Na Píobairí Uilleann presents Notes & Narratives – a series of monthly performance-based lectures on traditional music, song and dance by some of Ireland’s finest traditional artists.

This month's speaker will be fiddle player Simon Chadwick presenting a talk on "Traditional Irish Harpers through the long 19th century". 

For over a century, the standard narrative has been that the Irish harp tradition came to an end with the deaths of the old men who had gathered in Belfast in 1792. But a few years ago, Simon Chadwick discovered a traditional harper fitting brass wire strings to a harp in 1908. The information about this man's lineage in the inherited tradition led to Simon's all-encompassing research over the past few years: to uncover the lost or suppressed stories of the traditional harpers through the long 19th century.

Simon will discuss who these people were, how they learned the harp and how they passed the tradition on to the next generations; what their harps were like and what they played; and how they were marginalised and suppressed even as they were replaced by Gaelic revivalists playing classical-style lever harps. Simon will play some traditional Irish harp tunes, using a newly-commissioned reconstruction of a 19th-century traditional wire-strung Irish harp.

 Notes & Narratives will take place at Na Píobairí Uilleann, 15 Henrietta Street, Dublin 1, starting at 8:30pm on Thursday 17th July 2025.

Admission is €10 (unwaged / student / retired €5). For those unable to attend in person, it will also be live streamed for free through our channel NPU-TV.

Supported by The Arts Council.