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By Jeff Ksiazek Published March 3, 2026
Before St. Patrick's Day season kicks into full gear, we just wanted to give a behind-the-scenes update here at the Ward Irish Music Archives.
We're fortunate to have two part-time digitization archivist positions partially funded by grants from the Emigrant Support Programme, Clarissa Fountaine and Sam Kennedy. Clarissa is almost done digitizing cassette recordings from the Jack and Kathleen Congleton Collection. Since Jack and Kathleen are mainstays of the Irish music since in this city, there are some nice, Milwaukee focused Irish music recordings within this collection, as well as some session tapes from Ireland. Clarissa will move on to digitizing more cassettes from the Michael and Mary Comer Collection next. These will be a mix of recordings from Comer's radio show, Echoes of Erin, and potentially some unique material from recordings Comer made or received from people in Ireland.
Sam Kennedy has volunteered with us for a couple years, and has come on board to fill the second digitization position partially funded by the ESP grant through the end of June. He'll continue to digitize material from Mick Moloney's collection, as well as digitize and catalog Irish music tutorials and tune books in our general collection. We plan to offer these as a lending library to our year-round School of Music students and instructors.
Cassette from Jack and Kathleen Congleton Collection, JKC CS 00-025
Irish Musicians of America Philadelphia Local 17, St. Patrick's Day Parade 1957
From the Mick Moloney Collection, MM PH 00-095
In case you missed it, we've added the Francis O'Neill Cylinders album to Bandcamp for physical CD sales and digital downloads. Pick up your copy today!
Ted McGraw's radio show, the Irish Party House, has been resurrected in Rochester, NY by an Irish music friend of Ted's, John Ryan. John asked us to contribute historical material from Ted's collection as part of the show's "Cobweb Corner" feature that highlights older recordings. We've been recording intros and supplying digitized recordings. We were included in last week's episode (March 1, 2026) which should be on MixCloud soon. Tune in each Sunday on Rochester Free Radio 106.3 and Mixcloud.
One of Paddy Killoran's band members and collaborators, Jack Healy had one foot in the jazz world and the other in the 1930s New York Irish music scene. Read more...
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