Acclaimed and award winning concertina player Cormac Begley will headline the Kilkenny Arts Festival for the first time on Saturday August 12th 2023.
Cormac’s career has gone from strength to strength over the past year; selling out Vicar Street, winning Best Folk Instrumentalist 2022 at the RTÉ Folk Awards and Irish Times Album of the Year 2022, with his second solo album ‘B’.
The album ‘B’ celebrates the bass concertina, a very rare instrument and on this album Cormac uses two Dipper-made Bass concertinas to record all 12 tracks. His bold choice to concentrate solely on the bass and baritone register, the first album of it’s kind in any musical genre, has not gone unnoticed for all the right reasons and it has been described as 'Album of the decade' Donal Dineen, 'The musical gift that keeps on giving' The Irish Times, seven five star reviews and 'Groundbreaking' RTÉ Arena. The album and tracks from the album were nominated over three categories at the RTE Folk Awards 2022 for ‘Best Folk Album’, ‘Best Original Folk Track’, and ‘Best Folk Track’.
