Teaching
Gráinne is in great demand as a teacher of Irish harp, both in Ireland and abroad. She gives private lessons, workshops and masterclasses and offers intensive tuition options for individuals or groups at her home in Mayo and currently online.
She specialises in teaching Irish traditional music, including tunes from the Irish dance music tradition, historic harpers’ repertoire and slow airs. Gráinne is passionate about developing students’ understanding of the context and background to the music and building their confidence in arranging and adding ornamentation to tunes themselves. She is comfortable working with groups of various sizes and experience levels. All workshops are taught in the traditional style, “by ear”, with written music provided as backup. Most recently she has organised 2 Virtual Harp Camps online, and 2 series of monthly workshops, which have been very well received, as well as teaching at various online harp courses including Winter Harp Festival Online (2021), Gulf Coast Cruinniú (2020) and Somerset Online (2020).
Over the years Gráinne has taught at all the major summer schools in Ireland (including An Chúirt Chruitireachta, Scoil Samhradh Willie Clancy, Carolan Harp Festival, Scoil Éigse, Achill International Harp Festival) and has done innumerable workshops throughout the United States on her annual tours, including all the major harp conferences and Irish festivals. She is a regular tutor at the Swannanoa Gathering Celtic Week (North Carolina) and Somerset Folk Harp Festival (New Jersey).
“An interesting note is that the workshop included professional harpists — harp teachers, regular performers, the principal harpist for the Madison Symphony. I think it’s a tribute to Grainne and Billy and their traditional style that musicians of this caliber come out to workshops to learn from them.”
Mary Ellen Bell, MadHarpers, Madison, Wisconsin
