Hannah Harris

Hi Reader! Take a little trip down memory lane with me for a second... It's 2014 and I am attending my first ever Swannanoa Gathering Celtic Week. I've signed up for all four class slots (rookie mistake), and I know absolutely nobody going into the week. I've never attended a session nor taken any sort of private lessons specifically for Irish fiddling. I was terrified. But committed to being there and learning more about this Irish and Scottish music that captivated my hands and heart. That...

Hi Reader! There's a good chance that by the time you're reading this, I'll be piled under two cats with coffee close by and a full heart from a week in my original home state of North Carolina at the Swannanoa Gathering Celtic Week. It was during this week 11 years ago that a friend asked me if I'd heard about University College of Cork's Masters program for Ethnomusicology... And it was during this week 9 years ago that I got my first foray into interviewing Liz Carroll, John Doyle, Kevin...

Hi Reader! Matt Cranitch is the latest guest on the Find Your Lilt podcast, and I swear every time I have a conversation with him or take one of his workshops, I come away with a whole new set of ideas on bowing, playing in general, or understanding of who he is as a musician. In this chat, I really wanted to hear the spark that got him interested in Irish music. I'm used to thinking of him as a master fiddler who has been long established in the traditional Irish music scene (and...

Hi Reader! We had another really enjoyable (and packed!) session on Wednesday this week, and it's got me thinking about ideal sessions again... If you want to hear more musicians' perspectives around their ideal sessions and session etiquette, I highly recommend giving Tara Connaghan's podcast In Tune with Tradition a listen! A lot of Tara's guests will say that their ideal session size tends to be around 6-8 players. And typically these players would play at a similar level and have a mostly...

Hi Reader! A short letter from me today due to gigs and yesterday being the 4th of July (cue holiday brain mode). But I did want to take an opportunity to share three conversations I've had with some fantastic women in the Irish traditional music space over the past few months in case you haven't had a chance to tune in yet! Liz Knowles has a knack for making practicing your instrument fun. Basically think of the last time you went down a rabbit hole researching something you were curious...

Hi Reader! We had a really enjoyable session on Wednesday this week with a mix of the usual suspects and a couple of people visiting from out of town -- always a favorite combo! It was a bit shorter and earlier than usual due to the World Cup (despite our rousing rendition of Scotland the Brave at the end of the session, I'm afraid it didn't do the trick. But a big congrats to Brazil!). And there was a time and the not too distant past when it would bother me if a pub can't decide if it's a...

Hi Reader! Tell me if you've been in these shoes before. You open up a tune book like the O'Neill's collection (which has 1000 tunes in it if you're not familiar), and think "okay now I'm going to learn every single one of these tunes." After all, if you trained in the Suzuki method or another violin method that relied on progressing through a series of books, isn't that what we're used to? Learn every tune in the book, and then we can move on to the next level. It's certainly how I used to...