House Concert in a House of Worship

Coming THIS week!

 

 

THE MIDDLETOWN HOUSE CONCERT SERIES presents:

Brendan Begley

 and

Caoimhin Ó Raghallaigh

      

Saturday, October 22, 2011, at 8pm

Congregation Adath Israel

Corner of Church and Broad Streets

(8 Broad Street) 

Middletown, CT

Suggested donation: $25 general in advance ($28 at the door),

$12 students, $7 children 12 & under,

Please call Jody Cormack 860-983-7963 for reservations

or email jcormack@wesleyan,edu

please - no food or beverage in the auditorium

"the most maddeningly nourishing, elevating, and

mesmerizing Irish traditional music you'll hear today."

Earle Hitchner. September 26th, 2007, IRISH ECHO

A genial giant from the Dingle peninsula in County Kerry, Brendan Begley is a well known and accomplished performer of Irish traditional music on the button accordian, touring at home and in Estonia, Finland, Sweden and France. He is a member of the 'Boys of the Lough', first touring with the band as a guest in the 1980's in the USA, and full-time member since 1997.

Brendan's exciting dance music, sensitive emotional playing of slow airs on accordion, and his singing in his native Irish make him a great favourite. He is acclaimed in Ireland for his TV presentations of traditional music on the Irish language channel TG4.

Dublin-born Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh (pronounced Kwee-veen O'Riley) plays traditional and contemporary folk music on fiddle, 5-string viola and the Norwegian hardanger fiddle in small intimate listening venues.

As a traditional fiddler, he performs duos with dynamic Kerry accordion player Brendan Begley and Dublin uilleann piper Mick O'Brien. His Kitty Lie Over album with O'Brien was described in the Irish Times as "a niftier mood enhancer than any drug therapy".        

In 2007, he released Where the One-Eyed Man is King, an adventurous, self-produced little EP: "It's like if you untangled an Irish session and hung up the choicest bits each in front of its own glowing christmas light and viewed through 3D glasses made of paper and cellophane" says Uncle Earl's Kristin Andreassen.

Caoimhín has recently been studying the work of contemporary folk fiddlers from other countries, including Nils Okland, Dan Trueman and Johan Hedin, and has been writing new material that continues to explore that region where Irish traditional music begins to disintegrate. 

For more information about the musicians, go to www.caoimhinoraghallaigh.com/ or www.brendanbegley.com.