This year’s Tulla Trad Festival starts on Friday, 7 September at 8pm with a parade through Tulla with the Chapel Gate Wrenboys, the 2011 All Ireland winners, who will also perform at the official opening by Paula Carroll of Clare FM at Tulla Courthouse.

Saturday’s workshops will be run in St. Joseph’s Secondary School with registration at 10:30am  and classes running from 11am to 4.30pm. Saturday’s Celebrity Concert will take place in the Courthouse at 8pm and feature many of the tutors, including Darren Breslin on accordion, Angelina Carberry on banjo, Michelle Mulcahy on concertina and Louise Mulcahy on flute, Liz and Yvonne Kane on fiddle, and Sibéal Davitt dancing; as well as Vincent Griffin, Brian O’Rourke, and Mary Corry and Michael Landers.

For dancers there will be a céilí on Friday night with Danny Hunt and band, on Saturday night with Awbeg/The Five Counties – the 2012 Senior Ceili Band All Ireland Champions, and on Sunday night with Jim Corry, Mark Donnellan and Charlie Harris.

On Sunday there will be the Aifreann Gaeilge, a singing session in Teach Ól with Robbie McMahon and Nora Butler, a music session with Darren Breslin, Mary MacNamara and East Clare young musicians in Minogues Back room, and later a CD Launch of Eilleen O’Brien’s new solo fiddle album Aon le h’Aon celebrating her father, Paddy O’Brien’s compositions.

On Sunday afternoon at 3pm there will be a screening in Tulla Courthouse of a new film called Aughty which features music by local musicians.This is a feature-length, experimental documentary made by visual artists and filmmakers Tom Flanagan and Megs Morley. Over a period of 18 months, the artists have explored the Aughty mountain region, its hinterlands and people, a vast and unique geographical area that spans East Galway and East Clare. The film is constructed as an ‘arrangement of incidents’ alluding to a more fragmented narrative experience whereby meaning is constructed through the observation and interpretation of the encounter of place and journey, recording the incidental moments, actions and gestures encountered. Through observation and engagement with this unique rural region, the film captures the complex relationship between the place, the landscape and the people at a time where the degeneration and regeneration of traditional rural communities and the impact of modernization on rural society is reaching a pinnacle moment. Alongside traditional music by local musicians, the film also features original music from Galway band Phantom Dog beneath the Moon and Caoimhe Morley.

tullatradfestival.ie.