Failte! Welcome!

At The COATESVILLE CULTURAL SOCIETY; 143 E. Lincoln Highway
Admission, $15 / children under 12 admitted free / (610) 486-2220

SOME PHOTOS FROM PAST CONCERTS : A SLIDE SHOW

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I'm "The Library Guy" at the University of PA Veterinary School's New Bolton Center near Kennett Square, PA, which is a very pleasant thing to be. I'm also a banjo player with a passion for IRISH TRADITIONAL MUSIC, and I produce a series of concerts and workshops featuring the cream of the crop of Irish musicians, in Coatesville, PA, west of Philly. In the beginning I’d contact traditional players whose music I admired, like the revered 82 year old Irish flute player and Galway native Mike Rafferty ... then Brooklyn born button accordion wizard Billy McComiskey from Baltimore ... later County Offaly box player Paddy O'Brien and his band Chulrua. Things started rolling and now the series has been running for five years, and traditional musicians from Ireland are starting to call when they’re over here on tour. There's more history further down, but for now, read about our next concert! - Frank Dalton

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If that sounds slightly off, you have only to listen to the music on his long-awaited solo debut CD, "The Sligo Indians" to be cured of any preconceptions about the importance of ethnic purity in traditional music. There may have been a time when Irish music in New York City was played exclusively by Irish immigrants and their offspring, while their Italian neighbors strummed mandolins and sang opera. But the Big Apple really is a melting pot. Before WWII it wasn’t very common for Italian and Irish Americans to marry each other, but by the 1950s this kind of ethnic mixing was normal in Tony’s native Brooklyn, where Italians and Irish lived side by side and attended the same churches.

Tony was born in 1955, the second of three children raised in East Flatbush by Paul DeMarco and his wife, the former Patricia Dempsey. Tony’s maternal grandfather Jimmy Dempsey was a New York City cop and a son of Irish immigrants who married Philomena “Minnie” Fenimore, one of several Italian-American siblings who married into Brooklyn Irish families.

Tony definitely found his way to Irish traditional music via a different path than the one trod by musicians raised in Irish immigrant households. More typical young Irish traditional musicians in New York in the 1970s had at least one parent born in Ireland. They may well have attended step dancing classes with one of the many dance schools in the region, and most likely went to group music classes conducted in the Bronx, Brooklyn, New Jersey, or Long Island. Tony had a different background altogether. As he puts it: “I came through the folkie scene.” His first exposure to Irish traditional music was through a Folkways recording of the County Sligo fiddler Michael Gorman. Tony had many other musical influences before this, and would have many more afterward, but for him the appeal of the Sligo fiddle style would never fade.

Tony is among the worlds leading exponent’s of the sophisticated County Sligo style of Irish fiddling. His playing has all the characteristics of great Sligo fiddling- swinging rhythmic drive, a wealth of bowed and finger ornamentation, and a high degree of improvised melodic variation. Sligo fiddling has been closely associated with the New York Irish musical tradition for many years. Immigrant Sligo fiddlers in New York, notably the great Michael Coleman, James Morrison and Paddy Killoran, made hundreds of classic recordings in “the Big Apple” during the 78-rpm era. The influence of these discs back in Ireland made the Sligo style, as played in New York City, the de facto national standard for decades thereafter. In the early 1970’s, following a musical apprenticeship in American folk fiddling, Tony immersed himself in Sligo fiddling, in addition to listening intensively to those old 78’s.

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COATESVILLE CULTURAL SOCIETY; 143 E. Lincoln Highway
Admission, $15 / children under 12 admitted free / (610) 486-2220

The old steel mill town of Coatesville seems an unlikely place for traditional Irish music, but here's how it happened. As a volunteer at the Coatesville Cultural Society, I approached the artistic director there with a plan to present an evening of jigs, reels and hornpipes by a group of area musicians from Narberth, PA. And so local band ‘The Morrigan’ played driving Irish dance music on fiddle, flute, accordion and guitar for about 50 appreciative community members in June of 2004. Encouraged by the turnout, I contacted an elder statesman of Irish music in America, Mike Rafferty in New Jersey, and arranged a second event featuring himself on flute and uilleann pipes. Mike's daughter Mary accompanied him on accordion and tin whistle, along with Donal Clancy on guitar. The result was a very special evening of traditional music along with Rafferty's recollections of growing up and learning to play in Galway. With the level of enthusiasm rising, plans were laid for future events and the Coatesville Traditional Irish Music Series, was born!

• Mike & Mary Rafferty, w. Dónal Clancy - Oct. 2
• Billy McComiskey & Friends - Dec. 11

• Brian Conway & Darin Kelly - Jan. 9
• Paddy O’Brien & Chulrua - Mar. 12
• John Carty & Ged Foley - Apr. 2
• Gráinne Hambley & William Jackson - Apr. 9
• John Flanagan (sean nós singer) - May 20
• Kane Sisters - Aug. 19
• Téada - Sept. 18
• Randal Bays & Roger Landes - Oct. 8
• Paddy O’Brien & Chulrua - Oct. 30
• Colm Gannon & John Blake - Nov. 21
• Brian Conway & Brendan Dolan - Dec. 3

• Martin Hayes & Dennis Cahill - Mar. 8
• Joanie Madden & Mary Coogan - Apr. 22
• Brian McNamara - June 17
• Fanai - Sept. 16
• James Keane - Oct. 14
• Claire Keville & Pat O’Connor - Oct. 28

• Maeve Donnelly & Tony McManus - Mar. 31
• Jerry O’Sullivan - May 12
• Rosie Shipley & Gerry O’Beirne - June 16
• Angelina Carberry & Martin Quinn - July 7
• Rafferty, Dolan and Kelly - Oct. 13
• Hedge Band, from Baltimore - Dec. 14

• Dana Lyn, Tina Lech & Donna Long - Apr. 19
• Micheal O Raghallaigh & Ivan Goff - June 7
• Angelina Carberry & Martin Quinn - July 26

• Kevin Crawford & Cillian Vallely - Sept. 5

• John Carty & Donal Clancy - Oct. 26

• Brian Conway & Brendan Dolan - Nov. 22

• Michael Cooney & Pat Egan - Feb. 22

• Pat O'Connor & Eoghan O'Sullivan - Apr. 5

• Sligo Style Fiddle Master TONY DeMARCO - Sept. 26

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At The COATESVILLE CULTURAL SOCIETY; 143 E. Lincoln Hwy; (610) 486-2220 Admission, $15 / children under 12 admitted free / CD Door Prizes