Galway Days Irish Festival

Name: Galway Days Irish Festival
Start: 2024-08-10T11:00:00-08:00
End: 2024-08-11T20:00:00-08:00
Location: Town Square Park - Anchorage

Schedule

Sat Aug 10 2024 at 11:00 am to Sun Aug 11 2024 at 08:00 pm

UTC-08:00

Location

Town Square Park - Anchorage | Anchorage, AK

Press Release
Dated Material
For Immediate Release
The Irish Club of Alaska is pleased to announce the 2024 annual Galway Days Irish Festival will take place on August 10th and 11th. The popular Festival has outgrown the one-day format and will be held on Saturday the 10th in Town Square from 11am to 5 pm, and continue onto Sunday the 11th at 49th State Brewing from 3-8 pm.
Both days will feature the finest performers from the Alaskan Irish community, including Jubilee, The Northern Lights Celtic Dancers, Tania Opland, Laughing Molly, De Pris and many more. The Saturday part of the festival will feature workshops, vendor booths, a children’s tent, buskers, storytellers, a photography exhibit, and a Gaeltacht, a small village on the grounds where festival goers can can experience the Irish language. The Sunday part of the festival will feature live music from 3 - 5:30, dancing instruction from 5:30 to 6 and a ceílí from 6 - 8 featuring our visiting artists joined by our local musicians performing for the ceílí dancers.
We are delighted to host our visiting performers Sky Kelsey and Colm Broderick. Sky is currently based in Colorado, but Sky grew up here in Anchorage. He is well known for his fine traditional playing. He’s a five-time Midwest Fleadh Champion on both fiddle and banjo, and a four-time champion on flute and whistle, and his prowess as a musician is undeniable. Sky is joined for this trip home by Colm Broderick.
Colm is an All-Ireland winning uilleann piper and is the 2020 winner of the Seán Ó Ríada Bonn Óir competition on pipes.
Colm studied with Ciarán Somers and John Tuohy, and is now in high demand as a teacher and performer. He has recently been given the honour of taking possession of a set of uilleann pipes made by Leo Rowsome which belonged to the late Liam O’Flynn. Colm is tasked with playing and looking after this wonderful and historic instrument and carrying on the legacy of Liam O’Flynn’s music.
Saturday night will feature Sky and Colm in concert at the 49th State Brewing Heritage Theater at 7 pm. The concert is a ticketed event and tickets will be available on irishalask.org or at the door. Tickets are $25 for the general public and $20 for Irish Club members.
Thanks to our sponsors, both days on the weekend are free to the public. Some workshops will have fees to participate. Galway Days is Alaska’s only Irish Festival and is proud to be sponsored by The Atwood Foundation, 49th State Brewing Company, The Consulate General of Ireland in San Francisco and many more business and individual sponsor who support Irish culture in the Last Frontier. For more information on our sponsors, and on the festival log onto our website www.irishalaska.org.

p.s. We know the poster has a typo and will fix it as soon as we can!