www.irishfest.com

Francis O’Neill Cylinders CD & The Dunn Family Collection

The Ward Irish Music Archives has just released two special, historic projects: The Francis O’Neill Cylinders CD and the Dunn Family Collection website. Explore early twentieth century Irish traditional music from Chicago and Milwaukee.

The music contained within these historic cylinder recordings offers a rare opportunity to those interested in Irish traditional music. Recorded sometime after 1904, these cylinders construct an auditory bridge to the written musical notation of traditional tunes collected by Francis O’Neill alongside his recorded musical companions. The sound recordings allow us to hear the music that is a frozen skeleton on O’Neill’s printed page coming alive in the flesh and blood of a real performance.

The recording captures performances by noted uilleann pipers Patsy Touhey, James Early, and Bernard Delaney, as well as fiddlers John McFadden and Edward Cronin.

For those not lucky enough to be travelling to the Irish Fest in Milwaukee this year you don’t have to miss out as Barry Stapleton from The Ward Irish Music Archives tell us “I am excited to bring you an online exhibit featuring materials from the Dunn Family Collection.
Travel back to early twentieth century Milwaukee and explore the life of Irish emigrant Michael J. Dunn. The collection’s audio recordings, photographs, music manuscripts, and other artifacts tell the story of the Dunn family, along with other famed Irish musicians of the time.”