Boston Irish Reporter

Fiddler Conway learned his music ‘pure’ – Sligo style

Staff — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:15:14 +0000

Sean Smith

Brian Conway makes no bones about it: He understands that his particular tutelage in the Irish music tradition was a profoundly rare thing, and he feels very fortunate as a result.
“I think that, in my upbringing, I definitely got the music pure,” says Conway, who will bring his widely admired fiddle-playing talents to the Boston area later this month. Read more

Conner’s passions: Perform, preserve Great American Music

Staff — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:13:46 +0000

by R.J.Donovan

Baritone, pianist, and conductor Bradford Conner is on a mission. He sincerely hopes you’ll love great American music as much as he does. One conversation proves he has a devotion and an insight for it that few others possess.
Classically trained, Brad and partner Benjamin Sears have become the “go-to” guys in terms of impeccable musical research. Together they helped found the critically acclaimed American Classics, “devoted solely to the performance of American music, giving voice to forgotten gems and newly discovered musical treasures.” Read more

Irish educators discuss woes with Boston officials

Staff — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:11:11 +0000

BY GINTAUTAS DUMCIUS
REPORTER STAFF
Boston Public School administrators met earlier this month with a group of Irish education officials who quizzed their American counterparts about such things as closing buildings and dealing with vacant seats in Irish classrooms -- about 80,000 of them.
The Irish team, comprising officials from the public and private education sectors of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, sat down with Superintendent Carol Johnson in between meetings with state Education Secretary Paul Reville and Brookline school officials. The group also visited the Codman Academy Public Charter School before heading to the Boston School Department’s Court Street headquarters to talk with Johnson. Read more

Kerry seeks halt to BC archive interviews probe

Ed Forry — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:09:02 +0000

by Bill Forry and Melissa Tabeek
The British government’s controversial attempt to seize records from a Boston College oral history collection related to the conflict in Northern Ireland scored another court victory on Tues., Jan. 24, when federal Judge William Young dismissed a lawsuit that sought to block the records’ release. Read more

Teen arraigned in Conneely murder

Ed Forry — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:01:37 +0000

by MELISSA TABEEK
A Boston teenager was arraigned on Jan. 16 in a Suffolk Superior courtroom for the murder last October of an Adams Corner Irish immigrant man and a subsequent double-shooting nearby that left another man suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. John Graham, 17, pled not guilty to all nine charges— including first-degree murder in the Oct. 10 shooting death of 36-year-old Ciaran Conneely— and will likely stand trial for the crimes sometime next year. Read more

Dublin tot, family find hope at Boston hospital

Ed Forry — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:00:18 +0000

by PAT TARANTINO
After nearly a year-and-a-half spent in hospitals, operating rooms, and recovery units, a Dublin family’s lengthy struggle to secure a healthy future for their ailing daughter may finally come to a happy end here in Boston.

Fourteen-month-old Elie Madden was born weighing less than four pounds and suffering from esophageal atresia – a rare disorder in which her esophagus is too short to reach her stomach – and has spent much of her young life dependent on machinery to keep her fed and breathing. Read more

February's BIR People- News and Notes about Boston's Irish

Ed Forry — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:55:55 +0000

R.I.P. Kevin White: Mayor of many moods
BY BIR STAFF
Kevin Hagan White, a lineal descendant of the politically active Irish families who, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, wrested control of the city of Boston from the direct descendants of the settler Puritans of the 17th century, was a man of many personas – ebullient, moody, haughty, energetic, fretful, intellectual, daring, to name a few ascribed to him during his often-tumultuous mayoral occupancy of Boston City Hall from 1968 through 1983. Read more

Recalling a boy named Damien

Staff — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:50:10 +0000

BY ED FORRY, BIR Publisher
The new year brought sad news for local Hibernians: The death of Damien Brennan, a 24-year-old youth worker who lived and worked in Belfast, N.I. Damien was five years old in 1992 when he became the victim of a vicious crime: he was attacked at a Portadown playground by three older boys. Read more

Boston

Speaking of bargains for tourists, Ireland is hard to beat right now

Ed Forry — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:44:46 +0000

Joe Leary, Special to the BIR

Joe Byrne, Tourism Ireland’s New York-based executive vice president for North America, is typical of the hard-working Irish men and women who are sent to the United States to represent their country. Enthusiastic, loyal, focused, and extremely bright, his friendly outgoing personality belies a tough, single-minded dedication to improving Ireland’s annual visitor count – in the North and in the South – from the United States and Canada. Read more

Cause & effect & all of us

Ed Forry — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:42:47 +0000

BY JAMES W. DOLAN
SPECIAL TO THE REPORTER
That God is the uncaused cause has long been one of the principal arguments for a supernatural, all-powerful being. Some unexplainable, mysterious force must have begun the creative process, otherwise there would be nothing, or so the argument goes. Read more