The IAA recently received this letter from Kell Chole, director of The Murphy Roche Irish Music Club and School of Irish Music in exchange for our support.

Dear IAA Members,

Your donation toward our project to study ancient Irish airs has had a big impact on our music school students. We are so grateful to you for your support. I wanted you to know a little about the difference you have made in our ability to have a competitive edge at the world title level for traditional Irish music.

As you can imagine achieving world champion levels is tough for students. It takes a lot of effort and development. Last year, Lexia Kennedy (IAA member) became the 31st world title medalist in traditional Irish music as a Murphy Roche student. You have seen firsthand how hard Lexia and other Murphy Roche kids work at excelling at their craft. We are delighted with the track record of our students; however, in general, these prizes remain elusive for other Americans.

Over the years, we’ve focused on different areas of trade. music to see dramatic advancements.

The category we really needed to address the years was ancient Irish airs. This year, you made a contribution to us for this project. As a direct result, we were able to improve our knowledge as well as our competitive edge because through this project, I was able to work with some of the leading musicians in Ireland, and England to study the genre. Lexia who was the fiddle world champion in 2018 and also a world title medalist in 2014, was able to compete with music learned through his project and she felt very confident. The same was true for our other competitors on a variety of instruments. A direct outcome was that two of our students became world title medalists in two separate categories of the competition in Ireland in August.

Thanks to your generous support for our initiative, we were able to upgrade our airs repertoire, for the qualifying and the world title competitions. The project will continue this fall, expanding the study to additional regional airs styles.

The knowledge, recordings, and historic documentation that I have learned through this project will be part of the legacy of the IAA: a true and living example of your support of the Irish musical diaspora in Chicago. We are grateful for our association with the IAA and sincerely appreciate your support.

• Kell Chole; Murphy Roche School of Irish Music