The View From Here on Festivals

But it was the hard-core focus on solid traditional music all week through classes that reached out to 600 students, followed by no less than nine special lectures or master classes on top of that making for some serious learning by folks of all ages, including a husband and wife in their seventies and eighties who traveled all the way from North Carolina (one of 30 states represented on the student roster).

All week long the evening started off with concerts featuring a staff that totaled 75 performers on the Michael J. Quill Irish Festival Grounds in their outdoor pavilion that averaged crowds of 500 per night, while 100 more or so pounded the hardwood floors every night in the Shamrock or the Weldon House to shape up ceili bands drawn from the faculty.

These seemed to serve as starters to the main course of more than 40 sessions throughout the week in the regional roadhouse that tested the fortitude but not the familiarity with much of the star-studded cast led by icons like Jackie Daly, Mary Bergin, Matt Cranitch, Kane Sisters, Catherine McEvoy, Chris Droney, Billy McComiskey, Brian Conway and the Mulcahy Family to name just a few. Even Joanie Madden found time to swing up for a day's craic and fit in enough music in a few hours to last some others a week.

It seems odd to say that in its 13th year the Catskills Irish Arts Week found a rhythm and balance that was almost on autopilot, and that is only because it attracts enough people who want to be there to make it a going concern.

With the further advantage of the Quill Center carrying out its cultural mandate as a non-profit which allowed for funding from Culture Ireland, the New York State Music Fund, New York State Council on the Arts, the Irish Institute in New York City and a host of other sponsors, there was no need in trying to attract those who didn't share the love of traditional music there for curiosity or profit sake.

The economic benefits are plain to see, and they helped spark the upcoming Banjo Burke Festival (www.joebanjoburke.org) on Columbus Day weekend and later in October at Halloween, the Northeast Piping Tionol (www.eastcoastpipers.com) also in East Durham.

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Nster.com