For all of its forty years to date, the Willie Clancy Summer School has featured traditional dancing of all kinds in natural association with instrumental music and song, following in the footsteps of Willie Clancy himself. Exhibition solo step-dances and set-dancing have been to the fore in concerts, classes and workshops, and in recent years old-style step-dancing from Clare and elsewhere, Conamara sean-nós dancing, and two-hand dancing have been added to the bill of fare.

Reproduced here from the collections of the Irish Traditional Music Archive are documentary dance videos recorded by ITMA staff at the School in the early years of the new millennium, from 2001 to 2008. Included are old-style step-dancer Céline Tubridy from Co Donegal, Aidan Vaughan from Miltown Malbay with an exhibition of Clare battering, Margaret Wray from England with a solo set dance, Mick Mulkerrin from Glasgow and Co Meath and Mairéad Casey from Co Longford with a two-hander of Conamara sean-nós, and the Dublin-based set-dance group Brook’s Academy, which drew its inspiration from the Summer School and has gone on to teach hundreds of dancers in the headquarters of Na Píobairí Uilleann in Dublin over the last thirty years. Appearing here are Terry Cullen, Mary Friel, Sighle Friel, Pascale Gaudry, Vincent Heywood, Irene Martin, Terry Moylan, Mary Murray, Eileen O’Doherty, Jerry O’Reilly, and Gerry Ryan. Musicians include Michael Tubridy, Breanndán Ó Beaglaoich, Timmy O’Connor, Bobby Gardiner, and the Mulcahy Family.

With thanks to the dancers and musicians, and to the organisers of the Willie Clancy Summer School.

Nicholas Carolan & Treasa Harkin, 1 June 2012

From the early years of the Willie Clancy Summer School, which was founded in Miltown Malbay, Co Clare, in 1973, Na Píobairí Uilleann, the Dublin-based organisation for uilleann pipers, has played a central role in organising the teaching, refurbishing and playing of the pipes at the School.

From the 1980s, uilleann pipers played for their fellow pipers on an organised basis after morning classes at their centre on the Ballard Road, and in recent years these lunchtime recitals have moved to take place in Halla an Phobail, the Miltown Malbay community hall, for the wider audience of all those attending the School.

Presented here are Halla an Phobail performances, recorded by Irish Traditional Music Archive staff,  by two of the leading contemporary pipers who featured at the July 2011 recitals: Mickey Dunne of Limerick and Jimmy O’Brien Moran of Waterford.

With thanks to the performers for permission to upload recordings of their playing here, and to Na Píobairí Uilleann and the Willie Clancy Summer School for facilitating ITMA in making the recordings.

Nicholas Carolan & Treasa Harkin, 1 February 2014

For such a small instrument, the mouth-organ is physically hard to play, especially for jigs and reels, and that may be one of the reasons it is not more commonly used in Irish traditional music. In the past it was often given as a Christmas present to children and the tuneless results did not add to its status. But in the right hands the mouth-organ is very compatible with the nature of the music, and it is particularly popular in Co Wexford, the county with which it is associated above all others. In recent years, the instrument has been enjoying a renaissance in traditional music circles, one driven by several virtuoso players, some of whom simultaneously play the concertina. The once universal term ‘mouth-organ’ has been disappearing to be replaced by ‘harmonica’, an indication that the favoured form of the instrument now is the uniquely reeded chromatic form.

As a reflection of its rise in popularity, the harmonica has been taught in recent years at the annual Willie Clancy Summer School in Miltown Malbay, Co Clare, and has been allocated its own annual concert at the venue of The Mill. The recordings presented here were filmed by Irish Traditional Music Archive staff at the second such concert, on 11 July 2013.

With thanks to Padraig Enright, Rick Epping, Mick Kinsella, and John & Pip Murphy for permission to present these recordings, and to the organisers of the Willie Clancy Summer School for facilitating ITMA in making them.

Nicholas Carolan, Brian Doyle & Treasa Harkin, 1 October 2013

Co Clare fiddle player Joe Ryan (1928–2008), from Inagh, lived for most of his life in Dublin and in Co Meath, and also spent time in London. A regular session player, he was a prizewinner from the early 1950s at the All-Ireland Fleadh Cheoil and the Oireachtas cultural festival, and a member of several ceili bands, notably the Fiach Roe in Clare and the Castle in Dublin. His regular playing companion was fellow-Clareman, fiddle and concertina player John Kelly.

A personal friend of Willie Clancy’s, Joe taught at the Willie Clancy Summer School in Miltown Malbay, Co Clare, since its inception in 1973. Beginning in 1999 he was one of the older players whom Kerry fiddle player Máire O’Keeffe brought in every year to play for fiddle students at the School and to talk to them about their music and their life in music. For five years Irish Traditional Music Archive staff filmed these musical and oral history occasions, as unobtrusively as possible in the midst of the other ongoing music classes and all the hubbub of the School. A selection of music and talk is presented here from Joe Ryan’s contributions to these unique events.

With thanks to Joe Ryan, to the organisers of the Willie Clancy Summer School, & to Dr Máire O’Keeffe (who presented an illustrated lecture on this aspect of her work to the 2013 WCSS).

Nicholas Carolan & Treasa Harkin, 1 August 2013

Tony Kearns, Nutan, Colm Keating and Peter Laban have each spent many years taking photographs at the festival and are regular visitors to Miltown Malbay. As part of ITMA’s contribution to the virtual Willie Clancy Summer School for 2020 we published a selection of images from their collections. Also included in this gallery are images from Danny Diamond, Orla Henihan, Liam McNulty and Mal Whyte.

These ITMA audio recordings feature four Clare musicians who performed for and spoke to students at the 1999 Willie Clancy Summer School, and who have sadly since died
Since the late 1990s Kerry fiddle player Máire O’Keeffe has organised morning recitals and question-and-answer sessions with older source fiddle players and other musicians at the Willie Clancy Summer School. This is done for the enrichment of the fiddle players attending the School’s classes in St Joseph’s Secondary School, Spanish Point, Miltown Malbay, Co Clare. With the generous agreement of the performers, Máire and the School have facilitated the Irish Traditional Music Archive in recording many of these sessions, at first in audio and later in video.

ITMA audio recordings from its 1999 recording session are reproduced here. They feature four Clare musicians who performed for and spoke to the students that year, and who have sadly since died. They are the east Clare fiddle player Paddy Canny from Tulla, and, from west Clare, Bobby Casey from Miltown Malbay and London on fiddle, Tommy McCarthy from Kilmihil and London on concertina, and Joe Ryan from Inagh and Meath on fiddle.

With thanks to the performers, Máire O’Keeffe, the McCarthy family, and the organisers of the Willie Clancy Summer School.

Nicholas Caloran, Ian Lynch & Danny Diamond, 1 June 2012