By Anna Skinner
Madeleine Willard had never traveled to Ireland before, but last month she spent a week there with the six other members of the Indianapolis Ceili Band, which competed in the All Ireland traditional music festival.
The 2013 Carmel High School graduate and the band qualified for the competition by placing second at the Irish Music Fest in Cincinnati, Ohio. Two bands from New York also traveled to Ireland for the competition.
“We were (in Ireland) for a week. We would practice every morning for an hour and a half until lunch, and we would all eat together and (then) everyone go their own way and explore wherever we wanted to go,” Willard said. “Every night we would get together and play sessions with local bands at pubs.”
Willard has been a fiddler for the Indianapolis Ceili Band for three years. She won the Young Fiddler Award at the Indiana Fiddler’s Gathering in 2012.
“We didn’t end up playing until 11 at night (at the Senior Ceili Band competition,)” she said. “We were 18th to go out of 20-something bands, so it was a lot of waiting around to get on and play, and you could only be on the stage for 10 minutes because of the guidelines. So getting up there and playing was crazy because it was in front of way more people than I had played for before.”
The week-long festival drew an estimated 60,000 people.
Judges only placed bands who finished first, second or third, but Willard said the band will receive a scoresheet in the coming weeks to see how they performed.
The Indianapolis Ceili Band was founded in 2009, and it includes 10 members. The band performs at concerts, weddings and Ceili – traditional Irish dance and music parties.
For more, visit indyceiliband.com.
