Ricky Skaggs - and more - at Kilkenny Arts Festival

Thanks to Paul McEvoy for the news that Ricky Skaggs is scheduled to give a ninety-minute concert entitled 'Those ancient airs' at St Canice's cathedral, Kilkenny city, starting at 7.30 p.m. on Wednesday 10 August 2016, as part of the Kilkenny Arts Festival (5-14 Aug.). At present the Skaggs website shows no other appearances scheduled in Ireland. The Festival website says:

For this one-off collaboration Skaggs is joined by a wealth of leading American and Irish musicians (including Martin Hayes, Dennis Cahill, David Power, Cleek Schrey, Liz Knowles, Maighread and Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill) to explore the connections between Skaggs’s Appalachian roots and traditional Irish music. Blending Skaggs’s soulful country voice and unrivalled mastery of the mandolin with the haunting sounds of fiddle and uilleann pipes, 'Those ancient airs' offers a rich celebration of the global influence of traditional Irish music.

We hope there'll be a little room for American music in there somewhere. Tickets (€33/€30/€27, depending on the seating zone) can be booked on the event web page.

The Festival programme also includes Virginia fiddler Cleek Schrey, who'll be playing a sixty-minute set on Monday 8 Aug. at 10.30 p.m. in the Rothe House, Kilkenny (tickets €16/€14), and Loudon Wainwright III, who'll play three 'Surviving twin' concerts at the Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny, on Friday 12 Aug. (7.30 p.m.), Sat. 13 Aug. (7.30 p.m.), and Sun. 14 Aug. (3.00 p.m.).