Sunday, February 28, 2016

"Planxty Irwin": A Carolan tune for Clayville-Prairieland jam sessions before St. Patrick's Day

D R A F T (and a very rough draft at that)!

Mark Gilston - "Planxty Irwin" and "Munster Cloak" (at 1:25) on mountain dulcimer

Blast email sent this afternoon to Clayville and Prairieland mailing lists.

It's (almost) March already, and we have two sessions of the Clayville-Prairieland Academy of Music coming up this week:

-- Tuesday, March 1, from 7 to 9 p.m. at Atonement-Grace-Luther Memorial Church, 2800 West Jefferson.

-- Saturday, March 5, from 10 a.m. to noon at Clayville Historic Stage Coach Stop, Ill. 125, Pleasant Plains.

In addition, our "third Thursday" session, at the church on West Jefferson, will be 7-9 p.m. March 17. That's St. Patrick's Day, and that' s got me thinking about Irish tunes. Let's be thinking of tunes we'd like to play on St. Paddy's (Irish or anything else that strikes your fancy), and make a night of it.

In the meantime, here's a link to "The Parting Glass" in B minor:

-- http://www.everythingdulcimer.com/files/tab/parting_glass.pdf

Also a standard you may already know by Turlough O'Carolan, called "Planxty Irwin" -- this lead sheet, actually dulcimer tab by Mark Zuckerman) is in D:

-- http://www.everythingdulcimer.com/files/tab/planxty_irwin.pdf

Here's a YouTube clip [...] by the 1970s trad Irish band Planxty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGxfJ0TXUck.

(Nobody knows exactly what "Planxty" means. Carolan, the 18th-century harp player who composed it, invented the word in his song titles; it probably means "in honor of," in this case a tune in honor of Col. John Irwin, for whom he composed it.)

Andrea Fanciulli - "Planxty Irwin" -- Celtic finger-style guitar

Mikaela, of HarpKit, plays "Planxty Irwin" on one of their harps

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