Performers across the Dandenong Ranges and Yarra Valley are still recovering from the epic three-day National Celtic Festival in Portarlington, held last week over the long weekend from 6 – 9 June.
Celtic musicians, bands, dancers and more flocked to the frosty and windy shores of Portarlington to perform, learn and collaborate across many performance stages at the annual celtic affair.
Artist Barry James Gilson and Wadawurrung man opened the weekend and also performed with shadow artist Mary French to share a Wadawurrung Dreaming story under the stars.
“Barry’s Welcome to Country, accompanied by the cleansing smoke of the smoking ceremony, filled the air with warmth, reflection and deep cultural significance, the smoke carried with it a sense of healing, connection and welcome – setting the tone for a weekend of community, music and shared stories,” said the festival’s social media spokesperson on Facebook.
The Mast Gully Fellers from Upwey are known for their unique, but familiar ‘Australiana Bar-Room Folk’ sound and joined the festival this year for the second time.
Band member Freo Freeman said they were so grateful to have been given the opportunity by Una and the organisers of the National Celtic Festival to play for another year.
“It’s certainly one of our favourite festivals to play, the people, the culture, the music… It’s just so much fun,” he said.
The Mast Gully Fellers featured among many well-known bands, from the international act Boxing Banjo from the West Coast of Ireland, to the well-loved Claymore, and the Queensland band Amaidi.
This year, the Fellers played three shows, and Freeman said all of which were different in the way they played out.
“Friday night, we opened the proceedings as the first act on in the coveted Celtic Club, Saturday we played there again for a matinee session, and on Sunday night we were the last band on the Village Tavern stage, so we got to open one stage and close another,” said Freeman.
“The shows were well received with people dancing and singing along, the highlights were when folks joined us in some chanting at the start of our song ‘Dig Boys Dig’, and when the Irish dance troupe VIDA hit the dancefloor during our Sunday night set in the Village Tavern,” he said.
Bringing their beautiful trio of voices to the event were the multi-talented Nightingales, who live all over the hills and are made up by musicians Tracey Roberts, Maria Forde and Claire Patti.
The Nightingales performed original and trad pieces on a bevy of instruments several times over the weekend.
“It was a beautiful festival – a wonderful atmosphere and had great events,” Roberts said.
“We had full houses and beautiful concerts,” she said.
The Nightingales were previously made up of Roberts, Ford and fellow musician Janette Geri – who sadly passed away a few years ago.
Ms Roberts said the Nightingales began reforming last year, after they had begun to make connections with another local Hills artist Claire Patty, having seen her perform several times.
“We knew her actually as a friend, and we decided to ask her if she’d be interested in joining up with us to reinstate the Nightingales – So Nightingales version two, if you like,” she said.
“Claire is such a beautiful musician – she plays the harp and French horn.”
Although a keen jazz musician herself for many years, Ms Roberts said that working around Celtic harmony was a key reason for the group’s reform.
“You don’t often have harmony singing in jazz because it’s so free – I love the freedom of jazz, but I love harmony, so we decided to pull it together again, and we’ve done a few festivals,” she said.
“We’ve got a nice sort of combination of instrumentation, and the vocals were all really strong singers, and we all understand harmony and how to work together with harmonies.”
The trio also got up at Portarlington for an event known as ‘Hush for the Singers’, which involves some audience participation.
“We get the audience involved in singing along with a lot of well-known Celtic tunes,” said Roberts.
“Maria hosts that, and she has a few other musicians come up and join her from different bands and groups come up and do two or three songs each,” she said.
“It’s quite an entertaining concert, Claire, Maria and I got up and did a couple of songs with that, and Willie Hutton from Claymore and his guitarist, Ben, that was really great.”
Every year, the Celtic festival gains atmosphere and strength from its organic feel and the way musicians and performers come together and collaborate, often quite naturally, performing with one another across the weekend.
Ms Roberts said the Nightingales also joined up at another concert and did a couple of songs with Bahn Tre, who are another well-known Celtic trio.
“A lot of them collaborate together as well and jump up and play in each other’s sets – that’s really fun for them and for the audience alike,” said Roberts.
Irish and Scottish dancers from all over Victoria were seen dancing at the event, performing traditional and sometimes newer and creative routines to the festival crowds.
Victorian Irish Dance Academy (VIDA) teacher Kate Bilton said she also wanted to thank organisers Una, Amanda and the incredible team at the festival.
“What a phenomenal festival this year, the venues, stages, music and atmosphere were the best,” she said.
“Through rain, wind and shine, we delivered our biggest and best festival yet — with 55 dancers, eight performances, two workshops, four different costumes, and nine brooms (including two borrowed from the side stage).”
VIDA took a huge group of kids and adults to Portarlington who live all across the outer east of Melbourne, where they showcased their latest routines – including a new collaboration with the adults and teens, a traditional broom dance and a beautiful hard shoe dance set to a tune by the band Green Lads.
“Huge congratulations to the One Beat performers who had the courage to dance under extremely tough conditions on Sunday night,” said Bilton later in a social media post.
After the official performances finished at night, the festival would wind on inside the Session bar, a place where the musicians and festival-goers gathered to play on into the winter nights.
“It’s a really lovely festival like that,” said Roberts.
“Everybody’s very in the zone of just being joyful and making really great music happen,” she said.
Freeman said for the Mast Gully Fellers as a band, and as a group of friends who live music, the festival is the highlight of their winter.
“So glad to have been a part of such a special event,” he said.
