A review of the inaugural TRADITION:DL, the Dún Laoghaire Festival of Traditional Music

Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire, Co. Dublin, 3-5 August 2007

‘Eileanór na Rún’, one of the most beautiful love songs in Irish, delivered in sweet, measured style, unaccompanied; the beginning of TRADITION:DL, the first Dún Laoghaire Festival of Traditional Music, augured well. Could it be that this was a festival where music would be played and songs sung at a pace dictated, not by an invisible aerobics trainer with a stopwatch, but by the qualities of the individual piece? That was certainly how things went in the first concert, featuring sean-nós singer Róisín Elsafty and harpist Siobhán Armstrong. These musicians are of quite different musical backgrounds – Elsafty growing up in a house...