Now in its sixth year, the Rockport Celtic Festival – which takes place September 11-15 mainly in the Shalin Liu Performance Center – has established itself as one of Greater Boston’s premier folk and traditional music showcases, bringing together acclaimed performers from across traditions and genres for collaborations in music, dance and spoken word.

“It’s a challenge – but an enjoyable one – to come up with ideas that we think will work, that will be appealing and interesting,” says harpist/vocalist Maeve Gilchrist, the festival’s artistic director. “We’ve always sought to put different styles and sounds next to one another, so as to illuminate them in special ways that engage people. Our hope is for our audience to trust in what we bring to them, and every year that hope is rewarded.”

This year’s roster includes traditional Irish trio Open the Door for Three, whose fiddler Liz Knowles is the festival’s artist-in-residence and will be part of some special events; high-energy Quebecois quintet Le Vent du Nord; the Triton Trio, with a repertoire encompassing Scottish reels and hornpipes, Breton bourées and gavottes and Swedish polskas, among other things; Boston-area accordionist and sean-nos singer Diarmuid Ó Meachair and Baltimore pianist Matt Mulqueen; and Alex Chartrand and Nicolas Babineau, whose combination of fiddle and baroque violin – along with guitar and foot percussion – brings a fascinating dimension to Quebec traditional music. 

Others appearing at the festival are David Coffin, one of New England’s premier maritime singers; Jenna Moynihan, a Scottish/Appalachian/Irish/Scandinavian-influenced Boston-area fiddler; cellist Mike Block, whose musical explorations range from classical to Celtic to bluegrass to Mali folk tradition and more; guitarist Kyle Sanna, with a portfolio that includes Irish tradition and experiments in electronic music; Logan Coale, a well-traveled bassist at home in classical music (The Knights Chamber Orchestra), pop and rock (Taylor Swift, Natalie Merchant) and Broadway (“Tootsie”); Grammy-nominated violinist Christina Day, concertmaster for Boston Baroque; and Michael Leopold, a virtuoso on the theorbo, a bass lute popular in the Baroque period. 

Another key contributor to the festival is the Abbie MacQuarrie Band, which will provide music – and no shortage of energy – at a late-night ceilidh, which will include a session and participatory, easy-to-learn dances.  

Massachusetts-born author, painter and curator Ben Shattuck will be part of this year’s festival as well: His 2024 collection of short stories, The History of Sound, serves as the basis for a piece of music composed by Knowles – commissioned in the name of the late Brian O’Donovan, the festival’s founder – that will be the centerpiece of the Sunday festival finale, “Where the Sea Meets the Land.” Shattuck will narrate the piece, with music provided by Knowles, Gilchrist, Block, Sanna and Coale.   

“We were very excited that Ben could work on this with us,” says Gilchrist. “It’s a great example of something new evolving from traditional music, informed by New England history and culture.”

Knowles explains that her piece, “Gan Ainm Fós (Still Without Name),” is based on the idea of Irish music as “an exploration of repetition [creating] a familiarity which encourages deeper understanding—an unearthing—which in turns reveals the interactions amongst the unearthed landscapes of a tune.” The “tune landscapes,” she says, are similar to a shoreline and its tides: “a liminal space where things interact, overlap, envelop, embed, dissolve, and transform. Each tune for me is constantly in a state of ‘in-between’ — always in motion, always transforming, evolving, and becoming. Each tune is a story that has many possible outcomes – which relates to one of the many themes in The History of Sound.

  “‘Gan Ainm Fós’ explores story, repetition, melodic transformation, layering in excerpts from Ben’s book and delving into the in-between places.”

There has been a considerably poignant undercurrent to the festival the past few years, with the revelation of O’Donovan’s brain cancer in 2022 and his death in October of 2023. During that period, he worked with Gilchrist to prepare her for assuming leadership of the event; last year was the start of this new era.  

