Blaine and John joined forces about a year ago drawn together by their mutual love of harmonies and musical variety.

John Reid is a dynamic multi-instrumentalist which includes guitar, mandolin, harmonicas and when provoked, bagpipes. He is also a talented songwriter taking old traditions into new territory.

Blaine Hrabi (guitar and mandola) hails from PEI and his connection to east coast music traditions infuses his songs and his stories.

Together they will perform a wide range of traditional, Celtic and original tunes made all the more entertaining as they detail the background of the music and the love of playing songs that move the soul.

Noel Rea was born and grew up in Belfast, N. Ireland. He practised law before coming to Canada in 1977 where he spent most of his working career with Imperial Oil, in Calgary, before joining the law Firm of Fraser Milner Casgrain, where he was the Alternative Disputer Resolution National Coordinator, a position from which he retired in July of this year.

Noel has been wring poetry for many years, has had various of his poems published, has made many poetry readings and has been member of the Irish Cultural Society, Celtic Folk, and the Alexander Writers’ Centre Society since the early 1990’s. He is currently working on a manuscript of those of his poems having an Irish theme, to be entitled “Elsewhere”.

We get together every Tuesday evening from about 7:30 to 10:30 or so at the Joyce on 4th pub in Calgary to play Traditional Celtic music. The musicians currently include fiddlers Derek Marshall, Cara Broughton, Tracy Buck, Brendan MaCreanor, Kerri Brown, and Emilie Kirwan, Greg O’Neill on banjo, Katja Hoehn on flute, Anne Cowman on button accordion, Stewart Smith on Uilleann pipes, Sean Somers on Scottish small pipes, whistles, and flutes, Greg Hooper on flute, concertina, and whistles, dancer Mary Jo Skeet, and Jack Buck on guitar. (The session is a closed session, and we are not presently taking on new players.) Being a session, the exact line-up varies from week to week depending on who can make it on a particular Tuesday. Come on down to the Joyce on 4th some Tuesday evening and have a pint and listen to some traditional music. Slainte!

HEQ is a group of friends who over the years have played and performed a wide variety of music both together and separately. Each member brings to the table his own musical tastes, resulting in a collaboration of eclectic music including folk, country, blues and rock. HEQ consists of Sandy Johnson (vocals, guitar), Peter May (vocals and assorted instruments), Art Slinger (electric bass), Barry How (percussion) and Al Nawata (lead guitar).

John has performed at Celtic Folk many times over the years. He and Hal are both members of Ceard, the house band of the Rocky Mountain Folk Club in Calgary.

The Irwin School of Irish Dancing is one of Calgary’s most experienced and established Irish Dancing schools. First opened by Finnuala Irwin in 1985, the school has since expanded to include four more certified teachers (TCRGs), including daughters Andrea Irwin and Sarah Irwin, and former students Kelly McCabe and Cathy Sobieski.

The dancing academy has produced many World and National championship level dancers, including two two-time National Solo Champions. The school has also had a number of World Championship solo category top-three podium placings and National Ceili Champions. Many of the students have also gone on to perform in some of the internationally acclaimed shows such as “Riverdance”, “Lord of the Dance” and “Trinity”.

For more information, you can check out the Irwin School of Irish dancing webpage.

This group of approximately a dozen players meet each second Saturday afternoon for 2&1/2 hours to play traditional session tunes at the Joyce on 4th. The session is a closed session, not taking on new members at the present time but with these 12 musical bandits the pub experiences, flutes, penny whistles, fiddles, bodhrans, concertinas, 4-string banjo, 5-string banjo, octave mandolin, guitar, step dancing, uilleann pipes, North Umbrian pipes and the Hurdy Gurdy. The group would like to invite people to come to the Joyce on 4th for a meal or snack, a brew and to listen to the group. For information on dates we are performing contact Dave Settles.

Frank strummed his guitar around the campfire since taking the City of Calgary folk guitar courses in 1972. Abandoned music for the 1980’s but returned with a vengeance in the 1990’s by singing with Barry Luft’s Men Folk singing and the Irish Cultural Society Choir. Claims to know the chorus to almost every folk song and the verses to none of them.

You can contact him by email.

7 Fiddlesworth is a group with members from Cremona, Westcott and Sundre. Kate, Jessica, Kayleen, Olivia, Amy, Annessa, Mory and Tim have been playing Celtic music together for four years. They entertain at local events and festivals and have started exploring new instruments and new styles of music. They are apprentices of Ben Plotnick and Sean Softley.

You can contact them via email.

You can see a video on YouTube.

Greg has been playing tenor banjo in various Irish music sessions around Calgary for the last eight years. Originally from Dublin, Ireland, Greg moved to Canada in 1981.

You can contact him by email.