Pints and Pipes at the Willie Clancy Summer School

Every July, the small County Clare village of Miltown Malbay transforms into something extraordinary. The Willie Clancy Summer School — named for the legendary uilleann piper who was born here — draws the finest traditional musicians in Ireland and the world for a week of workshops, sessions, and communal playing that has no equivalent anywhere in Europe. The pubs stay open impossibly late. The fiddles never stop.

This is not a festival in the modern sense. There are no wristbands, no stages, no sponsorship banners. The music happens in pubs, kitchens, car parks, and on the road outside Crotty's at half-two in the morning. You might find yourself three pints in, wedged between a flute player from Galway and a piper from Philadelphia, watching a spontaneous session of such depth and complexity it makes your chest ache. The Guinness, poured slowly by barmen who have been doing it all their lives, tastes different here.

The school runs workshops every morning in pipes, fiddle, flute, bodhan, and sean-nos singing. You can attend as a musician of any level, or simply as a willing witness. Book accommodation in July at least six months in advance — the whole county fills up — and surrender yourself to the timetable of the music, which is to say no timetable at all.