Frankie Gavin's Roaring 20's Orchestra

This year’s main concert (7pm, Saturday 27 April in Kilfenora Hall) features Frankie Gavin and his celebrated Roaring 20s Irish Orchestra. The concert will be opened by this year’s winner of an award from the Meitheal Summer School to play at the Kilfenora Trad Festival – Naoise Kettle. See below for notes on the performers. Tickets for the concert are €20 and available in advance at Custy’s Music Shop Ennis or any of the pubs in Kilfenora – Linnanes, Nagles and Vaughans.

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Throughout his musical career Frankie Gavin has been fascinated and inspired by the music of legendary Irish musicians who emigrated to America in the early part of the twentieth century -giants such as James Morrison, Paddy Killoran and The Flanagan Brothers, whose family left Waterford for New York in 1911. Seventy years later, the 1981 De Dannan album Star-Spangled Molly, which included the band’s hit version of the original Flanagan Brothers’ song My Irish Molly-O,  reawakened Irish interest in the music of this era. 

Now Frankie Gavin has put together a new Irish supergroup to play the Flanagan Brothers’ music, a group whose first live performance, on Gala Night at Tradfest, Dublin in January 2018 was a huge success. Frankie Gavin and his Roaring Twenties Irish Orchestra comprises a four-piece front line of Frankie Gavin on fiddle, Emma Corbett on melodeon, Martin Murray on banjo, Carl Hession on piano and Monica Brennan on vocals. This core can be augmented by a four-piece brass section, clarinet and double-bass.  The band has recently released a stunning CD By Heck, celebrating the Flanagan Brothers’ music.