TRAD
STAGE
Sponsored by 42 North Brewing Company and one of our newer additions, the Trad Stage, brings the traditional side of the Irish music to the South Buffalo Irish Festival. Located inside the Cazenovia Casino
// KINDRED
With a rare blending of voice, cello, guitars, and percussion, Kindred draw their music from the Irish poets, pubs, and county fairs; from the Scottish Highlands, Atlantic Canada, and the Appalachian crannies of the American southeast.
// SETANTA
Setanta is a trio of musicians who will bring you the pure drop – the finest tunes and songs from the deep well of traditional music of Ireland. Setanta has performed at the Niagara Celtic Festival, the Buffalo Irish Festival, and many other local venues. This is their first time performing at the South Buffalo Irish Festival.
Gregor Harvey came to Buffalo from the Boston,MA seisiún scene in 2007 and has been a performing musician for over 30 years. His main focus is octave mandolin, fingerstyle guitar and traditional song.
Mark Warford was an established performer in the Irish scene in East Tennessee before moving to Buffalo. Also a multi-instrumentalist, he is the founder of the weekly Celtic Sessions at Nietzsche’s pub, now in its 20th year.
Classically trained violinist and traditional Irish fiddler, Natalie Bennett is inspired by the fiddlers Kevin Burke and Martin Hayes, as well as the rich music community in Buffalo. She has performed in various groups in WNY for over 20 years
// DRANK THE GOLD
Oona Grady and James Gascoyne play and sing North Atlantic dance tunes and folk songs. Both steeped in music from an early age, they have been performing together since 2015. Their album, Sipped The Silver, simultaneously features Oona's deep Irish fiddle roots; James' compositional talents; and their shared passion for digging deep into traditional music and finding something new to say.
// RANDY CLEPPER & JOHN SHERMAN
Acclaimed multi-instrumentalists John Sherman and Randy Clepper are two highly regarded performers of Irish traditional music from central Ohio. Both are consummate multi-instrumentalists, and together they perform arranged Irish and Celtic tunes on fingerstyle guitar, bouzouki, and tenor banjo. John and Randy’s latest recording, “Finally Tuned”, has garnered favorable reviews in both Ireland and the US – “a fine and finely tuned album that is intricate in its arrangement and delivery", TradConnect.com
// BÁNÓG
How do you pronounce Bánóg? With your feet! Bánóg (Bawn-ogue) roughly translates to "green patch of ground leveled by dance." Leah Rankin, Matthew Blue, and Charlie Coughlin bring that sentiment to life with their masterful crafting of traditional and original tunes and songs. Comprised of two Irish Echo award winners and a Buffalo Philharmonic respected soloist, Bánóg expertly weaves traditional and original tunes with new rhythms and experimental sounds. These three musicians have been performing for audiences in the Buffalo and New York City areas for years, and now join together in a group that will leave you wanting more.
_JPG.jpg)
_JPG.jpg)
_JPG.jpg)
_JPG.jpg)
// JOHN RYAN
Folklorist and multifaceted musician John Ryan is at the forefront of the strongest generation of Irish traditional artists in the Genesee Valley in more than half a century, since the post-war immigration boom brought musicians and dancers from every corner of Ireland to labor, build families, and pass on their art here in the Rochester area. For more than twenty of his thirty-five years, he has taken up the instruments and tunes of this Golden Generation — button accordion, concertina, whistle, and bodhrán — and brought them into the 21st Century, providing his community with more opportunities to hear and play this music than ever before. As a instigator and leader of jam sessions in the region, as a performer and presenter on all manner of stages, and most recently as the founder of the Hochstein School of Music’s first ever Irish music curriculum, his ambition is to convince all of WNY of both the approachability and the sublimity of this deceptively simple discipline. John Ryan lives in the North Winton Village with his fiancée, (journalist Rebecca Rafferty) and their children, Aoife and Diarmuid. In addition to his career in music, his studies in the History Department at SUNY Brockport have earned him multiple recognitions, among them a Friends of Drake Library award for his work on Al Smith, New York’s greatest governor and the first Irish Catholic candidate for president.
