This article is from page 31 of the 2009-08-04 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 31 JPG
THE curtain falls on the Riches of Clare concert series in Ennis tomor- row (Wednesday, August 5) with organisers already looking ahead to next year.
Stephen Madden (banjo), Paul Mad- den (accordion), Maria O’Donnell (piano) and Sinéad Heagney (fiddle) will perform in a free concert from Ipm to 2pm. This will be the eighth concert to have been staged at the Clare Museum since the series began in June 10. This is the fifth time that the series has been staged in Ennis
and at venues across Clare.
The final concert takes place in Feakle next Wednesday, by which time seventy musicians will have taken part in 16 concerts in nine different venues. The eight-week residency in the Clare Museum, En- nis, featured traditional musicians from and based in County Clare on Wednesday afternoons.
Tony Linnane, Jim O’Connor, Shane Mulvey, Siobhan Peoples and Maeve Donnelly, Kieran Kissane and Stephen Madden were among the musicians who performed in En- nis during the series. There was also
a performance from the Kilfenora Ceili Band, who this year celebrated the band’s 100 year anniversary.
Supported by the Clare Arts Office, this year also saw the series go on tour around County Clare with Fri- day afternoon concerts taking place in Scariff, Kilfenora, Corofin, En- nistymon, Shannon, Lisdoonvarna, Sixmulebridge and Feakle.
Finola Ryan, one of the series co- coordinators, said that the concerts had drawn good crowds.
“We always had done concerts in different venues around Clare but this year we decided to hold
them over two weeks which I think helped,’ said Finola
‘“They’ve been really good and the crowds seem to have been as big as last year, if not a little up on last year.”
Finola said that performances had once again been of a high standard.
“Tt’s hard to pick a highlight but I suppose the concert by the Kilfenora Céili Band stood out. That was a good one but honestly they were all of a really high standard. We’d be hoping to do it again next year, but it depends on budgets and things like that,’ she added.