Carrick-on-Shannon Water Music Festival (www.carrickonshannonwatermusic.com) is an annual festival of music and drama for all ages and tastes organised by volunteers since 2005, presenting circa 15 events over six days for public enjoyment, with the key events taking place on the weekend.

The Gala event is Saturday night and in 2011 and 2010 the festival committee presented a sold-out ‘Proms’ concert arranged and conducted by prominent Irish conductor Fergus Sheil.   In 2011, our guest soloists were the internationally-acclaimed Irish soprano Sinéad Mulhern and English tenor Jonathan Stoughton in a programme themed “Love Songs–with a Twist”.    Legendary UK rocker Joe Brown and his band were an outstanding success on the Friday night,  50 years in the business and still a world-class performer.    We were delighted and enthralled with Sunday night’s performance of  ‘Folk the Recession’ with Eleanor Shanley, Séamus Begley, Frankie Lane, Mick Hanly and Paul Kelly, with support from Donegal’s The Henry Girls, who were a great hit.

The festival uses an elegant Marquee as well as local venues such as The Dock and St. George’s Church for its events. Since 2005, the Festival has presented approx. 130 events and seen a through-put of over 17,000 event-goers  in Carrick-on-Shannon, many of whom stay on to visit the County.