Origins

THE INSPIRATION

Once known for its fine eels as it sped through the meadows outside Manchester, industrialisation transformed the River Irk into the “coal-black, foul-smelling stream” that political philosopher Freidrich Engels viewed from Ducie Bridge. Straddling the lower reaches of the Irk, the slums of Red Bank and Angel Meadow were the 19th Century home to Jewish and Irish immigrants respectively. Both communities came to Manchester, escaping poverty and oppression back home.

They had the ‘wrong’ religions, languages, values, diets, and customs ... and they attracted the negative press and discrimination that so often accompanies immigrant communities the world over. And the Irk, separating these communities, attracted all the filth and ugliness of the industrialisation that made Manchester. It is this uninspiring river, the Irk, which captured our imagination as we looked back a century or so, wondering if Jewish musicians from Red Bank did perhaps rub shoulders and swap tunes with their Irish counterparts in Angel Meadow.

What did this musical melting pot, or ‘mirk’ over the irk, sound like, and what happens when we choose to bridge the cultural gaps between us?

OUR JOURNEY

The show was conceived in 2015 by Richard Fay, an intercultural music-maker of Irish heritage and a passion for Klezmer music. First performed in 2016 at the Manchester Jewish Museum, it brought together musicians in Manchester’s Irish traditional scene (Michael McGoldrick, Dezi Donnelly, Emma Sweeney, Angela Usher) together with L’chaim Kapelye, a group of klezmer-playing graduates from the Music Department at The University of Manchester.

Those first Mirk shows – also featuring a dozen or more of the next generation of Irish traditional musicians – filled the museum for three consecutive concerts. And so, the Mirk phenomenon was born.

As co-produced by Richard Fay and Daniel Mawson and with the musical and performance ranks swelled, the show was performed again in 2018 at the Manchester Jewish Museum, and Chorlton Irish Club, and then for Musical Bites concert at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall in 2019.

Over the lock-down, a number of pieces from the show were filmed and recorded, and in 2022 the show was a finalist in both the Danny Kyle Open Stage competition at Celtic Connections in Glasgow and the Manchester Culture Awards.

So far in 2023, the EP has been re-released and the revived and revamped show has been performed at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester and the Partington Players Theatre in Glossop.

The Mirkers

  • George Bingham

    Guitar

  • Richard Fay

    Bariton Horn, Button Accordion

  • John Gibson

    Flute, Whistles

  • Idris Jones

    Fiddle, Spoken Word

  • Samuel Kane

    Fiddle

  • Elana Kenyon-Gewirtz

    Fiddle

  • Georgina MacDonell Finlayson

    Fiddle

  • Jo MacMahon

    Flute, Whistles

  • Daniel Mawson

    Clarinet

  • Hugh Owen

    Guitar

  • Sophie Sully

    Double Bass

  • Sam Gee

    Sound and Visuals

PAST MIRKERS

Fiona Browne: Uilleann pipes, Flute, Whistles
Paul Cowham: Guitar, Mandolin
Dezi Donnelly: Fiddle

Connaill Durcan: Bodhrán

Méabh Kennedy: Fiddle

Jemima Kingsland: Flute

Mike McGoldrick: Whistles, Flutes, Uilleann Pipes

Lucie Phillips: Bass, Vocals

Katherine Reynolds: Narration

Ellie Sherwood: Clarinet

Emma Sweeney: Fiddle
Angela Usher: Banjo, Tenor Guitar, Whistles

Hat Wells: Clarinet