Upcoming Traditional
Celtic Music Events

Yuletide: A Celtic Christmas Celebration with Molly’s Revenge, Moira Smiley & the Rosemary Turco Irish Dancers The community is invited to come out & celebrate the holidays with a special evening of Celtic music, song & dance in this benefit concert for the First Methodist Church. Hailed by Tom Clancy in Irish Music Magazine as ‘a seriously joyous, masterly musical experience,’ Molly’s Revenge has toured internationally with a lineup including bagpipes, fiddle, whistles, guitar, bouzouki, mandola & vigorous vocals. A finalist in the All-Ireland Singing Competition, Smiley has been called by Shay Black, whose family knows a thing or two about singing, ‘Moira Smiley’s songs are captivating, holding the listener enchanted with their telling and her rich voice captures the essence of traditional singing.’ The performance will include Christmas songs both old & new from many lands, all played with a Celtic twist, with the audience able to join in on their favorite carols. The evening will also include spellbinding folk tales set in the winter season & dancers who will surely set everyone’s toes tapping. On sale will be Molly’s Revenge’s YuleDance CD, featuring music from the show, with a portion of the sales donated to the worthy charities, The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society funding blood cancer research & education and the Aplastic Anemia and MDS International Foundation, support organization for bone marrow diseases.

The first of two performances of A Gaelic Christmas with internationally renowned Irish singer Mary McLaughlin & Cor Aingli (Chorus of Angels) & featuring Steve Coulter on harp & Lars Johannesson on flute with special guests, the women’s vocal ensemble Zambra

Celtic Magic’ Concert by Irish singer Mary McLaughlin, featuring songs & stories from the Irish Fairy & Magical tradition, with special guests, More info is at www.marymclaughlin.com.

Tempest, the Bay Area Celtic folk-rock band,

Scots singer, songwriter, guitarist & harmonica player Jim Malcolm Malcolm’s affinities with Robert Burns-- just as Scotland’s national poet drew much of his imagery from his native Ayrshire, so too does Jim for his compelling original compositions from his native Perthshire, with his concerts, as with his 8 solo albums, mixing Burns with traditional & self-penned material. Hailed as ‘The new male voice of Scotland’ on Radio Scotland, as ‘One of the most outstanding talents to emerge from the Scottish folk scene in years’ in The Independent & as ‘One of the finest singing voices in Scotland in any style’ by The Living Tradition, Jim received immediate international recognition in 1999 when he joined as lead singer Scotland’s popular traditional band Old Blind Dogs. The demands of family and his skyrocketing solo career have caused Jim to since leave that group. In 2004 Jim was the winner of the prestigious Scots Trad Music Awards as ‘Songwriter of the Year’ and from that organization Jim recently became the Meryl Streep of the ‘Singer of the Year’ category, receiving the most nominations ever. In concert, you don’t just get, in the words of Dirty Linen, ‘One of those pure, warm folk voices that one never tires listening to’ & as The Scotsman noted, ‘Many harmonica players have made a full career out of less talent,’ but also a huge helping of hearty humor in daft jokes, silly stories & inane introductions. For the past couple years, a wee dancing man has been a concert highlight & last year, in commemoration of the anniversary of Burns’ 250th birthday, Jim devoted the second half of his concert to songs by & stories about Burns, coming out on stage after the break in costume & wig. So astonishing was this transformation that Jim mentioned when he had done so at an earlier concert, a woman came up to him, while still dressed as Burns, after the concert and said how much she preferred him to the fellow that was on in the first half of the concert. (Jim is still uncertain if this was a compliment or not.) If you missed this, the good news is that Malcolm’s turn as Robert Burns was filmed at a concert in Scotland & a DVD is promised to be on sale at this concert, as is a new Jim Malcolm Songbook.  

The Chieftains with Paddy Maloney   The original traditional Irish folk band, as far as anyone who came of age in the 1970s or 1980s is concerned, is the Chieftains. Their sound, built largely on Paddy Moloney's pipes, is otherworldly, almost entirely instrumental, and seems as though it comes out of another age of man's history.

The most acclaimed & accomplished traditional Irish fiddle & guitar duo of our time, Martin Hayes & Dennis Cahill The power, panache & passion of the spellbinding partnership of County Clare’s charismatic six-time All-Ireland Fiddle Champion Martin Hayes, hailed in Dublin’s Hot Press as ‘the most important individual musician in Ireland right now’ & the greatly gifted guitarist Dennis Cahill has led to their performances being proclaimed the stuff of legend on the traditional Irish music scene. Concerts by this terrifically talented tandem are epic events that lyrically take listeners on a joyous journey into the music’s emotional essence, with their fiery creativity & kinetic chemistry having you redefine your concept of excellence. As The Irish Echo noted, ‘There’s no more impressive partnership in Irish music today than Martin Hayes & Dennis Cahill.’ To cast an oeillade at Hayes, it is continually astounding & astonishing what he can produce from the mix of the 4 strings, G, D, A & E, of his fiddle. The sound can be one of the warmth induced by AGED wine or as colorful as the palette of DEGAs, the result will always leave you thunderstruck, EGAD. Among numerous accolades, Hayes has taken home a National Entertainment Award (Irish equivalent of a Grammy), named Folk Instrumentalist of the Year by the BBC Radio Awards, cited by the Irish Sunday Tribune as one of 100 most influential Irish men & women in the fields of entertainment, politics & sports & has received the Gradam Ceoil, Ireland’s top award for traditional music. Hayes & Cahill’s utterly unique concerts feature extended uninterrupted sets of music which are really a display of the art of seduction with their love of the music meeting their audience’s love. In these lengthy ravishments, the music begins slowly evoking candlelight or moonbeams coming in on balmy breezes through open windows. Then the music’s tension mounts caressingly into increasing agitation until it reaches a climatic crescendo with Hayes’ long locks flying, perhaps with hAir on the G string, in Bacchanalian trance-like frenzy.