On 7 January 2015 occurred the 101st anniversary of the death of the notable Limerick traditional music collector Patrick Weston Joyce (1827–1914) whose published and unpublished music collections have been digitised by Irish Traditional Music Archive staff in the course of the past centenary year, and are now freely available on its website (formerly the PW Joyce Irish Music Microsite).

Joyce’s music collections are of great historical, social and regional interest, but their overriding contemporary value is as a source of music. His music notations, published song words and ballad-sheet collection, and the ITMA interactive music scores created from his melodies, all constitute a rich seedbed of traditional music and song for re-creation by musicians and singers of the present day.

To mark the occasion of the anniversary and the end of the centenary year, ITMA has added to its Joyce Microsite a selection of videos recorded recently by its staff on location in Newport, Co Tipperary, and Kinvara, Co Galway, and in its studio in Dublin. The recordings feature a number of contemporary musicians and singers – all of whom have had their own previous and varied connections with the music and song of Joyce – performing their re-creations of sample items from his collections. They have kindly agreed to be recorded for presentation here.

Nicholas Carolan and Danny Diamond, 7 January 2015