|
Comhaltas Corner: '2004 Gradam Ceoil winners announced' By Joe
Mullarkey
The Gradam Ceoil TG4 (National Traditional Music Awards) is Ireland’s most prestigious award ceremony to honour the best in traditional music and song. On Sunday, November 28 at the University Concert Hall Limerick, five awards will be presented at a televised Gala Awards Ceremony.
This year’s recipients were announced recently in Ennis and the roll of honour once again marks the contributions of the very best in Irish music. The 2004 winners are:
Gradam Ceoil (Musician of the Year): Seán Keane
Ceoltóir Óg na bliana (Young Musician): Edel Fox
Gradam Saoil (Hall of Fame): Tony Mac Mahon
Cumadóir na bliana (Composer): Richie Dwyer
Amhránaí na Bliana (Singer): Rosie Stewart
The awards encompass Ireland’s thriving traditional music scene and, now in its eighth year, Gradam Ceoil TG4 is recognized as the premier event in the traditional music calendar in Ireland.
Performers at the televised gala presentation concert will include The Chieftains, Lúnasa, Páraic Keane, Steve Cooney, Seán McKeon and Eoin Ó Neill, Liam Óg Ó Floinn, Gerry ‘Banjo’ and Gerry ‘Fiddle’ Ó Connor, Mary Bergin and Arty McGlynn, plus performing students from the University of Limerick.
Tickets for the gala concert can be obtained by contacting University Concert Hall, Limerick on 061 331 549 or
www.uch.ie.
The Winners
Seán Keane was born in Dublin in 1948. His father was from Clare and his mother from Longford and both parents brought a love for traditional music with them to Dublin.
At the age of 17, Seán won a Fleadh Cheoil competition on Radio Éireann and was then invited by Seán Ó Riada to become a member of Ceoltóirí Chualann. He went on to join the Chieftains in 1968 and has been with Ireland’s most successful traditional band ever since.
Edel Fox is 18 years of age and a native of Miltown Malbay, Co. Clare. She began learning the concertina from Noel Hill aged seven and made her radio debut shortly afterwards on Clare FM.
She attended various workshops and summer schools from the age of eight, learning from masters such as Tommy McCarthy, Dympna O’Sullivan, Timmy Collins and Tony O’Connell.
She won the under-18 Oireachtas concertina competition in 2003 and the Senior Duet competition with Seán McKeon at the same festival in 2004.
In 2002, she toured Britain with Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann and will shortly embark on their tour of the US and Canada.
Tony MacMahon grew up in Ennis, Co. Clare, and played traditional music from an early age. He travelled the world during the 1960s, meeting up with Séamus Ennis in New York, recording with Clare fiddle player, Bobby Casey in London in 1966, and busking in Paris and Morocco. On his return to Dublin, he organised the Tradition Club in Slattery’s of Capel St. and began working with RTÉ.
He initiated the long-running and influential The Long Note programme on Radio Éireann and pioneered traditional music broadcasting on television, with series such as Ag Déanamh Ceoil and The Pure Drop.
Richie Dwyer is a native of Eyries on the Beara Peninsula in west Cork, where he grew up in a musical family.
Economic circumstances forced emigration from the area and Richie moved first to England and later to the United States. He recently returned to settle in Ireland and now regularly performs in and around his hometown of Ennis.
Rosie Stewart has lived all her life in South-West Fermanagh, apart from a brief sojourn in London in the early 1970s. Her first public appearance was at the age of nine in the local Parish Hall.
Traditional singing had always been in her background — her father Packy McKeaney was and is a singer of note.
| 