dress1012

THE moon peeked through the hot and hazy summer's eve over the mountains and along Route 145 as Monday night's fun exploded all over East Durham on the official Monday opening of the prestigious Catskills Irish Arts Week. The moon will be full by the time the annual event crests at week's end with the close of the annual Andy McGann Traditional Music Festival on Saturday so the craic in the Catskills should be howl. Thousands of tunes will have been shared by teachers and students from stages to roadhouses surrounded by the lush green hills that have been attracting the Irish for decades to Greene County about two and half hours from New York City. Again there are hundreds who witness the annual summer festival and summer school, many of whom return year after year. Twenty states and three Canadian provinces would yield residents who came to the upstate New York hamlet to sharpen their playing and listening skills and deepen their appreciation of Irish culture in general, and especially when it comes to wellspring of traditional music. After the classes are done in the daytime, the evening concerts (five) and the 50 music sessions - all solidly displaying the mastery of the assembled teaching staff - will provide plenty of evidence that the well is deep and the future of Irish traditional music solid for a good while yet. Proof of the creativity possessed by the many artists recruited to perform this year lay across the teacher's consignment shop where their CDs and instrument instruction books were choc-a-block and varied.