Sligo Live Sessions is again joining with CCE Sligo Town Branch to host the Fiddler of Dooney Competition over the October Bank Holiday weekend. The competition, inagurated in 1965, is one of the oldest and most prestigious instrumental competitions in the tradition and is inspired by the W B Yeats poem of the same name. The roll of previous winners reads like a whos who of traditional fiddling and includes Matt Cranitch, Cathal Hayden, Brid Harper, Liz Kane, Paddy Glacken, Seamus and Manus McGuire.
Surprisingly, since Sligo Live Sessions joined with CCE to host the competition, all the winners have been women. Tara Breen 2006, Laura Beegan 2007, Bronwyn Power 2008 and last year’s winner was Aoife Ní Bhrion. Entries are expected from all over the country and from traditional musicians based overseas; who knows perhaps a male fiddler could even break the sequence this year.
