Watch step dancing, hear fiddlers and eat soda bread at IrishFest Atlanta
Now in its 13th year, IrishFest Atlanta has grown into a vibrant celebration of Irish heritage, gathering roughly 4,000 people for a three-day festival at the Roswell Cultural Arts Center and Roswell City Hall Grounds.
Taking place this weekend, the celebration features a full schedule of Irish concerts, step dancing, social dances, a tea party, soda-bread competition, cooking demo and dozens of educational and creative workshops with visiting professionals from across the U.S. and Ireland.
This year’s IrishFest
Kentucky-based, high-energy Irish traditional trio Open the Door for Three will kick off the festival Friday night..
The band’s three musicians — uilleann pipes player Kieran O’Hare, fiddler Liz Knowles and bouzouki player Pat Broaders — will each teach a musical technique workshop on their individual instruments Saturday morning.
Other workshops Saturday include a Sean-nós (old style) dance workshop taught by All-Ireland dancing champion Sharleen Doyle, a singing workshop with Atlanta-based Irish singer Olivia Bradley, and beginning fiddle two-time All-Ireland champion with Patrick Finley.
On Saturday night, five-piece traditional Irish band Téada will headline a concert. Founded by famed fiddler Oisín Mac Diarmada in County Sligo in Ireland, Téada has toured for 25 years around the globe including throughout Asia, Europe and the Americas. It is the band’s second time at IrishFest Atlanta and third time performing in Roswell. Téada’s band members will each teach a Sunday workshop on their individual instruments.
Other Sunday workshops include traditional song with Niamh Farrell (who toured with David Gray in 2014) and piano accompaniment with Samantha Harvey (a longtime collaborator with Téada).
Beyond workshops and concerts, IrishFest boasts several other signature events for the broader public. Saturday morning, an Irish tea party at Zion Baptist Church (888 Zion Circle, Roswell) will feature scones, cake and tea sandwiches made by two Irish chefs (Thomas McKeown of Hyatt Regency Atlanta, and Judith McLoughlin of the Shamrock & Peach). Tickets are $45 and also include dance and musical performances by Tigh na Coille, a group visiting from County Clare Ireland.
On Saturday afternoon, IrishFest will host an Irish bread making contest, an Irish cuisine cooking demo and a céilí (pronounced “kay-lee”), a social dance.
A family zone will have arts and crafts, face painting and sporting events like Gaelic football, hurling and camogie.
“It is a wonderful community celebration,” said Frank Groome, consul general of Ireland to the U.S. Southeast. “It reinforces the close bond between our two nations, built on shared ancestral ties, while also welcoming people from across the diverse communities of this city.”
Festival roots
When founder Teresa Finley first started the festival in 2013 she never imagined what it would become.
In 2011, Finley was looking for ways to provide musical mentorship for her Irish fiddle-playing son Patrick and about a dozen of his fiddle-playing peers. In hindsight, she may have been fated to build a full-scale festival.
Finley is the daughter of two Irish immigrants who were passionate about connecting their four children to their Irish roots. They took the family to visit Ireland every few years, introduced them to Irish arts and helped found the Milwaukee Irish Festival. Finley became an Irish step dancer, while her two brothers mastered the Irish fiddle and her sister sang.
When Finley had a son of her own, she wanted to introduce him to his Irish heritage. He was naturally curious already, idolizing his Uncle Martin, Finley’s brother Dr. Martin Dowling, who played the Irish fiddle (and will be a visiting guest teaching two historical workshops at this year’s festival).
“I got a fiddle in his hands faster than he knew what happened,” Finley said.
Patrick attended the only Irish music school in Atlanta at the time, the Atlanta Irish Music School, where he made about a dozen friends all passionate about traditional Irish music. The young aspiring fiddlers were hungry for more.
In cities like New York, Boston or Chicago, Finley said, kids have opportunities to come in contact with prestigious Irish musicians.
“Here (in Atlanta) we don’t have those kind of musicians down the street or across town,” Finley said.
She decided to take action. In 2011, she teamed up with other moms to see if they could bring in some professional Irish musicians to teach workshops. It took about two years, but eventually the idea took shape. Bolstered by the support of the consulate general of Ireland in Atlanta, which had recently opened and saw the event as an opportunity to build bridges between siloed Georgia Irish organizations, the first IrishFest Atlanta was born in 2013.
“We built the festival around (workshops) as our core model,” she said. “It worked wonderfully well.”
In the first few years, the workshops introduced young musicians to great North American players like Liz Carroll, a legendary Chicago-born Irish fiddler and composer, and Billy McComiskey, a Baltimore-based Irish button accordion player, Finley said.
IrishFest’s small core of volunteers also recruited some big-name Irish bands to play the festival, including Dervish from County Sligo, Ireland and Cherish the Ladies from New York.
In order to play at IrishFest, bands were required to teach at least one workshop. The exposure to professionals, Finley said, made an impact. Atlanta kids started to win competitions in the Midwest and qualify for the All-Ireland, the highest-level competition for traditional Irish arts in the world. Patrick Finley won two back-to-back All-Ireland championships in 2016 and 2017.
“Now we’re trying to build the next generation of musicians,” said Finley, who also runs Phoenix School of Irish Arts, which she opened in 2021.
Since the festival’s founding, it has grown from one day to three and now welcomes a much broader audience.
“The Festival has become a milestone on the annual calendar of Irish heritage events in the Southeast,” said Groome. “It is a family fun day out with fantastic food, music and dancing, which showcases the strength, vibrancy and talent of the Irish diaspora here in Georgia.”
If you go
IrishFest Atlanta. Friday-Sunday. Roswell Cultural Arts Center, 950 Forrest St., Roswell and Roswell City Hall Grounds, 38 Hill Street, Roswell. Irishfestatlanta.org.
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