I’ll be heading up to the Folklife Festival in Seattle in a few weeks and I was just wondering if anyone is aware of any UP performmances or workshops that will be happening there? I should have my new practice set by then, so if there are any beginners workshops I wouldn’t want to miss them…
-David
I may be there Ston. If so, I’ll email ye in advance. I have to check my calander for conflicts (I travel a bit and play in about 4 different bands). I trust you know what you’re getting into?
Check it out:
Seattle Folklife Festival. It’s always on Memorial Weekend at the Seattle Center (right under the Space Needle). It will knock your socks off, if you’ve never been! Tons of Irish musicians, and the Pipers Club always plays (Tom Creegan and his fellow U-pipers) Tom’s Really Really good.
There’s not nearly all the Irish music listed! And there’s tons of places to go (pubs, etc. with live bands) in the evenings, and an evening concert of the best picks of the day in a beautiful concert hall which hold about 15,000 people. Typically there’s about 200,000 people who visit the festival over 4 days…and it’s all FREE!
I know, it’s wonderful – This’ll be my 11th straight year going to the festival 
. I’ve actually performed as well, once as a musician and four or five times as a dancer. One of the things that bums me out about being in Los Angeles is that I can’t play with the band I was a member of back in Oregon. They perform every year at Folklife.
This is my first time in the Irish context, though. In past years I’ve mostly just been interested in balkan stuff and contra dancing. Since I’m getting into UP, though, I’d really like to hear whatever’s available of Irish piping at the festival. If there were a workshop that would be an extra bonus I already looked at the schedule online, but they don’t seem to list workshops, and I did a search on “uilleann” and didn’t find anything among the performances.
-David