St Patricks Day 2024
Below are a few pictures from St Patrick's Day in Leamington Spa, performances at Murphys Bar, our Ceili Night at St Joseph's Church Hall and performance at St Patrick's Irish Club. Thank you to everyone who supported us.
Empower
Growth
Monthly Sessions
We hold a monthly session usually on the first Friday of the month at St Joseph's Church Hall, Murcott Rd, Whitnash, CV31 2JJ. Complimentary snacks & refreshments available, you can bring your own alcohol. Sessions start at 8pm with some slower easier tunes for beginners at the start.
Everyone is welcome to attend, to either participate if you are a musician or just come along and enjoy listening.
Our next session will be on Friday 5th April from 8pm.
Concerts
We arrange a couple of concerts per year which is a wonderful opportunity for the children to showcase what they have learnt in front of family and friends. Proceeds from the concerts are donated to St Joseph's Church Hall in thanks for them allowing us to use the hall for our weekly lessons and monthly sessions.
Our last concert was on Friday 27th January 2024 followed by a session.
Below are some videos
Harp Workshop - Saturday 27th January
Many thanks to the Vice Chairperson of our branch, Janet Harbiso, an international and renown harpist, for arranging a FREE traditional Irish harp workshop . Also thanks to St Patrick's Irish Club for their support in facilitating this. It was a fantastic event with many attendees from across the Midlands and London. Janet is keen to start harp lessons locally, so watch this space for further info!
Below is a video of the afternoon session who were complete beginners after just 1-2 hours of tuition! For more info about Janet visit: www.janetharbisonharp.com/
Happy 60th Anniversary to
St Patrick's Irish Club!
Our branch was delighted to be involved in St Patrick's Irish Club's 60th Anniversary week in October 2023. We performed in the club (joined by Coventry Comhaltas members) and had a fantastic time taking part in the parade through Leamington Town Centre. Below are some photos and video from the event.
Our branch performs for many charity events. We recently performed in March 2024 at our local Memory Cafe and in Summer 2023 we performed at Leamington Rehabilitation Hospital to help them raise funds to enhance patient's stay at the hospital. It was lovely to see staff and patients with their family & friends enjoying our music!
Fleadh/Competitions
For those children that wish to compete, we enter regional fleadhs every year in both solo and group competitions.
Depending on our success, we sometimes qualify to travel to compete at national competitons at the All Britain Fleadh and All Ireland Fleadh.
This year the following children from our branch qualified at our local Midland Fleadh in April and travelled to the All Britain Fleadh in Sterling, Scotland in June 2023.
Freya Weed (Fiddle U-12)
Amelia Jamison (Trio U-12)
Marley Lambert (Trio and button accordion U-12)
Rose Ashby (Trio, button accordion and whistle U-12)
Caitlin Borley (Flute and whistle 12-15)
Cormac Cotter (Singing and button accordion 12-15)
Well done to all of them, they played brilliantly and in particular to Cormac who qualified in the singing competition to compete in August 2023 at the All Ireland Fleadh.
Below is a photo of Cormac winning the All Ireland Fleadh 2022 and a video of his beautiful singing from last year, plus a video from the All Ireland Fleadh 2022 featuring an amazing performance from Anu from the Leamington Branch and Amy from the Leicester Branch.
