Irish Music Concert and Lecture at Illinois Wesleyan

Feb. 12, 2003

BLOOMINGTON, Ill.– On Friday, Feb. 28 at 4 p.m., Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin, the Jefferson Smurfit Corporation Professor of Irish Studies, University of Missouri, St. Louis, will deliver a public lecture entitled “From the Gaspé to the Sierras: Irish Musical Culture and Diaspora in North America since the Great Famine of the 1840s.”

The lecture, which is free to the public, will be held in the Beckman Auditorium of The Ames Library, 1 Ames Plaza, Bloomington.

On the following evening, March 1, Ó hAllmhuráin, a champion player of the concertina (a musical instrument resembling an accordion), as well as an ethnomusicologist, will join Patrick Ourceau and Robbie O’Connell to present “A Masters’ Performance of Irish Traditional Music, Song and Folklore” at 8 p.m. in the Main Lounge of the Memorial Center, 104 E. University St., Bloomington.

This event, which is sponsored by the Humanities Series Occasional Grant, is also free and open to the public.

The Irish Voice writes of Ó hAllmhuráin and Ourceau, “Years of musical partnership allow them to play in tandem with almost telepathic sensitivity, producing duets in which fiddle and concertina blend into one seamless stream of sound.” And, according to The Hot Press, O’Connell, a member of the renowned Irish band The Clancy Brothers, is “a man blessed with an enviable turn of phrase and a gift for melody bestowed only on the few…a national treasure.”

For additional information, please contact Associate Professor and Chair of the History Department and Director of American Studies April Schultz, at (309) 556-3414.