Hi all-- I received the following yesterday from Phil Hardy. I’m sorely tempted to splurge and make the trip. Anyone interested?
Hi Paul, we are holding a gathering of whistle makers here in West Chiltington, West Sussex, UK on saturday 3rd November 2012.
We would love you to be a part of it.
The idea is to have as many whistle makers under one roof for a day so players can and prospective customers can have a look at the instruments and talk personally to the makers.
It is not a money making venture, rather a gathering of makers and to have a good time.
There will be music in the evening and sessions in the local pubs.
There is no fee, you will just have a table along with the rest of us to display your instruments.
Phil Bleazey and I are responsible for getting things together so I hope you will consider it.
If you can place a message on the C&F to let other makers know that would be very cool.
I do intend to film as much of the event as poss to help promote the event and makers.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
All the best.
phil
ps, here is a list of the makers attending so far:
Phil Bleazey
Roy McManus
Tony Dixon
John Swaine
Misha Sommerville
Steven Harper
Guido Gonzales
There are more invited and I am yet to get confirmation.
I could post something about the upcoming Irish Festival in Charlotte (sort of near me) in September. Date isn’t set yet as it got pushed out. It’s a big enough city that there is a reasonable chance that someone there might offer to host a gathering. Once they announce the date or if there a decent size one nearer to me, I will check my calendar and may very well post start such a thread. You can do the same thing for festivals near you. I don’t know what kind of response you will get, but there is only one way to find out…
All you whistles makers get on a plane and come to Anchorage!
We could use some musical livlihood here. We have something like a folk festival every year but it’s really like hippy stuff and lots of people on drugs. Not that I care what other people do but it’s not my scene.
It’s hard to play whistle under the influence of anything more than a few beers.
That sounds nice. I doubt that I could be away from my day job long enough to matter, though. I really like Alaska. If there was some way for me to make a living there, it’s where I would be.
I am in college so I can leave Alaska though! I grew up here. The charm doesn’t really wear off, but it is a small city. To be honest the amount of alcholics here is outrageous. A lot of young Alaskans start drinking in middle school and highschool and never have time to learn anything about themselves before they’ve dropped out of school and are working terrible jobs.
Sad, but true. I barely made it out alive! Now I’m in college trying to get a degree so I can teach English abroad. It’s not a fancy living but I will get to see a lot of places.
I realize I talk about Alaska here on the boards a lot! It’s probably because our traditional music scene is small and hard to find. I’d love to meet other whistlers.
People just think I’m playing a strange metal recorder.
well, you’ve met whistlers here on C&F from all levels, the internet is a whole new connection to people, and I’ll bet there are whistlers there in Alaska, you just have to seek them out, even with your busy schedule.
Why don’t we hold a whistle convention/festival that would include whiske makers, liver performances from top whistle players, workshops and ceilis and sessions. I’m sure I could host it here on the beautiful Oregon coast. And it would be great to get as many makers to come as possible. I’ll talk to my local folk society and see if we could hold it and the college, if not there’s a large community center down the street that would work… Sorry thinking out loud, but I think I would love to host something like this. Let me do some research and I’ll start a new thread with specifics once we get things lined up.
I keep hoping to get an email back from the Charlotte Irish Festival. Their web site (http://www.charlotteirishfestival.com/) still says it was postponed but will occur in September 2012. Very odd; as you can see on the photos on the site, it was well attended in the past. But as it is now the latter half of August I have some serious doubts about whether it will really happen this year or not. I was hoping to organize a get together there.
Maybe it has morphed into the Democratic convention this year.
Seriously … If you do a DNS lookup on the domain, there’s a Hotmail contact for the domain owner, where you can send a query. Or maybe you’ve already done that?
The domain record mistakenly lists him as located in Charlotte, New York, so maybe he never received his renewal notice in the mail.
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