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Note, 01/2024: We have been on hiatus through the pandemic, and currently don't have a practice session. The pandemic is mostly over, but I need to find a venue, and a hopefully musician, to anchor the group. However, I am posting a monthly beginners session being lead by Ellery Klein at Powers Music School in Belmont. Please see the calendar for details.

This group is about getting together to learn and practice Irish Session Tunes, and to listen to Irish Music. I find learning tunes at sessions to be impossible, and while it is enjoyable to learn and play music at home, it would be fun to get together with others to play occasionally. I started this group to see if there are others like me. To start, we are meeting once a month to play tunes at a fairly slow tempo.

Because the goal is to learn tunes and to practice playing with others I'm guessing that this group will be made up of beginning and intermediate level musicians (If good anchor musicians want to show up all the better), and that we will choose sets of tunes to work on. This way everyone gets to play. Of course, this is all open to what the group wants to do as a whole. Tempos will be anywhere from slow (while everyone is first learning a tune) to comfortably fast (once we've learned a tune). I'd like to keep one specific monthly Meetup away from blistering tempos, although if anyone wants to become an assistant organizer to schedule something more like a session for this Meetup, they are more than welcome (I'll pay the Meetup fee. Anyone who becomes an Assistant Organizer will not have to contribute. The yearly fee is not a lot of money.)

My motivation comes from years ago when I belonged to a CCE Branch in Utica NY. We used to play together weekly, usually in someone's dining-room or living-room. It was a lot of fun to get together. And we all knew a common set of tunes after playing together for many years. Of course we had a great anchor musician, a guy who grew up in Ireland playing accordion. He was patient, and quite tolerant :) CCE in Boston does have Sunday sessions in Watertown, but they don't have a tune list as far as I know. And Watertown is a bit far from the T.

The format is open to whatever the group decides: We can start with new tunes played slowly, and work our way to tunes we have learned well, picking up the tempo as we go. We could also just mix new sets with old sets. I think the first format might be better if better musicians want to show up later to play faster tunes. This depends on who joins. Currently, I'm working my through Malley's 100 Essential Irish Session Tunes. We can choose to go through a collection like this (All great tunes), or we can put our own setlist together.

So here is to whatever happens!

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