Forty Years of Irish Fiddling: The Meaning of Traditional Music in Modern Life

Immerse yourself in Irish traditional fiddle and guitar music!

Folio: The Seattle Athenaeum is delighted to welcome fiddler and guitarist Randal Bays for his first concert at Folio.

Traditional music plays many roles in modern life, a link with the past, a part of cultural identity, a lens through which to study history. It’s all that, but to stay alive it has to be engaging to modern listeners. Irish traditional music does all that, and it’s found devoted listeners and players around the globe.

During the first half of the concert, Randal will share fiddle tunes he’s collected over the last forty years, plus fingerstyle guitar arrangements of early Irish harp composers such as O’Carolan and Connellan. For the second half of the concert Randal will be joined by Susan Waters on fiddle and Clint Dye on guitar. 

Join us for a wine reception and discussion to conclude the concert.

Randal Bays is an American born, Irish style fiddler, well known on both sides of the Atlantic for his great fiddling and his devotion to the traditional style. He has a string of highly regarded recordings to his credit and he’s toured for many years in the U.S., Ireland, and Europe. In 2021 he received the Irish Artist in America Achievement Award from O'Flaherty Irish Music in Texas. Randal taught Irish fiddle and is the author of a book of original Irish tunes, “The Humours of Cascadia”.

Susan Waters is a native of Vermont, where she grew up in the midst of a musical family, immersed in the instrumental and song traditions of that part of the world. She took up the fiddle in her 20s and soon developed a strong, rhythmic style perfectly suited to the fiddle music of western Ireland. Susan met Randal in the late 90s and they've been playing tunes together ever since.

Guitarist Clint Dye is a recent addition to the Seattle Irish music community. His great musicality, rhythm, and style have made him very welcome in sessions and concerts around the Northwest. Clint got his start playing traditional Irish music by accompanying step dancers and singers in the Busch Gardens show Celtic Fyre in Williamsburg, VA. During this time, he began to cut his teeth in Irish music sessions and worked in several groups at festivals and events on the east coast.