Late founder Brian Bannon, and The Courtyard (via Google Maps)
Dec. 5, 2024 By Shane O’Brien
Sunnyside Trad Weekend, a popular event featuring traditional Irish music, song and dance, will return to the neighborhood Thursday night for a four-night run at Courtyard Ale House.
The event, which will take place at 8 p.m. every day from Dec. 5-8, returns to Courtyard, an Irish bar located at 40-18 Queens Blvd., after a two-year hiatus and is organized by “Star Trek Strange New Worlds” actress Melissa Navia.
Navia’s late partner Brian Bannon founded the inaugural Sunnyside Trad Week in September 2021 but died three months later after being diagnosed with an aggressive and rare form of leukaemia before Christmas. Navia organized a second Sunnyside trad event in Bannon’s honor in 2022 but was unable to organize an event last year due to scheduling conflicts.
Bannon, a native of Ireland who lived in Sunnyside during his 20 years in New York, worked as a bartender and a musician and founded the trad fest to platform talented musicians across the city and ensue they were paid well for their work through his foundation Irish Musicians, Poets and Artists of Queens Inc. (IMPAQ.US).
The non-profit, which is involved in organizing the trad weekend, promotes Irish arts and culture in Queens and aims to enable communication between artists, venues and employers to ensure musicians are paid fairly for their work.
Navia described Bannon as a “force of nature” and said the upcoming trad weekend celebrates his legacy.
“We’re continuing Brian’s legacy,” Navia said. “Brian was so, so many things and when you meet people who knew him, he comes alive because of stories and because of their experiences.”
“This, for me, is a way to to kind of have a gathering place for his friends and also for the community.”
All four nights of the upcoming trad weekend will be free to enter, with more than 10 Irish and Irish-American traditional musicians taking part in the event, including singer and musician Dave Fahy, renowned fiddle player Pat Mangan and Ivan Goff, a celebrated uilleann piper (a traditional Irish instrument resembling bagpipes).
Bannon’s family is flying to New York for the trad fest, while Navia said his nephew is due to perform during the four-day concert series.
The 2024 Sunnyside Trad Weekend will take place shortly before Bannon’s anniversary on Dec. 17. Navia remembered her late partner as a “wonderful” person and a man of both “words and numbers.”
“He was wonderful. And many people here in this Sunnyside community and also in New York City knew Brian. He was originally from Ballyshannon in Donegal but was a New Yorker through and through,” Navia said. “He was everything to me.”
Navia said part of her reasoning for holding a trad weekend in December was that it coincides with Bannon’s anniversary and allows her to celebrate his memory over the holiday season.
“The holidays have been incredibly hard for me these last three years, but to not celebrate them with family and friends is the opposite of what Brian would have wanted. And so for me, holding this year’s Sunnyside Trad Weekend at the start of December was a purposeful step toward reclaiming the holiday spirit and hopefully spreading an extra bit of joy for whoever else may need it.”
Melissa Navia and Brian Bannon at Thanksgiving in 2021. Photo provided by Melissa Navia
Navia said Bannon’s inspiration for kickstarting the event in 2021 was to provide a free event for the public while also ensuring that talented musicians got the pay they deserved through his IMPAQ foundation.
Bannon told the Sunnyside Post in September 2021 that he hoped the trad fest would become an annual event, marking a “triumphant embrace” of Irish music and helping to connect the Irish diaspora living in Queens.
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