Hello! After taking a break for the past few months, I am now ready to resume a full schedule of online slow sessions right up to Christmas.
You can find all of the forthcoming dates here. The next slow and steady session will take place on Monday 26 October, 2.00 – 4.00 pm. You will see from the schedule that I will now be holding more frequent sessions on Monday afternoons, and only one Saturday evening session per month.
If you are a beginner/intermediate Irish musician on any instrument, and would like to join our next session (or be put on my invitation list for subsequent sessions), then contact me – Bev – by email: fluterbev@gmail.com. I ask all participants for a £5 contribution for attendance at each session. This can be made via Paypal.
There are some other changes, as follows:
Monday Slow Session
The full two-hour Monday afternoon slow sessions will take place every other week, and will involve us playing tunes together at a slow and steady pace (ie the same format as our previous sessions). The one difference is that, in advance of each session, I will designate a featured tune (see below) which we will aim to play at the session (along with all the other tunes our participants want to play).
Our next Monday slow session will take place on Monday 26th October, 2.00 – 4.00 pm.
Featured Tune
Before every fortnightly Monday slow session, I will circulate the written music for a featured tune, plus a short video of me playing the tune for you to learn/play along to.
The featured tunes will primarily be ones that I have previously taught at our Irish tunes class in Lancaster, and will be an opportunity for new attendees to learn our popular back-repertoire, and for our longstanding members to revisit our older tunes. We can then play these tunes together at our online slow sessions.
You can see our first featured tune here – Si Beag Si Mor. We will play this together at our next slow session on Monday 26 October.
Learn a tune!
On alternate Monday afternoons (ie the weeks we are not having a two-hour session) we will meet as usual, but instead of having a full two-hour session I will spend the first hour teaching a new tune. This is an opportunity for us all to increase our class repertoire in a sociable and supportive environment.
We will then spend the second hour playing together in a slow and steady manner as usual.
Slow session – Saturday edition!
Once a month (on the first Saturday of the month) we will have a Saturday night session. This will be the same format as our full Monday afternoon sessions, in that we will play tunes together in our usual slow and steady manner. I will circulate a featured tune before the session for you to revise/learn.
These evening sessions will go on a bit longer than the Monday ones, from 7.30 pm to 10.00 pm. This is to accommodate people who may prefer to attend earlier or later. You are welcome to come along whatever time you wish, and stay as long or as short a time as you like. You are also encouraged to bring along some liquid refreshment, if you wish! I aim for our Saturday night get-togethers to be as close as we can get to a pub session in these strange days, so there will be plenty of banter as well as tunes.
Online Christmas party!
On Monday 21 December, we will be holding our annual Irish Tunes Class and Slow Session Christmas party. This is sure to include Christmas music (in addition to traditional tunes), and seasonal snacks, beverages, Christmas crackers and silly hats, though optional, are encouraged!
There will also be our annual silly story competition, featuring the names of tunes we have played/learned during the year.
More information about this event will be circulated nearer the time.
Bev Whelan's Irish Tunes Class and Slow Session 