RENOWNED Glengormley School of Traditional Music will mark their 20th anniversary with a Tradfest this month. The TradFest will run from the 12-20 March, with a weekend of workshops, talks, traditional music sessions, special Saint Patrick’s events and a special Traditional Music Family Fun Day.
The festival will be a culmination of a series of events celebrating the 20th anniversary of GSOTM, its successes and the opportunity to set out its vision for the future to the wider community.
Based in Edmund Rice College, Newtownabbey, the school offer tuition in: fiddle, flute, tin whistle, button accordion, bodhran, banjo and mandolin, uileann pipes and guitar (DADGAD and Standard), as well as harp, concertina and ballad singing.
Ray Morgan, Chair of Glengormley School of Traditional Music said: “It is with great pleasure to welcome our special anniversary celebrations, more so given the turbulent and challenging conditions in which we have found ourselves operating since the Covid-19 pandemic began.
“Glengormley School of Traditional Music is a voluntary, community-based arts organisation now in its 20th year.
“GSOTM was established to promote, for the benefit of the inhabitants of Glengormley and North Belfast and its environs, without distinction of age, sex, race, political, religious or other opinions, the education and training of people in all areas of Irish traditional music skills and musicianship and to promote appreciation for, and knowledge of, Irish traditional music for the benefit of the general public.
“We are very much a community with a very strong emphasis on the social aspect of the school. Giving our pupils the opportunity to come together to play music is and remains one of our objectives.
“This festival will be a culmination of a series of events celebrating the 20th anniversary of GSOTM, our successes and the opportunity to set out our vision for the future to the wider community.
“The festival provides the pupils, past pupils, their families and the wider public, the opportunity to take part in a series of events to celebrate the milestone of our 20th anniversary.
“I wish to thank our funders for the festival – Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council, the Arts Council NI National Lottery Fund and Arts and Business – along with those businesses that have taken sponsorship in this programme. Their support has helped us open the festival to a wider audience and we are very grateful of their ongoing support.”
The Tradfest will feature a number of events, talks, traditional music sessions and a number of special events including ‘The Life of St Patrick in Music, Word and Song’, ‘Feast of St Patrick Mass’, both in St Bernard’s Church in Glengormley and a Traditional Music Family Fun Day in Edmund Rice College.
For a full Tradfest 2022 programme, please visit here.
