About

What is Celtic Night?

Celtic Night has evolved from an event that had both a performance and an open session to more of an org trying to help people ease into the Session scene. We still will support performances, and if you’re interested in having the a shot at the stage please feel free to reach out, but the pace of a band a month was a little much for us to handle. The session is now consistently the 4th Saturday of the month and starts with a slow session where we learn a tune, and then we move onto an standard session. The session is open and has no ticket requirement. If you want to play an instrument with that group or sing along, you can participate yourself, as long as you follow the rules!

What is the Performance?

The Performance is just that, a band playing about an hour of Celtic music for your enjoyment. We try to feature local bands, but we may have out of town guests come in.

We are trying to have it so the performance will have an opening act of local students for a set or two. This is to help younger players get a feel for the stage and also to help keep our session community vibrant for years to come.

The performing artist may set the ticket price to whatever they feel is reasonable. Take a look at our Artist FAQ for more information on how this works.

If you’re interested in being a Band or Student performing, please reach out to us using the Contact Us Page.

What is a Session?

If you know what a session is and would like to just read our rules, please follow this link. Otherwise read on for more information!

Traditional sessions are a wonderful and unique piece of Irish culture. They are gatherings of musicians and music lovers, for sharing tunes, craic (good conversation), and drinks. Sometimes a session lead is paid to perform, but often the musicians are there for the love of music and to share with the community. It’s a great way for spectators to get a little taste of Ireland. Traditionally, sessions were held in the kitchen of a musical family’s house. Today they’re generally held in Irish pubs, though in Colorado we often have them at a variety of breweries and bars. Wherever a group of trad musicians gathers, it’s hard to stop a session from breaking out.

Trad sessions are not jam session in the rock or jazz sense of the term, as free improvisation is generally not encouraged. Musicians come knowing a subset of the overall group repertoire, and jump in and out of the playing for tunes they are familiar with. Most sessions also have a leader or leaders, experienced musicians with a wide knowledge of tunes and Irish musical tradition who help keep the music flowing.

For our particular session, we have it split with the first hour being the Slow Session and the following it up with a Regular Session. The Slow Session will often be a tune at a time played at a more relaxed pace and is intended to help newer players ease into playing in a session setting. This is a great place to start if you are trying to get a feel for things as it may be a little intimidating to jump into the vast repertoire of celtic tunes for the first time. If you are new to sessions and would like to play along, please take a look at the rules.

The Regular Session is faster paced tunes and complete sets, ideally, but we also try to encourage you to bring your new tunes to share and welcome the occasional singer as well.

We will play a wide variety of tunes at both sessions, from Irish Trad, Scottish, and even an occasional Chanson, Breton, Appalachia, Old Time, or Quebecois Folk tune.