Now in its fifth year, the Frankie Kennedy Winter School, which runs, through ice, snow and wind, between Dunlewey and Derrybeg in the north-west corner of Donegal, is managing to hold on to its magic. The magic is created by several factors conspiring together. As a New Year's event, it profits from the fact that musicians are home on holidays anyway and out to have fun. Then there's the place itself - the crazy majesty of a peak like Errigal, the dark fingers of mountain around the lakes at its base, the pleasure of getting in from the wild wind and rain to the warmth of the music.
And, of course, there's the spirit of Altan's late flautist, Frankie Kennedy, in whose name the school is held - and it is a practical, joyful way of remembering him. The concerts which run all week are different in character to the concerts the same people will play during the year. What the Frankie Kennedy offers is a session space; musicians can mess around and experiment, in front of an audience which already understands the music. The concert featuring the accordionist Dermot Byrne, the guitarist, Steve Cooney and the fiddler, Dessie Donnelly, was a perfect example of this. The three don't habitually play together but are master musicians who responded effortlessly to the challenges thrown down by each other.
In tunes like the reel, Fr Jack Walsh, the excitement was in the strain between Cooney's wild, powerful, percussive guitar and the silvery poignancy of Byrne's accordion and Donnelly's fiddle. The poet Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill once used a quotation from a Turkish poet about "the sound of the reed crying for the reed-bed from which it was cut" and it seems apposite for the melodies of Irish music when played as well as this, with the added excitement of the percussion's counter-attack.
Relative newcomer Aoife Ni Fhearraigh has a pure voice but so far it lacks character: the smokiness of a Maire Ni Bhraonain, for instance. The comparison is begged, because she sounds so like early Clannad and, in fact, her co-conspirator in song is a Ni Bhraonain, Deirdre, whose voice has less power but more mood than Ni Fhearraigh's. The wonderful, Donegal songs are there, of course, but it takes more than good songs and a beautiful voice. At Altan's Friday night gig, Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh was complaining loudly of a sore throat but it just didn't matter. On songs like the old Arranmore lament, Tuirse Mo Chroi o Phosadh, and the glorious Northern Flower of Magherally - returned by Ciaran Curran's delicately picked bouzouki to what sounded like English Renaissance origins - she had the power to electrify.
The music was at its best, spear-headed by those two wild, wild fiddles, with the richness of guitar, bouzouki and Dermot Byrne's accordion.
The audience shouted and stomped with sheer animal excitement to sets like Johnny Boyle's Gig and The King of the Pipers.