Musicians who like to play traditional tunes, but are not yet ready for full-speed sessions, are welcome at our annual slow session at Langdale Charity Acoustic Festival! We will be playing in a slow and steady manner, with supportive session leaders helping you navigate both the tunes and accompaniment. The music will be predominantly Irish, but tunes from other traditions are very welcome.

Sunday 17th May 2026: 12.00 – 2.00 pm in the hotel lounge

The Old Dungeon Ghyll Hotel, Great Langdale, Ambleside, LA22 9JY

IMPORTANT! Please give yourself plenty of time to get there, get a drink and get settled. The event is part of Langdale Charity Acoustic Festival, and the valley and pub will be very busy.

Extra parking can be found in the field through the National Trust car park right outside the hotel.

Admission is FREE, but donations at the event are encouraged as the festival will be collecting money for the Lake District Mountain Rescue Search Dogs. This is a volunteer organisation who work with Mountain Rescue, saving many lives on the Cumbrian fells every year. They are funded exclusively by donations. If you do not have cash with you on the day, you can make an online donation to the charity here.

The session leader will be Bev Whelan. Bev is an experienced teacher and performer of traditional music, specialising in whistle, low whistle, wooden Irish flute, boehm flute, and anglo concertina.

Bev will be joined by some of her friends, all of whom are fantastic traditional musicians on a variety of instruments, including fiddle, guitar, banjo, whistle, low whistle, concertina and bodhran. Andrew, Kat, Maddie and Steve will be on hand alongside Bev to help lead the session, and to answer any instrument-specific queries you might have.

Tunes

Below you will find some tunes that we might play, that Bev has written out specifically for the session at the ODG, with chords added by Maddie. Click on the titles below to view or download a PDF of the notation for each tune, along with ABC. More tunes will be added as we get closer to the date so that we have a wide choice available.

These tunes are only suggestions, as we can play any traditional tune you want, even if it is not on this list! It’s a session, after all, so part of the fun is about spontaneity. If tunes come up during the session that we have not provided the music for, but you would like to read the notes, we will try to source a version for you at the session. We will be projecting the notation for all tunes up on a screen – very environmentally friendly, as we will not be providing printouts on paper. Do feel free to print these out for your own use, though!

Photo credit: Steve Roberts