jcawley

Flute player, wannabe fiddle player in Blarney, born and raised in Manchester, New Hampshire.

The Cork has a great traditional music scene. I love playing flute. The fiddle is super (technically, expressively, emotionally?) challenging, but I’m slowly getting better thanks to advice from Seamus Sands, Matt Cranitch, and using Seamus Creagh’s Tunes for Practice CD. As a music educator, I have an obsessive interest in the learning process within the Irish traditional music community. I wrote a book on the subject based on several years of research (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53003137-becoming-an-irish-traditional-musician).

I’m fortunate enough to be involved in running and teaching in some community projects, like Club Ceoil Blarney. I work with kids who haven’t previously had the opportunity to learn trad music. Sharing tunes, seeing kids and adults uplifted by the music is what keeps me ticking (https://www.facebook.com/creativetrad/)

I post mostly trad and music stuff on twitter too - https://twitter.com/jessie_cawley