Sunday, January 22, 2012
2 reels from Mick O'Brien
Uilleann piper Mick O'Brien at the South Wales Uilleann Pipers 2011 Celtic Night Concert. Two reels played on the C whistle, The Mason Apron and Ralthin Island, composed by Peter Browne.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Singer Bridie Gallagher buried
Image via WikipediaALMOST 500 mourners gathered yesterday for the burial of renowned singer Bridie Gallagher.Ms Gallagher was buried at Doe Cemetery outside her beloved birthplace of Creeslough in Co Donegal.
A lone tin whistle player sounded the tune of The Town I Loved So Well as mourners braved wind and rain for the burial.
A funeral Mass had taken place earlier at St Bridget’s Church, Derryvolgie Avenue, in Belfast, where Ms Gallagher had moved to from her native Donegal in the 1960s.
The chief mourners included Ms Gallagher’s son, Jim Livingstone, and her sister, Maggie Curran.
Mr Livingstone and his family thanked people for turning out.
“It means so much to us and to Bridie,” Mr Livingstone said.
Also among the many mourners was close family friend and singer Daniel O’Donnell. O’Donnell, who flew in from Texas for the funeral, said Ms Gallagher was one of the first singers to inspire him.
“She was a fantastic woman and I wanted to be here today for her return to Donegal.
“She was one of the first singers who inspired me and I just wanted to say thank you and goodbye to her,” he said.
The graveside prayers were said by local priest Fr Joseph Broidy.
Ms Gallagher, who was 87, died at her home early on Monday morning last.
Better known as “The Girl From Donegal”, she was a world-renowned singer and had played the Sydney Opera House, New York’s Carnegie Hall and London’s Royal Albert Hall.
She had inspired a generation of singers with hit songs such as A Mother’s Love’s A Blessing.
Her life was tinged with sadness after another son Peter (21) was killed in a motorbike crash in 1976.
Singer Bridie Gallagher buried - The Irish Times - Thu, Jan 12, 2012
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Friday, December 16, 2011
Pioneering ensemble lends Celtic spirit to holidays
When the holidays roll around, Joanie Madden has plenty to cherish.Her Celtic music ensemble, Cherish the Ladies, last year celebrated a quarter-century of performances — far beyond what the flutist and award-winning tin-whistle player anticipated.
“It’s great to be accepted and respected,” said Madden, 46, a New York native who speaks with a slight Irish lilt. “We were here before Riverdance, before Celtic Woman.
“I think we’ll still be here when they’re all gone.”
The quintet — whose ranks include longtime member and fellow New Yorker Mary Coogan (guitar, mandolin, banjo) plus accordion player Mirella Murray, fiddler Grainne Murphy and pianist Kathleen Boyle — will offer a Christmas concert on Friday in the Riffe Center’s Capitol Theatre.
Featuring selections from the Ladies’ two holiday albums, whose Irish-inspired arrangements enhance even standard Christmas carols, the night will also include Irish step dancer and central Ohioan John Timm plus several students.
The annual festivities have become routine for Madden, who recalled the group’s first holiday gig 12 years ago — initiated after a venue manager asked whether Cherish the Ladies offered a yuletide show.
Yes, she replied.
“I hung up the phone and said: ‘Well, we’ve got to put together a Christmas show.’ ”
Such pluck is indicative of Madden’s music-business acumen, developed at an early age.
Her father, Joe, an all-Ireland champion on the accordion, initially forbade his seven children from following the same path.
Music “would be over his dead body,” Madden joked. “He thought it could be a dead end, that I’d be a bum on the street. But it seemed like it was meant to be.”
She ultimately disproved her father’s concerns in 1984, winning the same award as Joe — “25 years later, to the day, at the same age.”
Picked as part of a team conceived by Irish musician Mick Moloney to balance gender dynamics of the genre’s male-dominated scene, Madden and the inaugural Cherish the Ladies lineup made their debut one year later.
“I thought that would be a one-night stand,” she said, “but all the shows sold out.”
Still, an all-female lineup — hardly abnormal for a Celtic unit these days — at the time was considered foreign.
“I’d call to book gigs and they’d say: ‘What church are you with?’ ” Madden recalled. “Everybody thought we were some marketing ploy, like the Spice Girls.”
The members, whose faces have changed often throughout the years, won audiences over with their vocals, instrumentation and 15 albums to date.
Their latest work, Country Crossroads, was the spur-of-the-moment studio session the women assembled after a Nashville show, featuring appearances by Vince Gill and Nanci Griffith.
Madden, too, has rubbed elbows with plenty of big names, adding tin-whistle backup for artists ranging from Sinead O’Connor to Pete Seeger.
Although all current Cherish the Ladies players learned music from their fathers — a tradition once passed on among Irish men — Madden is glad she took a risk and paved a path for others.
“I’ve traveled the world, played with symphonies, the finest performing-arts centers,” she said. “It’s just been wonderful.”
Pioneering ensemble lends Celtic spirit to holidays | The Columbus Dispatch
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Atwater-Donnelly Duo to Play at Stoughton Public Library
Image via Wikipedia"The Atwater-Donnelly musical duo visits the Stoughton Public Library on Saturday, Oct. 22 at 2 p.m. for a toe-tapping concert of traditional American folk music and Irish music and dance.Aubrey Atwater and Elwood Donnelly blend gorgeous harmonies and play guitar, Appalachian mountain dulcimer, mandolin, tin whistle, harmonica, banjo, bones, spoons, limberjacks. They will also mix in some Appalachian clog dancing.
