Musician and UCC Folklore lecturer launches new album at Willie Clancy Summer School

8 Jul 2026

• Dr Aoife Granville and Deirdre Granville launch new album Ceo Draíochta.
• New album is rooted in the living traditions of West Kerry.

Multi-instrumentalist musicians and singers Dr Aoife Granville and Deirdre Granville have launched their new album, Ceo Draíochta, at Scoil Samhraidh Willie Clancy, the internationally renowned traditional Irish music and dance summer school.

Dr Aoife Granville and Deirdre Granville are sisters from Dingle whose music is deeply rooted in the traditions of Corca Dhuibhne and the Blasket Islands. Acclaimed performers and recording artists, they have toured internationally and collaborated with many of Ireland's leading traditional musicians. Ceo Draíochta reflects their shared musical heritage and lifelong connection to the songs and tunes of their native West Kerry.

Dr Aoife Granville is a flute player, fiddler and singer, and lectures in the Department of Folklore and Ethnology at UCC. Her research and teaching at UCC spans calendar custom, festival and carnival, music and song, and vernacular clothing and craft, reflecting the close relationship between scholarship and living tradition that also informs Ceo Draíochta. She was appointed to board of the Arts Council in 2022.

A UCC BMus graduate, Deirdre is a harpist, flute player and singer, a board member of Harp Ireland, and a secondary school music teacher in Dingle. She graduated from UCC with BA She recently completed an artistic residency at Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris, where she developed a new compositional project.

Dr Aoife Granville said: "We wanted to launch the album at the Willie Clancy Summer School, as it has been a really important part of our musical journey. We've been coming to the school since we were teenagers and, now, we both teach there. We love it.”

“The album is a collection of local music, mostly from West Kerry. We've included quite a few tracks from the Goodman manuscripts, many tunes that have not been recorded before. The music and songs are ones we've been researching and working on for a while. We wanted to breathe new life into some of these tunes and songs, and we hope it might encourage others to learn and play them too.”

“We've also included some marching tunes that we've been playing for years with the Dingle Fife and Drum, because it's such an important repertoire for anyone from Dingle!” Aoife said.

Ceo Draíochta is out now.