104820850

I'm Mich (pronounced: Mick) Nielsen from Copenhagen, Denmark.
My ”musical” career started in the mid-seventies where I began hanging out in Vognhjulet (The Wagon Wheel), a long gone folk club in Copenhagen. Soon my interest brought me to Ireland and I still remember my first session in Cultúrlann na hÉireann in Monkstown. The following year brought me to Miltown Malbay and the Willie Clancy Summer School . What an eye opener!
I came back the following year with a tin whistle in my pocket and signed up for a class with Micho Russell. I took classes two years in a row, but I never really practiced at home. I didn’t “know” anybody here who played. They were “musicians” and you couldn’t just walk up and talk to them. Also I’m a believer in instant results and when I wasn’t able to play like Mary Bergin after practicing for a couple of weeks I gave up.
I have been known to squeeze a box and I even tried to blow the right end of a flute as well, but I love the music so much that I thought it would be the decent thing not to “play” myself.
I have missed one Willie Week since my first time there.
Back then I still went to sessions in Copenhagen, but only as a listener. Then I got involved in a little organization called Live Folk (I may even have been a founder member), who tried to promote trad. music sessions in Copenhagen. We didn’t have much success, but I got to know a few “proper musicians”. Some of us got together late one night in Vognhjulet and decided to “upgrade”, what had until then been known as the Scottish Irish Weekend, to the Copenhagen Irish Festival . We rented a big concert hall and the yearly festival hasn’t looked back since.
I stayed on the committee for a couple of years and although I'm no longer on the committee, I still help out where and whenever I can.
My contribution to the music scene here in Copenhagen? – I make websites.
I have made quite a few for “Danish” Irish bands and you can see samples at www.ceol.dk .
I also review Irish music for the Danish Irish Society
We don’t have many sessions in Copenhagen, but every Sunday there’s a good one in Bloomsday Bar .
We also have the Copenhagen Folk Club (another of my sites) which put on great concerts several times a year.
I go to Ireland two – three times a year and I do my best to catch sessions while there. Then I stack up my cd collection of course. Best shop for trad. music in Dublin? Claddagh Records !
... and yes, I do have a website of my own: www.michn.dk