Description: Manchester born encounter of Klezmer and Irish music.
A mid the Mirk Over the Irk: When Irish Meets Klezmer is an imagined musical meeting of two of Manchester’s long-established and prominent immigrant communities: the Irish and the Jewish.
Conceived in 2015 by Richard Fay (for whom Manchester has always been home), it combines traditional folk tunes, new compositions, intriguing fusions, and spoken word to evoke this imagined confluence of cultures across the banks of the river Irk.
It was first performed in March 2016 at the Manchester Jewish Museum in nearby Cheetham Hill, bringing some of the best musicians in Manchester’s thriving Irish traditional scene together with L’chaim Kapelye , a group of klezmer-playing graduates from the Music department at The University of Manchester where Ros Hawley and Richard Fay established the Michael Kahan Kapelye (klezmer ensemble) in 2012.