Kevin Burke & Seamie O’Dowd In Concert

More on Kevin Burke:

Kevin has earned international acclaim in both Europe and America as a solo performer, a teacher and as a member of some of folk music’s foremost groups including the exciting Celtic Fiddle Festival and Ireland’s long admired and respected Patrick Street. In 2007 he also set up his own record label, “Loftus Music”, which soon developed a reputation for excellence in both its musical output and its unique eco-friendly packaging.

His contribution to music has received formal acknowledgement on both sides of the Atlantic where he has been the recipient of several awards including Ireland’s “Gradam Ceoil” (Traditional Musician of the Year, 2016), and a National Heritage Fellowship, the USA’s highest honor for excellence in the folk and traditional arts. (Previous National Heritage Fellows include B.B. King, Doc Watson, and Bill Monroe.) Kevin has also been honoured by his adopted home state with his induction to the Oregon Music Hall of Fame .

In 1980 Kevin settled in the USA and was performing with Bothy Band colleague Micheal O Domhnaill. Their 2 albums, “Promenade” and “Portland”, became, and still are, very influential resources for many traditional musicians.

In the mid Eighties Kevin was a founding member of two influential groups, “Open House” and “Patrick Street”, whose recordings and performances were greeted with great acclaim both in Europe and US. In the mid Nineties Kevin was a founding member of yet another successful and enduring traditional group – “The Celtic Fiddle Festival”, this time with Johnny Cunningham from Scotland and Christian Lemaitre from Brittany.

Although Kevin has spent much of his life playing in a group context, he has never lost his love for solo fiddle music – the “naked fiddle” as he himself sometimes puts it.  This is very evident in his new live solo release, “An Evening with Kevin Burke”, a collection of performances and stories before audiences in Ireland and US, including his home town of Portland, Oregon.

Whether solo or accompanied, on record or in concert, Burke is an immensely engaging performer.

More about Seamie O’Dowd:

His experience also includes recording production, teaching and more recently, film soundtrack work, and encompasses solo performance as well as extensive work with bands and small groups as both a member and a session musician.

Seamie’s public musical experience spans four decades. He made his first radio appearance at the age of ten on a Radio Eireann programme called Young Musicians and began playing publicly with his father, the renowned Sligo fiddle player Joe O’Dowd at around the same time.

He has been a tutor at the South Sligo Summer School in Tubbercurry, Co.Sligo on a regular basis since its beginnings in the late 1980s, teaching fiddle for six of its first seven years and teaching traditional guitar since the mid 2000s up to the present day.

He was awarded The Freedom Of The Borough in 2004 by Sligo Corporation while a member of internationally renowned traditional group Dervish and acknowledged again in 2010 at a civic reception given by the Mayor of Sligo for his personal contribution to the cultural life of the area.

He also worked with film score composer George Fenton in London’s Abbey Road Studios on part of the film score of Jimmy’s Hall, a film made by Ken Loach in the Sligo/ Leitrim area.

As part of the Masters of Irish Music project devised by Martin Hayes, he, along with Mairtin O’Connor and Cathal Hayden played the group’s concerts in the Sydney Opera House as well as a flagship performance at the Lincoln Centre in New York.

Watch Seamie Here: