Irish Hooley at Bloomsbury Theatre

Press Release – Irish Hooley at Bloomsbury Theatre – 26 June 2025

IMDL Presents:
‘Irish Hooley at Bloomsbury Theatre featuring: Frankie Gavin and De Dannan’
With support: The Trad Gathering

Our ‘Irish Hooley at Bloomsbury Theatre’ - IMDL’s annual profile and fundraising event will take place at the prestigious Bloomsbury Theatre on Thursday 26 th June.

Tickets: £22.50/ £7 U18s - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bloomsbury-theatre/events/2025/jun/irish-hooley-bloomsbury-theatre

Frankie Gavin and De Dannan
Coming from a musical family, Frankie Gavin has played fiddle and flute since his teenage years. At the age of seventeen, he won All-Ireland competitions for fiddle and flute. Originally influenced by the great Irish and American-Irish fiddle players such as James Morrison, he later found himself playing with stars: The Rolling Stones, Stephane Grappelli, James Galway and Yehudi Menuhin, and for celebrity audiences including four American presidents: J. F. K on his 1962 visit to Ireland, followed later by Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama. Perhaps most importantly, the name Frankie Gavin is synonymous with De Dannan, the globally celebrated band he founded with Alec Finn in the mid-1970s. Over the years, there have been a numerous star-studded line-ups, and 2023 saw the birth of the latest incarnation of the band. This evening De Dannan will feature Frankie Gavin on fiddle and flute, Dermot Byrne on button accordion, Ian Kinsella on guitar and Kaitlin Cullen-Verhauz on vocals and cello.

Since their formation, the new band have played at Temple Bar Trad Fest, Wickham Festival (UK), Ballyshannon Folk and Traditional Music Festival, The All-Ireland Fleadh, Mullingar, Tonder Festivak (Denmark), and Belfast Tradfest. The new line-up is as creative and inspiring as any from the band’s long history:
Frankie Gavin (flute/ fiddle)
Diarmuid Ó Meachair (melodeon/ button accordion)
Ian Kinsella (guitar)
Katilin Cullen-Verhauz (vocals/ cello)
Jack Talty (keys)

The Trad Gathering
IMDL’s London-wide youth project The Trad Gathering features 30 young traditional Irish musicians from different music schools/ teachers led by Karen Ryan and Pete Quinn. This evening, members of the group will be playing music from the repertoire of prominent Irish music teacher, button accordion player, lilter, whistler and céilí drummer, Tommy Maguire (North Leitrim). The first person to begin teaching formal Irish music lessons in London in the late 1960s.
The Trad Gathering was jointly commissioned in 2008 by the BBC Proms and Return to Camden Town Festival. In recent years, the group have been celebrating music from the repertoires of a number of prominent members of the London Irish music scene, including: Bryan Rooney, The McCarthy Family, Roger Sherlock, Lucy Farr, Danny Meehan, John Bowe and Julia Clifford. The group have performed on stages including: the Royal Albert Hall, Royal Festival Hall, Kings Place, Cadogan Hall, Mayor of London’s St Patrick’s Day Festival (Trafalgar Square stage) and more.

IMDL (Irish Music and Dance in London) will be promoting their online Grand Draw during this event – great prizes to be won, and all monies towards
hosting the annual ‘Return to London Town Festival’ and other year round IMDL events.