On 15 May, the Irish Traditional Music Archive will host the launch of No Better Boy: Listening to Paddy Canny. In this blog, author Helen O’Shea discusses the sources she uncovered at ITMA and in other archives, affirming the importance of archival collections for our understanding of musicians and their music in their historical context.

A monthly series showcasing compositions of tunes by contemporary composers in the traditional idiom.

ITMA would like to congratulate the 2023 Gradam Ceoil TG4 Award winners: Mick, Louise and Michelle Mulcahy, Fintan Vallely, Mick O’Brien, Síle Denvir, Maurice Lennon, Méabh Smyth and Frank McArdle.

On Thursday, 20 April, ITMA welcomed a group of traditional singers and musicians from Slovakia for a visit.

Last month, ITMA was pleased to welcome intern Linda Badley to work on various projects.

This month, ITMA was pleased to welcome interns Sorcha Ní Scolaí and Campbell Hannan.

On Sunday 12 March, some of the country’s leading traditional performers took over the stage of the National Concert Hall in Dublin for the third instalment in ITMA’s Drawing from the Well concert series.

In January 2023 ITMA received an extensive collection of Irish dancing medals won mainly in Ireland and England in the 1940s–60s by Seán Fegan. The collection was donated by the Fegan family to An Coimisiún le Rincí Gaelacha (CLRG) and presented by Carol Leavy Joyce and Máire Mhic Aogáin per Kevin McCormack. This collection is becoming part of the Cullinane Archive Collection which is housed in ITMA. Seán Fegan, Irish dancer, and former President of CLRG is remembered here by longtime friend Kevin McCormack.

There is a momentum behind St Brigid's Day this year with the new Bank Holiday in her honour. But Brigid has long been an inspirational character and her name has been used in the titles of some compositions in the tradition.

In 2016 Music Network gathered ten of Ireland's leading harpers in the studio of the Irish Traditional Music Archive to record tunes collected by Edward Bunting (1773–1843) at the 1792 Belfast Harp Festival and published in his 1797 "A General Collection of the Ancient Music of Ireland [Volume 1]". These recordings, and the digitised printed volume were to become the source of inspiration for a commission awarded to internationally acclaimed artist Aideen Barry by ITMA and Music Network in 2020. Oblivion / Seachmalltacht / ᖃᐅᔨᒪᔭᐅᔪᓐᓃᖅᑐᑦ, a multimedia installation premiered at Limerick City Gallery of Art in December 2021, and has continued to tour nationally and internationally.

During the summer of 2022, UCD Irish Folklore and Ethnology MA interns Juliana Zepf and Samantha Brandal, played a central role in a pilot project to develop protocols for the long-term preservation of physical reel-to-reel tapes in ITMA.

Hi everybody/Dia Dhaoibh! My name is Gwendoline Lemaitre, I am currently doing an internship at ITMA, working mainly on the Irish music manuscripts in the Derek Bell Collection.

5 Bealtaine/May 1919 – 5 Deireadh Fómhair/October 1982

Singer, musician, collector, writer, and record producer Robin Morton died on the 1 October 2021. To mark his first anniversary, his friend over many years John Moulden recalls the breadth and richness of a life dedicated to traditional song and music. This tribute also includes a curated playlist of music associated with Robin.

Hello, my name is Stephanie, and for the next three months I am the project cataloguer for the Cullinane Archive Collection (CAC) at ITMA. Time flies and I can’t believe it’s only been 3 weeks since I started, so much has happened already!