www.battlefieldband.co.uk

Battlefield Band are now playing 22 shows in their ‘Milestone Tour’ in Germany, celebrating their 40th anniversary. Reports ‘from the front’ tell us that the tour is going well, with excellent shows in Waldkraiburg, Puchheim & Esslingen. There are more concerts coming up in Basel, Offenburg, Schaffhausen, Pforzheim, Illzach, Aalen, Lauf, Darmstadt, Melle, Taunusstein-Hahn, Peine, Hiddenhausen, Eckernfarde, Hamburg-Osdorf, Stuhr, Kelllinghusen, Bleckede & Dresden. See www.battlefieldband.co.uk for details of any of the shows.
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www.manchesteririshfestival.com

Manchester will celebrate its fifteenth Irish festival with a two week extravaganza featuring two hundred events, staged at thirty two different venues throughout Greater Manchester. Lawrence Hennigan, Marketing Executive of the Manchester Irish Festival website said “The festival will feature Art, Culture, Comedy, Community, Dance, Music, Sport and Theatre events, making it one of Europe’s biggest Irish Festivals. We have tried to include something for everyone to enjoy in the community and a warm Irish welcome awaits all our visitors.” The official dates for this years celebration are Friday 5th March to Saturday 21st March, but there are also a number of pre and post festival events from February through to April.

www.rte.ie

The double CD “Willie Clancy: The Gold Ring“ was released on Friday, December 4th, a little too late for us to announce it in our Annual issue. There is a large body of music on the two discs, running to over two and a half hours of music with 65 selections of tunes. The tracks were chosen by piper and RTÉ radio producer, Peter Browne. Peter had access to the RTÉ Libraries and Archives and was also able to source some tracks from private collectors and other archives. The CD covers about twenty years of piping from the famous Clare musician. The CD comes complete with a detailed 32 page booklet on the life, music and importance of Willie Clancy.
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www.folkways.si.edu

Our very own Dan Milner has been short listed for an Independent Music Award for his Smithsonian Folkways Album Irish Pirate Ballads. He tells us: “I just got some potentially good news from Smithsonian. Happy to report that Irish Pirate Ballads is one of 5 recordings to receive a nomination in the Indie Music Awards “World Traditional” category.
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www.livemusicnow.org.uk

Live Music Now (LMN) is recruiting musicians based in Northern Ireland for their national music outreach scheme. Those selected musicians will get paid to perform interactive concerts & workshops in a range of community settings. The charity organisation wants to reach out to hundreds of talented musicians in Northern Ireland. It will ask them to consider outreach work as a musical career and train those selected to work with an extraordinary range of audiences including the elderly, children with special needs, patients in hospitals and hospices, young offenders, early years and adults with physical and mental disabilities.
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www.loftusmusic.com

Kevin Burke has a new project in the works, a new album that features a 20-minute suite of tunes arranged for string quartet. He’s also joined by Beoga on a number of tracks. The album is called Suite and will be released on March 16th on his Loftus Label.

www.roscommonartscentre.ie

Roscommon Arts Centre “Reel thing” series presents Paddy Keenan & Tommy Sullivan in concert on Thursday February 18th at 8pm. Check out www.roscommonartscentre.ie or email: artscentre@roscommoncoco.ie. Paddy will play ten dates in Ireland in February and one at the Irish Centre Hammersmith in London before her returns to the US for a tour in March.

Festival and Event Management Master Class
February 25th, 2010
www.aoifeonline.com

The Festival and Event Management Masterclass is an intensive 2 day programme designed to inform and inspire anyone involved in the business of creating, managing and developing festivals and events. The course will be hosted by Paul Gudgin has over 20 years experience in the management of festivals and events and was for 8 years the Director of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It is a highly practical course that looks to make a positive difference to the participants’ approach to festival and event Management. It includes sessions on Marketing, Press, Programming, Evaluation, Sponsorship and Fundraising. It also provides opportunities for one to one sessions with Paul giving a chance to focus on issues of interest to each individual participant.