Now's The Time To Visit The Catskills

Gwen Orel Talks To Paul Keating, Artistic Director Of The Catskills Irish Arts Week

By Gwen Orel

It's quiet in the office of the Catskills Irish Arts Week in East Durham over July 4th weekend. Artistic Director Paul Keating was to work without distraction.

But starting on the 11th, "quiet" is not a word anyone would use to describe East Durham. One of the defining traits of the Catskills Irish Arts Week (CIAW) July 11-17 (http://www.irishvillageusa.com/catskills-irish-arts-week) in East Durham is that it's "a 24/7 environment here."

Registration for the week of classes is still open; when Keating spoke with us last weekend he said with a laugh that he didn't know how many people were coming yet because of the Irish tendency to do things at the last minute.

But if you can't spare a whole week, you can go up for a day and session hop. It's only a two hour drive from Manhattan.

You might even be able to take a day or two of classes if you email Keating about it (paulkeating@aol.com).

If you go up on Wednesday, for example, you can go to the CD launches for the Kane sisters, Edel Fox or harpist Laoise Kelly; on Friday you can attend virtuoso Chicago-Irish fiddler Liz Carroll's book launch of 185 original compositions; Saturday has the all day Andy McGann Festival, which samples all of the talent of the teachers and performers. Sessions go on until the sun rises and beyond.

I remember a session at Furlong's last year where Matt Cranitch, teaching fiddle again this year (and launching a new CD, The Living Stream, with box player Jackie Daly on the 13th), played until after 7am. He was wearing a prop purple hat as were several other sessioneers. It made sense then.

Joanie Madden, of Cherish the Ladies, often wanders into a session with a burst of energy at 3 or 4. She is launching A Galway Afternoon, recorded with her father, the late Joe Madden, whose memory was honored at CIAW last summer.

Cherish the Ladies are holding a very special 25-year anniversary concert Friday night, which Keating describes as "a blockbuster": Four current members (Joanie Madden, Mary Coogan, Mirella Murray, Kathleen Boyle) are teaching during the week, past singers Aoife Clancy (also on Staff) and Deirdre Connnoly appear, original member Rose Conway Flanagan (also on staff) appears, and new singer Marianne Knight may be there too. Liz Carroll, the Kane sisters, Laoise Kelly and Edel Fox have all played with Cherish and will join them on stage, as well as Ottawa Valley Step Dancer Dan Stace and Donny Golden.

"There are an extraordinary number of CDs being launched, some from artists involved with us for many years from Ireland, and some relatively new to us too," Keating says. "It's become quite the place to launch a CD in America, and a feather in our cap."

Keating explains that some CDs would never have happened at all if not for Catskills Irish Arts Week: a group called Nagaviskey formed when Caitlin and Bernadette Nic Gabhann (daughters of fiddler Antoin MacGabhann) met Sean McComiskey (son of Billy McComiskey) and piper Sean Gavin at a late night/early morning session at Furlong's last summer.

Two recording sessions later, one in Ireland and one in the U.S., they launch their new album, Home Away from Home, at CIAW on Friday the 16th. Keating is proud of the way the album reflects the cultural interchange that happens during those long days and nights in East Durham.

And the partnership of Cranitch and Daly playing the music of Sliabh Luachra together at CIAW for the past seven years helped inspire that new recording as well.

Many other teaching weeks of Celtic music-the Swannanoa Gathering in Asheville, North Carolina; the Augusta Heritage Irish Week in Elkins, West Virginia-take place on college campuses, and while music sessions and performances go late, in East Durham they literally often go all night long.

That's a big job for Keating: he works out over 50 sessions a night (they are all assigned) led by 65 instructors, in addition to scheduling the performances. Hiring the instructors from Ireland and the U.S. and Canada, working out deals with pubs and local hotels, writing up reports and seeking funding, is a big project.

Classes take place in hotels, schools, restaurants (and yes, some in pubs), and students choose their own lodging at the area's many inns and hotels. While it's less centralized than a college campus, "it's a real Irish village," says Keating. Like a village, you quickly find yourself bumping into people you know wherever you go.

Asked when he starts planning the summer, he answers, "I don't know that I ever stop." After taking a few weeks off to recover from the intense week in July, he usually begins planning in September. But he keeps it one year at a time. "Otherwise," he says wryly, "it looks like a sentence."

It's enough work to do only that, but Keating wears many hats: he's involved with Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann of the mid-Atlantic Region; he writes a music column for the Irish Voice.

He was a journalist for Newsweek, and eventually chief of the News Desk, before taking a buyout. He began writing about Irish music for Irish Music Magazine, among others, and in 2003 he began writing for the Voice on traditional music. That was the same year he became Artistic Director for the Arts Week.

Yet Keating doesn't even play an instrument. He began set dancing in 1972. "I love the music and wanted a way to participate, but not as a musician, so I threw myself into dancing and became a dance instructor." He was 23 then, and thought he was too old to begin an instrument (although plenty of those playing fiddle, concertina, flute, uillean pipes, banjo, bouzouki, hammer dulcimer, bodhran, guitar, mouth organ, piano or harp in "basic" classes, two years or less experience are well over 23).

Dancing brought Keating in 1984 to the Willie Clancy Summer School. After seeing the dancing at Clancy week, he decided that "we needed to import teachers to the U.S.."

Organizing set-dancing workshops with people from Ireland led to organizing tours, festivals and traveling workshops, and gave Keating the experience in complex logistical arrangements.

Keating has been involved with CIAW even before it opened in 1995; he was on the Formation Committee (before becoming Artistic Director, he taught dance).

One of the goals for the Arts Week was to bring business back to the area. Once a favorite summer haunt for Irish-Americans, full of music and dance, it had been in decline (with the advent of air conditioning, among other things).

Keating, a native Manhattanite, didn't grow up visiting the Catskills himself: "My family summered in Rockaway beach," he says. It was his wife, harpist Deirdere Dannaher, who introduced him to the area. But he appreciates the history onsite, and adds that it's not about the past: "Every day, every year, new history is made here."

The arts week is also a big support for the Michael J. Quill Irish Cultural and Sports Centre, founded in 1987 to preserve Irish cultural and artistic heritage in the area.

East Durham, normally population 3500, quadruples in size during Catskills Irish Arts Week. Students often bring family and friends, and there are non-musical classes as well: Celtic Arts and Crafts, Painting, Irish History and Language, Set Dancing, Step Dancing, and Children's Workshops.

And the instructors are a major draw, all of whom also perform in evening concerts and sessions.

Fiddle teachers this year include Liz Carroll, Antoin MacGabhann, who produced and will launch the U.S. debut of a double album by the late Cavan mouth organist Eddie Clarke, and ten-time Ireland National Fiddle Champion Seamus Connolly. Flute teachers include Mike Rafferty and Joanie Madden; Jimmy Crowley is one of the mouth organ teachers; there's also Aoife Clancy on singing teachers and Laoise Kelly on harp, Billie McComiskey and Jackie Daly on button accordion, among many others!

Check them out here: http://www.irishvillageusa.com/catskills-irish-arts-week-schedule Many of these A-list pros teach intermediate classes as well as advanced.

That opportunity to hobnob and rub shoulders with some of the greatest musicians in traditional music makes the Arts Week unmissable. "Many of the musicians give afternoon lectures in their specialty revolving around music, as well as leading late night sessions," Keating says. Students come, year after year, from 35 states. Everyone I know who went last year is either going, going for a day, or wishes they were.

Because once you've been, you want to go back. Just don't expect to get a lot of sleep. It won't be very quiet.

Just ask Paul Keating.