Festival Programme for 2025

If you have never played in a session before here are some handy tips to help you best enjoy the experience.

Where to sit?
A session needs a critical mass of different types of instruments and abilities. Some musicians will know each other but many will be meeting for the first time. If you are a less experienced player, you may have found a seat at the table where the tune leaders sit while a session is quiet. This is fine. But if the session gets busy, it might be appropriate to give up your seat to a more experienced player. Of course, newcomers to Ceol Aneas may not recognise all the experienced players. Therefore, it's not an insult to you or to your playing if someone quietly suggests giving up your seat to one of these people. Such an action would be in keeping with the Irish sense of ómós (respect for musical elders).

What tunes will be played?
Many of the tunes played at Ceol Aneas will be well known tunes played all over the world. Session musicians do not use music sheets and a session is not for ‘jamming’, if you don’t know the tune, it’s better to sit back and listen. Some sessions will have obvious session leaders, and others will not. At Ceol Aneas you are encouraged to play in sessions and this includes playing the tunes that you know, so give it a go and start a set. But before you do you might want to ask those around you if they know the tunes so that you are not playing solo!

Can I record the session?
A session is a great place to collect tunes so that you can learn them and join in the next time. In general musicians don’t mind you recording them but if in doubt ask! Its not appropriate to post the recordings to public sites for professional reasons.

What instruments can play at a session?
At Ceol Aneas we welcome all traditional Irish music players. Some of the sessions at Ceol Aneas will have a lot of people playing and others will be smaller sessions. Session tunes are melody based, so it is important that the melody is not lost. Sometimes this can happen if there are too few melody instruments, such as fiddle, flute, banjo etc and sometimes this is because there are too many backing instruments such as guitars bodhrán and bouzouki, or those instruments are playing too loudly. If you are playing a backing instrument, be mindful of your volume and let the melody lead.