Shannon on the Shannon: Where does the time go??

My apologies for the delay in new posts. I had a slight disagreement with the harddrive on my computer, and unfortunately lost. I'm working out the details of getting another.

Besides the computer drama, my life has been very busy! After my Europe trip, I spent much of January taking it easy because school did not begin again until the 28th. I read a few books, learned some fiddle tunes, went to the gym, went to the pub... Needless to say, I was excited to return to classes and have a regular schedule reintroduced to my life. So far in my classes, we have continued working on vocal workshopping, Brazilian samba and Javanese Gamelan. Tomorrow we have two days in African ensemble music led by an African PhD student studying at UL.

At the beginning of February we spent two days of workshops with Irish Singer Songwriter Julie Feeney. She is a highly accomplished artist with several songs on Youtube. Check out her track "Impossibly Beautiful" at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyVtLpfGobU. Julie introduced our class to various theatrical activities which no other lecturer had covered. Our class was telling stories using nonsense sounds, holding dramatic freeze frames, lying on the floor pretending to be water, and much more memorable activites.

At the beginning of the month I also attended a wonderful charity concert put on by the Irish World Academy. It was a great selection of traditional music and dance over the course of the night, plus there was the added bonus that I won the raffle Grand Prize, dinner for two at a nearby restaurant! Performances included two of my classmates, Eoghan Burke and Adam Downey. Eoghan is a singer-songwriter located in Galway who uses the stage name Fia Rua (Irish for Red Deer). I really like the tracks "Falling Time" and "Ghosts" on his new album, available for free at http://official.fm/fiarua! Three members of the music faculty, Niall Keegan, Sandra Joyce and Michael O'Suilleabhain, performed an incredible arrangment of tunes which mixed Trad and jazz. There is a video of the trio on Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01RI02N_N48). Make sure you listen beyond the first track because the second is where the jazz enters!!

A few of my classmates got together mid-February to have a house jam session. It was a fun evening of switching instruments and improvisation. Most memorably, I managed to teach myself the Titanic theme on the tin whistle. I believe there is a video somewhere of my attempt, which proves that it is virtually impossible to play the tin whistle while laughing. Recently I have also taken it upon myself to learn the guitar, but at the time of this session I only knew four chords. Since we were all community musicians, my kind classmates facilitated my limitations and sang every song they could think of that use the same four-chord progression. Here are some pictures!