The Cathal McConnell Collection comprises 700+ cassette tape recordings and dates from the 1960s up to the early 2010s. The non-commercial audio material was recorded both in Ireland and abroad in a range of settings including field recordings in houses, informal sessions, concerts, outtake studio recordings, music classes and workshops. Also featured are both domestic recordings of radio programmes including 'The Long Note', 'Airneáin' and 'The Irish Phonograph' among others, along with cassette recordings of various commercial LP, cassette tape and CD releases.
Collection of domestic recordings on reel-to-reel and cassette tapes featuring Catherine Foley and her father, Patrick Foley, performing tunes and dances on a variety of instruments.
This collection of sound recordings is a unique taste of post-war Irish traditional music in New York, with leading players including Andy McGann, Paddy Reynolds and Larry Redican, concertina music from Charlie Mulvihill and family sessions with Charlie and his son Tommy (fiddle) and daughter Geraldine (piano).
Handwritten music manuscripts, music tablature manuscripts and an imperfect printed fiddle tutor. Some of the music tablature is written in the hand of Pádraig O'Keeffe and other music notation is written either by Dáibhí Ó Cróinín's father or uncle. More information to follow from Dáibhí once digitised versions of the manuscripts are shared with him.
This collection was created by Derek Bell during his lifetime. The majority of the papers and audio visual collection date from the late 1960s to the late 1990s. There are some papers relating to Bell's early music education in London's Royal College of Music and Trinity College Dublin but the vast majority of materials date from his professional music career. The papers cover Bell's time with the City of Belfast Orchestra and the BBC Northern Ireland Orchestra. His international career as a solo musician, recording artist, composer and his long career with the Irish music group The Chieftains are very well documented in this collection. Derek Bell's interest in Irish music, ethnic music from Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and South America and classical harp music are also evident in the collection. His interest in the relationship between music, mysticism and meditation is reflected both in his papers and his audio visual collection. The first series contains personal papers which include: music papers relating to education, teaching and musical instruments; financial documents; religious papers relating to the guru Gideon Fontalba and the spiritual organisation the Self Realization Fellowship; papers relating to family history; and papers gathered by his widow Stefanie Bell after his death in 2002. Correspondence with family, friends, music publishers, music librarians, musicians and business related correspondence can be found in the second series of this collection. The third series contains papers collected by Bell during his time as a working musician both as a solo and orchestral artist and with The Chieftains. Included in this series are invitations from individuals and organisations to Bell to perform as well as rehearsal schedules, performance related ephemera, reviews, articles, promotional material, tour schedules and awards and certificates. The final two series in this collection contain photographs of Bell and The Chieftains and audio visual material. This material includes Bell's solo recordings as well as The Chieftains many albums. Also included in the audio collection are ethnic music recordings from around the world.