“It was definitely emotional,” says Gilchrist of the 2024 edition. “But as I found to be the case in many things, Brian, even in death, is the gift that keeps on giving. Thanks to him, and because he also had given me leadership opportunities in his ‘Christmas Celtic Sojourn’ and ‘St. Patrick’s Day Celtic Sojourn’ shows, I felt like I was ready for the transition.”

Above all else, she says, O’Donovan stressed that the Rockport Celtic Festival should have a different raison d'être than either of the “Celtic Sojourn” productions. 

“He saw the festival as more exploratory, where ‘Celtic’ is a bridge to other music and a means to involve other kinds of artistic expression, especially prose and poetry. And Brian thought it was important to use the setting of Rockport and Cape Ann, and its long, multifaceted history with the sea, as another element in the festival programming.”

The 2025 festival fulfills all these criteria, while celebrating the wealth of traditional music and dance to be found in Greater Boston and in New England – and the fascinating results when it encounters music from other places, and even other times. 

Open the Door for Three, who along with Knowles includes uilleann piper Kieran O’Hare and vocalist and bouzouki player Pat Broaders, will open the proceedings on September 11 in the “festival club,” located on the Shalin Liu’s third floor.

The following night, “Quebec to Brittany,” sees the festival’s gaze shift toward other horizons, featuring Le Vent du Nord and its powerful presence of fiddle, accordion, hurdy-gurdy, guitar, bass and vocals, and the Triton Trio, with Vermonters Jeremiah McLane (accordion, piano) and Timothy Cummings (small pipes, whistles) and Quebec’s Alex Kehler (violin, nyckelharpa, låtmandola, vocals). Alongside the Quebec and northwestern European strains will be pure-drop traditional Irish music by Ó Meachair and Matt Mulqueen.

Saturday (September 14) will be a marathon of the creative process, beginning with an 11 a.m. salon that will focus on Shattuck’s writing – hailed for its emotional resonance, insightful observations, and ability to find meaning in the grand sweep of history and quiet moments of everyday life – and how it and other factors, including the New England seascape, have influenced Knowles’ music. Open the Door for Three also will talk about Irish music in America and its effect on the evolution of music itself.

Audience participation long having been a hallmark of the festival – as with many of O’Donovan’s endeavors – Coffin will lead a sea chanty singing session at 1 p.m. (at Rockport’s First Congregational Fellowship Hall). 

            Le Vent du Nord brings their high-energy brand of Quebecois music to Rockport.

The festival's many strands come together at the Saturday evening concert, in which folk traditions of Ireland, Germany, Quebec and New England are woven into the fabric of Baroque music in a contemporary-minded context, with performances by Chartrand and Day and Leopold. In addition, Gilchrist, Sanna and Coale will perform a new work inspired by a Seamus Heaney translation of a Middle English poem, “The Names of the Hare” – said to be a ritualistic recitation, traditionally spoken by a hunter upon encountering a hare, to bring good luck. 

Another iteration of the festival club follows: the previously mentioned ceilidh with the Abbie MacQuarrie Band, hosted by Gilchrist.

 The festival’s final day begins with one of its signature events, “Words and Music,” in which artists share a selection of poetry and prose accompanied by a soundscape both improvised and curated.

“This has always been a particularly moving part of the festival, inviting performers to bring stories and poems that strike a chord with them,” says Gilchrist. “We refer to it as ‘Brian’s Church,’ because he felt very strongly that the spoken word should have a place in the public forum, in the same way music does.”

It all comes to a close with “Where the Sea Meets the Land,” the festival’s homage to Cape Ann and its nautical legacy, featuring appearances by Coffin and the Triton Trio as well as the premiere of the Shattuck-Knowles collaboration. 

“What is very striking about this festival is not just the music, but the very sounds from the instruments, whether alone or with others – especially the hurdy-gurdy, the nyckelharpa, the small pipes, the theorbo, which may be less familiar to us,” says Gilchrist. “And then, of course, is that wholly unique instrument, the human voice. No music event is quite the same without it.”

For full festival details, see rockportmusic.org/rockport-celtic-festival