New York Trad Fest 2014 will include some of the great artists featured at last year’s inaugural concert, plus some new faces. This year, there will be two evening concerts, one at Connolly’s Club 45 on Saturday October 18th and another at the Irish Arts Center on Sunday October 19th.

The 2013 inaugural New York Trad Fest was a massively successful celebration of locally based traditional music talent in the Big Apple.

Trad Fest was the brainchild of Brooklyn–born fiddler Tony DeMarco, whose long experience in both Irish and American folk styles guided his inspired selection of the artists who performed at the centrepiece of the festival, a marathon Saturday night concert on October 19th at Connolly’s Klub 45 just off Times Square. An overflow crowd packed the room, and the club’s tiny “green room” was even more crowded with performers waiting to take their turn on stage.

The Irish contingent included fiddlers Brian Conway, Eileen Ivers, Mattie Mancuso, Dylan Foley, Maeve Flanagan and Jayne Pomplas; banjo and mandolin genius Mick Moloney; flute and tin whistle goddess Joanie Madden of Cherish the Ladies fame; uilleann pipers Jerry O’Sullivan, Ivan Goff and Cillian Vallely (from trad supergroup Lúnasa); button accordion virtuosi James Keane, Dan Gurney and John Nolan; keyboard standout Brendan Dolan; bodhrán player extraordinaire Anna Colliton; in-demand guitarist Allan Murray and the popular singing Corkman Donie Carroll.

Michael Flatley said of the event “Trad Fest is a very welcome addition to New York’s cultural calendar. There are too many talented musicians playing Irish music for it not to have a wider audience. People like Tony DeMarco, Eileen Ivers, Donny Golden and Joanie Madden, just to name a few. Bringing the audience in and letting them hear the music in its traditional setting is the ideal exposure to Irish culture. Keeping it real, local, raw and natural – brilliant.”

For further information email: nytradfest@gmail.com