TradFest Temple Bar, running from January 25-29 has a packed programme of live music.
Ireland’s largest trad and folk music festival invites audiences to experience extraordinary live music in the historic and atmospheric setting of Temple Bar, Dublin’s cultural quarter, across the city and now for the first time, expanding into picturesque Fingal. There'll be trad everywhere you go - from the city to the coast.
In 2023, TradFest Temple Bar will celebrate the Mná na hÉireann by featuring a number of female led and curated Trad and Folk performances. TradFest aims to greatly increase women’s participation across the festival programme, building balanced representation in terms of pure numbers. The festival also continues to welcome new voices and works in ways to increase accessibility and diversity across the programme and in trad and folk.
Showcasing the best of established and emerging musical talent since 2005, this joyful celebration of culture is reimagining and redefining Irish music and bringing it to growing Irish and international audiences. This year, TradFest Temple Bar is reaching further across Dublin city & County with performances in a range of venues. Among those taking part will be Niamh Regan. Released in the midst of the pandemic in 2020, her debut album Hemet announced her arrival as one of the most distinctive songwriters in Ireland today. Earning nominations for both the RTÉ Folk Awards and the Choice Awards Album of the Year, the album received soaring praise, and led to performances on The Late Late Show, Other Voices, and La Blogothèque.
Following her studies in flute and guitar in the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick, Regan honed her craft as a songwriter by travelling between Ireland and California, and writing about her experiences along the way. As a result, her songs seamlessly weave the intimacy of the Irish lyrical tradition in with the expansive breadth of American songwriters such as Karen Dalton, Stevie Nicks and Joni Mitchell - but the resulting sound is entirely her own.
A natural storyteller, Regan’s songs are windows into her world, snapshots of the intimacy of everyday life. This is evident on her upcoming EP, In the Meantime, which was generously supported by the Galway International Arts Festival Elevate Bursary. The EP is a collection of songs written during the challenges of the pandemic, exploring themes of acceptance, uncertainty, independence, family guilt, silence, and ordinary acts of love. With her singular mastery, Regan's songwriting draws us into the intricate details of everyday life and elevates them into something universal.
Niamh will be performing in Malahide Castle on January 29 at 1pm. Tickets are on sale now at www.tradfesttemplebar.com
