Sessions

Brighton has a thriving Irish music scene. Some sessions are weekly—every Sunday afternoon in The Bugle and every Wednesday evening in The Jolly Brewer. Some are every two weeks, like the session in The Fiddler’s Elbow. Others are monthly, like the session in The Dover Castle and the session in The Lord Nelson.

So it sometimes happens that if the calendar aligns just right, there are many sessions in one week. This was one of those weeks. I managed a streak of five sessions in a row.

The first was the regular Sunday afternoon session in The Bugle.

Two women playing fiddle in a pub.

Then on Monday, it was The Fiddler’s Elbow.

Two concertina players and a banjo player sitting at a table in a pub corner.

The night after that there was a one-off session in the Hand in Hand, which will hopefully become a regular monthly occurrence.

A woman playing fiddle and a man playing concertina in an ornate pub. In the foreground another man holds a fiddle.

On Wednesday it was the regular session at The Jolly Brewer.

Two banjo players, a man and a women, playing at a pub table. Two fiddlers, a man and a woman, in the corner of a pub.

Finally on Thursday it was the monthly session at The Lord Nelson.

A woman playing concertina and a man playing whistle around a pub table with a guitar headstock in the foreground. A woman playing fiddle and a man playing bones at a pub table covered with pints.

I’m very lucky to have so many opportunities to play the music I love with my fellow musicians. I don’t take it for granted.

Related posts

Music in 2022

It was all about the sessions.

Related links

Fairweather Fiddlers @ Brighton Acoustic Club Aug 2019 - YouTube

Myself and Jessica joining in some reels and jigs.

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Banjos and Discrete Technologies | stevebenford

An examination of how sites like The Session are meshing with older ideas of traditional Irish music:

There is a very interesting tension at play here – one that speaks directly to the design of new technologies. On the one hand, Irish musicians appear to be enthusiastically adopting digital media to establish a common repertoire of tunes, while on the other the actual performance of these tunes in a live session is governed by a strong etiquette that emphasizes the importance of playing by ear.

There’s an accompanying paper called Supporting Traditional Music-Making: Designing for Situated Discretion (PDF).

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Previously on this day

2 years ago I wrote Links for Declarative Design

Categorised hyperlinks that have been condensed into my new talk for An Event Apart.

13 years ago I wrote Hackfarming Map Tales

A week in the countryside.

14 years ago I wrote Adfonting

An advent calendar for fonts, complete with responsive layout.

14 years ago I wrote Spacelogging

Turning NASA transcripts into hypertext jewels.

16 years ago I wrote Iron Man and me

The story of how one of my Flickr pictures came to be used in a Hollywood movie.

17 years ago I wrote Dripping

Oozing liquid goodness.

20 years ago I wrote Back from Baltimore

I’m back in Brighton after a fairly short and painless jet-stream aided journey from Baltimore.

21 years ago I wrote Bad web whuffie

Here’s a message I sent earlier through the contact page at Macoholics:

21 years ago I wrote Renaissance theme

One week ago I was in Bologna. I was walking through cobblestoned streets lined with red-roofed old buildings. Many of the buildings were painted in the typical Renaissance style of yellows, browns and oranges.

22 years ago I wrote Puerto Muerto

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23 years ago I wrote The Science Museum

As of today, there is no admission price for the Science Museum or the Natural History Museum.