Well known to audiences at the Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith, Tad Sargent, Michael Sweeney and the legendary Irish banjo player Mick O’Connor can be seen playing music there again this Friday when they kick-start the new ICC Seisiúns, a series of concerts to be streamed every Friday for 14 weeks starting this Friday 11 September.
You can see the moment they came back to play music together after having been in lockdown for five months. They also talk about what the ICC and what trad music means to them.
Tad Sargent and Michael Sweeney are both Irish music tutors at the ICC while Mick O’Connor is a renowned figure on London’s Irish trad music circuit and shares his memories of the Irish music scene in west London from the ‘60s until today.
The ICC Seisiúns were filmed at The Irish Cultural Centre over a period of one week in August 2020, in a Covid-19 secure environment. The aim of the project was to give a platform to those London-based Irish musicians who regularly play at the ICC and have over many years helped to establish it as ‘The Home of Irish Culture.’ Because all of the musicians have, as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, lost their means of income, the ICC endeavoured to create a project that would help to pay and support them.
The line-up for ‘The ICC Seisiúns’ stars some of the very best Irish musicians based in London, including: Fiddler James Patrick Gavin with Tim Fairhall; Fiddler James Carty with Flute player Eimear McGeown; Irish Trad band The Connolly Family; Fiddle and Flute duo Ali and Phil Barnes; Uilleann Piper Coleman Connolly with Fiddler Fiona Daly; Karen Ryan and The Quinn Family Band; Irish Singer Peter Coughlan; Piper and Flute player Brendan McAuley with singer Mick Sands; Opera singer Carolyn Holt with Paul McKenzie; Irish Trad band The Devine Family; Singer – Songwriter Hannah Jackson; Singer, piano and flute player Jacquelyn Hynes; and Singer Songwriters Luke Coughlan; Sinead Egan; and Tim Logue.
‘THE ICC SEISIÚNS’ were made possible with funding from The Embassy of Ireland G.B. and The Department for Foreign Affairs, Ireland.
The ICC Seisiúns will be viewable online here.
