Cavan geared up for Reavy trad fest

Cavan Town will be alive with ceili dances, concerts, competitions and more sessions than you could wave a bow at as the Ed Reavy Festival is set for this weekend in honour of the trad legend.

Such is the packed programme for the festival that almost anywhere you go in the county town this weekend you’ll likely find live music filling the venues. The organisers hope the buzz in town will help keep a generation of rising musicians excited to playing.

“It is to try to grow trad and ensure our younger musicians become more enthused and energised, so rather than just playing the ‘Dawning of the Day’ on the tinwhistle, and it being a chore, it is something they are interested in and want to do,” says Eugene whose own adult children share his passion for trad music.

The craic kicks off on Friday with six sessions at staggered times in venues across the town from the Abbey Bar up to the Top of the Town. Blessings host the first session at 6.30pm. Friday’s highlight is the set dancing ceili in the Town Hall Arts Centre featuring The Blackwater Ceili Band.

“They have been the champions in the All Ireland Fleadh Senior Ceili Band competition in the past,” Eugene says of the ceili that gets underway at 9pm. “There will be a few hundred people in attendance at that.”

The live music continues across the weekend with the Hard Boiled Egg hosting a breakfast session at 11am on Saturday, and another dozen will be held in venues across the town on Saturday. The sessions will all be led by accomplished musicians.

Many of the country’s finest fiddle players will take to the stage of the Town Hall Arts Centre in the hopes of claiming the perpetual cup for the Ed Reavy International Fiddler Competition for both seniors and U18s categories.

“It’s a well sought after title,” says Eugene. “When you look at those who compete they are coming from Waterford, Cork, Kerry, Belfast, Donegal, Cavan – all over the country. For those of us who go to provincial and All Ireland fleadhs, they are the names of those competing at that high level all of the time, and many would be on Comhaltas Tours.”

Competitors must include an Ed Reavy tune as part of their performance, and organisers have been heartened to see competitors expand their repertoire of Reavy tunes. This reflects a growing appreciation of the Cavan fiddler and composer who was born in Barnagrove, Maudabawn in 1898, but emigrated to the States as a child where his precocious talent for music emerged as a teenager. His tunes were first collected in publications in 1971 and 1996, with the latter including 127 Reavy compositions.

“He wrote a lot of tunes and many of them reflect places in Cavan, so you have tunes like Maudabawn Chapel, where he was christened, Killinkere Lasses, Cuilcagh Mountain, Lovely Lough Sheelin.

“He would have written a lot of tunes, many of them recorded, many of them are not, and many were lost, which is unfortunate. They were in his head by they died with him in 1980.”

Sunday’s schedule of sessions get underway with a breakfast session at 11am in the 7 Oaks Cafe on Main Street. Amongst Sunday’s session highlights is a singing session with more a folk vibe at 8pm in The Abbey Bar.

The weekend’s second ceili will be held on Sunday, at Cavan Town Hall at 2.30pm with The Pipers Cross Ceili Band providing the tunes.

“They were the All Ireland Champions in 2024 – they are predominantly from the Mayo, Sligo region. They will have a good following, so again you are looking at a few hundred people out dancing on the floor at that.”

A concert on Sunday night featuring the thrilling quartet of multi-instrumentalists Ryan Sheridan, Andrew Caden, Conor McDonagh and Conor Connolly will ensure the Ed Reavy Festival will close on a high note.

Support on the night will come from Lauren Ní Néill, Colm McGonigle and Sabina McCague and the Music Generation Cavan/Monaghan, Harp Ensemble. Fittingly the concert will also feature the 2025 Ed Reavy International Fiddle Competition winners.

One of the festival’s aims is to increase awareness of Reavy’s impressive back catalogue, and know that his tunes were composed by the Cavan man, and aren’t simply ‘another trad tune’ emerging from the mists of time.

“They want to ensure that the legacy of Ed Reavy lived on, and that people knew who he was and the contribution he made,” said Eugene of the Reavy family.

Asked where he would rank among the pantheon of trad musicians, Eugene holds him amongst the highest.

“Globally he would have ranked in the top five,” Eugene estimates.

“It’s hard to know where anyone ranks but he is very prominent and very well respected and his tunes are played all around the world, so you could be sitting in a session in Sydney or Perth or Tokyo and you will hear his tunes.”