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538 Pan Celtic Festival (PCF). An event run annually in Ireland, the aim of which is to ‘promote and strengthen Celtic languages, culture, music, song and sport and to encourage inter-Celtic tourism, trade and commerce, and exchange of information ’.It hosts an international song contest,and has competitions in traditional singing, choral singing, harp, fiddle, dance, piping and drumming and camogie.Begun at Killarney in 1970,it was formalised with a constitution in 1973, and is governed by an International Council, and six national committees . It has been run since 1997 by a charity, Celtic Cultural Trust Ltd, which addresses ‘Celtic Languages, culture, music and song among the six Celtic Nations of Alba [Scotland], Breizh [Brittany],Cymru [Wales],Éire [Ireland],Kernow [Cornwall] and Mannin [Man]’. Associated with the PCF are a number of new or revived festivals and events, including Kan ar Bobal (Brittany), Lowender Peran (Cornwall), Pan Celtic Reunion (Wales), and An Cruinneach (Isle of Man). It has formal triangulated ties to An tOireachtas and to Am Mod Náiseanta Ríoghail in Scotland under the title Comh-nasg na nGael. Parsons,Niamh. (1958– ). Singer. From Dublin, she developed an interest in song through her Dublin father and Clare mother who brought her and her sister to the local folk club at the Old Shieling Hotel in Raheny.There they experienced seminal voices of revival ballad singing such as The Johnstons, Emmet Spiceland, Sweeney’s Men, Dolly McMahon and Danny Doyle; they also heard Liam Weldon and Frank Harte at Sunday sessions in The Brazen Head. Her father led singing in the family car on journeys,and travel around festivals led to her collecting songs. She sang in the band Killera with Gerry O’Connor (banjo), then moved to Belfast, played with the Loose Connections (a contemporary and traditional band), and Cuigear Bán (an all-women a cappella group with a mix of genres). Parsons has performed with a variety of other artists, and has appeared at all the major folk festivals in Europe and the US. As a member of the band Arcady she sang on its recording Many Happy Returns, and performed before former US president Clinton in Washington. Her repertoire includes traditional and contemporary lyrics and styles, and her early albums thematically reflect this. Presently she performs with guitarist Graham Dunne who has played with Sean Tyrrell, on Necklace of Wrens, the biographical account of the Co. Limerick poet Michael Hartnett, and on Tyrrell’s The Midnight Court in 1999; Dunne has also played with Liz Carroll, Paddy Keenan, Tommy Peoples and the Mary Custy Band. Parsons’ recordings include: Loosely Connected (1995), Loosen Up (1997), Blackbirds andThrushes (1999),In My Prime (2000), Heart’s Desire (2002), Live at Fylde (2005) and The Old Simplicity (2006). Patrick O’Keeffe Festival. Held in honur of the Kerry fiddler each autumn at Castleisland,this was established in 1993 following the production of a radio series by Peter Browne who suggested that a music festival would be a fitting celebration of the music of the region. pattern. The ritual activities surrounding a saint’s day, these involve fasting, prayer, walking rounds and socialising, and often music. In the nineteenth century these were major social events, akin to today’s festivals, and the sale of liquor and food was a feature. The resultant music-making, dancing,song and fighting is documented by nineteenth -century writers such as William Carleton and Patrick Kennedy. Rev. Caesar Otway’s 1827 description of a midsummer pattern at Gougane Barra, Co. Cork shows the place of music in the religious ritual: They come f rom Kerry and Connaught … such praying in the morning, and dancing in the evening – groaning and craw-thumping as they drag along on their bare marrow-bones, performing the sacred rounds; and then such a shouting and sporting, and carousing, and all ending in a fit and a scrimmage.Och,there was P Percy, Bishop Thomas 539 not a piper or a fiddler from Cork to Bantry that was not here. (Sketches in Ireland: 311) Patterson, Annie. (1868–1934). Composer, arranger,academic,the first woman to be awarded a PhD in Ireland.A crucial figure in Dublin musical circles during the Irish cultural revival of the 1890s, Patterson was born in Lurgan and died in Cork after a long career as an organist and composer. From 1924 until her death she was lecturer in Irish music at University College Cork. Responding to calls for the development of the national...

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