Just imagine if the band that inspired and influenced your youthful musical development invited you, years later, to join them. This fantasy - common to musician and non-musician alike - came true for Boston area native Eddie Dillon during the late 1990s, when he played with The Clancy Brothers, which at the time comprised original members Paddy and Bobby Clancy and Bobby's son Finbarr (Paddy died shortly thereafter, but the group kept performing until Bobby's death in 2002). Read more
August 2, 2010 by R. J. Donovan, special to the BIR
Ronan Tynan is a big man with a big heart. He's also one of Boston's newest residents. Having settled into his new home earlier this year, he'll be appearing locally at Cape Cod Melody Tent in Hyannis on Aug. 6 and South Shore Music Circus in Cohasset the next night. Read more
August 2, 2010 by Matthew DeLuca, special to the BIR
In the early 19th century, Ireland's musical traditions were in a state of flux. Older practitioners and their music-making were passing away, and with them, some feared at the time, would go that sign of Ireland's culture and heritage - the harp. Read more
August 2, 2010 by Thomas O'Grady, special to the BIR
One of the many wonderful scenes in Flann O'Brien's novel At Swim-Two-Birds has Jem Casey, "the Poet of the Pick and the Bard of Booterstown," kneeling to assist the injured King Sweeny, a man of words in his own right: "poet on poet, a bard unthorning a fellow-bard," O'Brien inscribes that moment. Almost inevitably I thought of that scene when I finally sat down with Notes from His Contemporaries: A Tribute to Michael Hartnett, a substantial book of poems and prose that landed on my doorstep around a year ago. Read more
August 2, 2010 by Dave Palmater, special to the BIR
Over her long and storied career, Judy Collins has recorded everything from ancient English ballads to the latest Broadway show tunes, but her main musical influence was an Irish tenor: her father, Charles "Chuck" Collins.
The son of an Irish immigrant, Chuck was proud of his heritage, and named his first-born son Michael Collins. Though Chuck became blind at an early age, he never let it hold him back in any way up to, and including, driving a car. Read more
July 2, 2010 by By Thomas O’Grady, , special to the BIR
A particularly satisfying moment in James Joyce’s Ulysses occurs in the third episode of the novel, when Stephen Dedalus, unhappily sharing living quarters in a Martello tower in Sandycove with the irreverent Buck Mulligan and miserably holding down a teaching position in a private boys’ school in nearby Dalkey, recalls his sojourn in Paris cut short by a summons to his dying mother’s bedside back in Dublin almost a full year earlier: “My Latin quarter hat. God, we simply must dress the character. I want puce gloves. You were a student, weren’t you? Of what in the other devil’s name? Paysayenn. P.C.N., you know: physiques, chimiques et naturelles. Aha. Eating your groatsworth of mou en civet, fleshpots of Egypt, elbowed by belching cabmen. Just say in the most natural tone: when I was in Paris, boul’ Mich’, I used to.” In light of Stephen’s self-inflating assertion at the end of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man—“I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race”—this self-deprecating musing on the bohemian pose he struck in Paris is truly refreshing, as he finally shows a capacity to look at himself with a healthy measure of the irony with which Joyce (the artist as an older man) viewed his quasi-autobiographical character in A Portrait. Read more
A column of news and updates of the Boston Celtic Music Fest (BCMFest), which celebrates the Boston area’s rich heritage of Irish, Scottish, Cape Breton music and dance with a grassroots, musician-run winter music festival and other events during the year. —Sean Smith
– As far as the Boston Celtic Music Fest is concerned, there’s no such thing as an age difference: BCMFest events have featured performances by pre-teens, senior citizens, and everyone in-between, including mamas and papas, grandmas and grandpas, and kids big and small.
BCMFest will celebrate the all-ages appeal of Celtic music with a special concert on July 12, as part of its Celtic Music Monday series at Club Passim in Harvard Square. “In the Family Way: Music Shared Across Generations” will present three acts that, together, show how traditional music acts as a bond within families and unites youths and adults: The Reiner Family Band, a veritable institute of traditional music performance and education; fiddling, singing and dancing sisters Eden Forman and Emerald Rae; and Plaiditude, an ensemble of middle school-age fiddlers. Read more
Abbey, Druid Theatres Will Be Featured Along With World Premiere on Rose Kennedy
By R. J. Donovan
Special to The BIR
This fall, there’ll be a new cultural organization joining the Boston arts community. ArtsEmerson has been established by Emerson College to bring an eclectic program of legendary and pioneering international theater, film, and music to town.
Performances, workshops and discussions will take place in the four distinct venues operated by the college, including the handsomely refurbished 590-seat Paramount Theatre, the intimate 150-seat Black Box Theatre, the 170-seat Bright Family Screening Room, and the historic 1,186-seat Cutler Majestic. Read more
NOTE: Following is the first installment of an occasional series, “inSession,” which will profile regularly occurring Irish and Celtic music sessions in, or reasonably near, the Greater Boston area.
Tommy Doyle’s
Where: 96 Winthrop St., Harvard Square, Cambridge
When: Thursdays, 6:30-9:30 p.m.
Began: Fall of 2008 Read more
Music & Dance Scene Not Like It Was, But It’s Still There if You Want It
By Sean Smith
Special to the BIR
It’s a cool, early spring Saturday night at Watertown’s Canadian-American Club, and the sounds of a fiddle and piano casually tearing through a set of Cape Breton reels reverberates through the sparsely populated ballroom. Small clusters of people sit on the edges of the dance floor, chatting as the music continues — a cavalcade of marches, jigs, strathspeys, and the occasional air. Read more
