as his moniter speaker wasn’t working, and kept in time by watching Mick’s foot tapping.
We had a small session in one room later starting around 10 pm, together with piper Keith Powell from Wales, Jeruen a flute player living
in Copenhagen, and some others. A cello player turned up as well, and later Mick & Caoimhín came in around 2 am and played some nice tunes in B for us some also incorporating the cellist and fair play to her for managing so well. Creating some warm flowing sounds. We were asked to leave around 3.20 am so everyone took the new (one year old?) Copenhagen metro back to Morten’s neighbourhood where we crashed in various apartments belong to Morten and relatives.
I really recommend anyone that gets a chance to hear Caoimhín & Mick play live to do so. They are making some magical sounds on their instruments - zen and the art of flat tunes. They had us all, seven of us, entranced there in the wee small hours in that room. Strangely enough just listening to the music it seems very laid back on one level, with the melody weaved into the droning notes of both pipes and fiddle yet when you look up at them playing you see the fingers are flying and there are a lot of notes sailing out at you at a fair old clip. Great musicians and very nice people I hope they come back soon, and again many thanks to Morten to getting all together.
The classes on Sunday were possibly a little surreal being held in a high tech advertising bureau amongst the desks, designed office equipment, big wall photos of models, advertising material and Macs (heaven for a Mac freak such as myself). There were 7 in the piping class and three in the fiddle class so that was good for everyone. The fiddlers were especially pleased. I’ll put up some pics this evening, Monday, Swedish time, on the page “Session snaps”
Caoimhín if you read this the address is:
http://w1.461.telia.com/~u46103557/sessionsnaps.html