Parking is available both behind and next to the library, and at the Jones School on Walnut St.
The event is sponsored by the Friends of the Stoughton Public Library and by the Stoughton Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
"
Atwater-Donnelly Duo to Play at Stoughton Public Library - Stoughton, MA Patch:
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Dolly Parton At Verizon Wireless Theater
Dolly Parton seems like the kind of person so determined to make sure her audience has a good time, she's not above putting them to the thumbscrews to make sure that happens. Luckily, it didn't come to that Tuesday at a near sold-out Verizon Wireless Theater.
Parton (re)introduced herself to the adoring crowd by saying that she loves playing in Texas because every movie she's been in -- or close enough -- her character has been from the Lone Star State. And her two-hour-plus set was a lot like Texas weather: Don't like it, stick around a few minutes and it'll change.
Photos by Jason Wolter
So if the uptempo gospel-pop of "He's Everything" might have made some of the less spiritually inclined on hand squirm, the almost a cappella Smoky Mountain harmonies of "Precious Memories" could have made believers out of them. They should have, for sure.
If her latest bid for country chart success, the glossy take-a-hand tune "Together You and I," didn't quite work, there was always past triumphs "Jolene" and "Here You Come Again," which most assuredly did. "Holding Everything," a duet with producer/bandleader Kent Wells, may be the real hit off her latest album, Better Day, anyway.
Even Dolly acknowledged that her version of "Stairway to Heaven" -- presented in abbreviated bluegrass form Tuesday, with several verses lopped off -- may have been better left in the hands of Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, et. al. It's her husband's favorite song, she said, but when he heard her version, he wondered if it should have been called "Stairwell to Hell" instead. It wasn't that bad, but her takes on both the Beatles' "Help!" and Collective Soul's "Shine" survived the classic/modern-rock-to-bluegrass transition much, much better.
Dolly never took off that coat of many colors she put on all those many years ago -- neither she nor Aftermath would be foolish enough to reveal how many -- and her chameleonic nature is key to her considerable charm. And although her covers of "River Deep, Mountain High" and "Son of a Preacher Man" were nothing to sneeze at, the best parts of Tuesday's show weren't when she was putting on Tina Turner or Dusty Springfield's heels, but dipping into her own history.
That started with honoring her mother on "Coat of Many Colors." Equally affecting, if not more, was her tribute to her dad on an "Smoky Mountain Memories," presented as a stock-still Celtic ballad with her drummer's solemn taps on a bodhran and Parton's own high-lonesome tin-whistle melody. Likewise, you could have heard a feather drop during "Little Sparrow," her warning to all the "tender young maidens" out there, and a rip-snorting "Muleskinner Blues" had everything but the cruel crack of the driver's lash.
Parton (re)introduced herself to the adoring crowd by saying that she loves playing in Texas because every movie she's been in -- or close enough -- her character has been from the Lone Star State. And her two-hour-plus set was a lot like Texas weather: Don't like it, stick around a few minutes and it'll change.
Photos by Jason Wolter
So if the uptempo gospel-pop of "He's Everything" might have made some of the less spiritually inclined on hand squirm, the almost a cappella Smoky Mountain harmonies of "Precious Memories" could have made believers out of them. They should have, for sure.
If her latest bid for country chart success, the glossy take-a-hand tune "Together You and I," didn't quite work, there was always past triumphs "Jolene" and "Here You Come Again," which most assuredly did. "Holding Everything," a duet with producer/bandleader Kent Wells, may be the real hit off her latest album, Better Day, anyway.
Even Dolly acknowledged that her version of "Stairway to Heaven" -- presented in abbreviated bluegrass form Tuesday, with several verses lopped off -- may have been better left in the hands of Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, et. al. It's her husband's favorite song, she said, but when he heard her version, he wondered if it should have been called "Stairwell to Hell" instead. It wasn't that bad, but her takes on both the Beatles' "Help!" and Collective Soul's "Shine" survived the classic/modern-rock-to-bluegrass transition much, much better.
Dolly never took off that coat of many colors she put on all those many years ago -- neither she nor Aftermath would be foolish enough to reveal how many -- and her chameleonic nature is key to her considerable charm. And although her covers of "River Deep, Mountain High" and "Son of a Preacher Man" were nothing to sneeze at, the best parts of Tuesday's show weren't when she was putting on Tina Turner or Dusty Springfield's heels, but dipping into her own history.
That started with honoring her mother on "Coat of Many Colors." Equally affecting, if not more, was her tribute to her dad on an "Smoky Mountain Memories," presented as a stock-still Celtic ballad with her drummer's solemn taps on a bodhran and Parton's own high-lonesome tin-whistle melody. Likewise, you could have heard a feather drop during "Little Sparrow," her warning to all the "tender young maidens" out there, and a rip-snorting "Muleskinner Blues" had everything but the cruel crack of the driver's lash.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
2 polkas on whistle from Boys of the Lough
A polka from Finland, followed by three reels, first one from piper Séamus Ennis, second from fiddle player Gerry O'Connor, and the third is "The Ivy Leaf". From a concert by The Boys of the Lough.
Cathal McConnell, from Ballinaleck, Co. Fermanagh (whistle).
Christy O'Leary, from Kenmare, Co.Kerry (whistle).
John Coakley, from Bantry, Co.Cork (piano).
Cathal McConnell, from Ballinaleck, Co. Fermanagh (whistle).
Christy O'Leary, from Kenmare, Co.Kerry (whistle).
John Coakley, from Bantry, Co.Cork (piano).
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