Greater Boston will see the debut this spring of a traditional Irish music and dance festival that aims to emphasize culture and camaraderie as much as reels, jigs, hornpipes and songs. 

The inaugural Tunes on the Charles festival will take place from April 30 to May 3 at locations around Cambridge, Somerville, and Watertown, including the Somerville Theatre, The Burren, McCarthy’s/Toad, The Druid Pub, The Lilypad, An Sibin, the Cambridge Masonic Temple, Lesley University and the Canadian American Club. 

A bevy of concerts, sessions, and workshops featuring numerous Boston-area Irish music and dance performers will run from late morning well into the night each day.

Highlighting the festival will be evening shows in Somerville Theatre on April 30 and May 1 curated by the Dublin-based Irish Traditional Music Archives (ITMA) – Ireland’s national reference archive of traditional music, song and dance – and its Drawing from the Well program. 

The two performances will showcase leading Irish musicians from both Ireland and the US, including many with Boston connections: Grammy-winning singer Aoife O’Donovan; Matt Molloy, a member of The Chieftains and the Bothy Band; Burren owners Tommy McCarthy and Louise McCarthy; legendary concertina player Noel Hill; and ITMA Executive Director Liam O’Connor.

Others featured will include: Aoife Ní Bhriain; Johnny Óg Connolly, Pádraig Ó Dubhghaill and Clíodhna Costello; Joey Abarta and Jackie O’Riley; Conor Connolly; Cormac Begley; Seán McKeon; Caitlín Nic Gabhann and Ciarán Ó Maonaigh; Doireann Ní Ghlacáin (fiddle); 

Meanwhile, numerous accomplished performers from the Boston area will give concerts, lead sessions, or run workshops at various points during the festival, among them Oisin McAuley, Colm Gannon, Teddy Davis, Tina Lech, Laura Feddersen, Nathan Gourley, Jimmy Kelly, and David Healy. 

(Some festival details are still being finalized and updated. Information is available at crirish.org.)

Tunes on the Charles is the brainchild of Colin Kadis and Sean Clohessy, both denizens of Boston’s Irish music scene for some years and regulars at various local sessions and other events. As often happens in such gatherings, conversations strike up in between the tunes about any number of topics, including the state of local music and what would make it even better than it already is.

“The idea of having some sort of festival was kind of floating around for a while,” says Kadis, a third-generation Irish American who began playing accordion in his teens and studied with local box players Tommy Sheridan and Colm Gannon. “We felt the music here in Boston is stronger than ever, and that it would be great to do something to celebrate what we have.”

Said Clohessy, a fiddler and pianist who emigrated to Boston from his native Limerick two decades ago, and has been active in the music school of Boston’s Comhaltas Ceoltóiri Éireann branch, “It really is a golden age for Irish music in Boston.

“In particular, there are lots of young people here – Irish, Irish American, American but not Irish – who are playing at a high level of excellence, who have embraced the tradition and everything that goes with it. And a lot of them head off to festivals in Ireland or Irish festivals elsewhere in the US. 

“So we thought, ‘Why can’t we hold a festival here, in Boston, that celebrates all we have? And we’ll bring folks here to celebrate with us.’”

The model Kadis and Clohessy looked to was the find of festival they attended in Ireland where entire neighborhoods – even towns – are given over to the events, making the whole experience more convenient and accessible. 

That’s where the prime festival ingredient comes in, says Kadis: serendipity.

“What we want is a scenario where people can certainly plan what they want to do when and where, but that there’s also room for whatever happens. Maybe you’re on your way to a concert and you run into a friend on their way to a workshop, and you both decide to do something completely different, like go to a session.”

So, among the features of Tunes on the Charles will be its “session trail,” which winds from Inman Square to Porter Square in Cambridge to Davis Square in Somerville (a little over two miles all told). The sessions are free, so festivalgoers can casually wander from one to another.

“Obviously, to have the kind of festival we envision, you need the spaces and the places to facilitate the coming together of people,” says Clohessy, who also will be performing. “We are extremely fortunate to have a lot of supportive publicans in Boston who are very interested in keeping the music live – and alive. So we’re extremely grateful to them and their staffs.”

Jackie O’Riley, who is the dance director for the festival, is excited that the Tunes on the Charles lineup includes skilled dancers Edwina Guckian and Caitlín Nic Gabhann, who in addition to performing will give workshops in sean-nos, set and step dancing. There will be something for dancers of all levels, she notes, and that includes beginners.

Edwina Guckian.

“Edwina will be calling a big Saturday night ceili where the aim is inclusivity – even if you haven’t done ceili dancing before,” she says. “She'll also be hosting ‘This is Not a Dance Competition,’ where Irish dancers of any traditional style will gather to dance a few steps to represent our Boston Irish dance community. With live music, no judges, and the ‘winner’ chosen out of a hat, this should be a great celebration."  

O’Riley is especially pleased that dance will be a feature of the festival in other settings, too.

“We want to create spaces for dancing to be integrated into the festival in an organic fashion,” she says. “Dance tends to have its own space and other needs, so it can seem remote from the mainstream of festivals and similar events. But this way, people will see how dance has its part in the tradition.

“Dance can’t exist without music, and while music can exist without dance, when we bring them together it’s fascinating to see how they interact – and what dance can add to music.”

Says the ITMA’s O’Connor: “What impresses me most about Tunes on the Charles is that it builds on something real and deeply rooted. Boston is both a global music city and, in many ways, an Irish cultural center in its own right. The depth of talent, the sense of community, and the continuity across generations are all exceptional. This festival recognizes that and gives it the scale and platform it deserves.

O’Connor has more than a few reasons to cheer the opportunity for collaboration with the festival. One is memories of the kindness shown by the Boston Irish music community to his family when, in 2012, his nephew Sergio had to travel from Ireland for life-saving surgery at Children’s Hospital; The Burren hosted a benefit event for Sergio that raised an estimated $20,000 (Sergio is “thriving,” says O’Connor, and has even taken up bodhran). 

Visiting Boston during that time, O’Connor struck up friendships with Clohessy, McCarthy, and Costello, and others in the community that have since grown — as has his respect and enthusiasm for the area’s Irish music scene. 

ITMA also has built strong institutional ties with Boston College’s Irish Music Archives, he adds, and there are hopes of developing staff exchanges, shared research, and joint public-facing projects as well as other ventures — including documentary work — that could emerge from the growing relationship.

“Over time, I’ve come to feel that the Boston tradition is sometimes under-recognized in Ireland,” he says. “In truth, we are looking at a golden period, and part of what we are trying to do with these concerts is simply to honor that.”

Tunes on the Charles comes as ITMA is continuing work on its US250 initiative, which involves developing a major digital atlas mapping Irish music, song, and dance across all 50 states, historically and in the present day. Boston will be one of the key anchor points in that map, says O’Connor, reflecting its central role in the story of Irish music in America. 

Boston-born Daniel Neely – an ethnomusicologist and a columnist for The Irish Echo — is working with ITMA’s Rónán Galvin on ensuring that Boston's rich tradition is documented on the ITMA map, which will be launched later this year.

“We’re deeply honored to be working with the Boston community on this inaugural festival, says O’Connor. “The first year is always the hardest, but there is a real opportunity here to establish something lasting: an annual festival in the calendar that connects artists, audiences and communities on both sides of the Atlantic.”

Tunes on the Charles is accepting festival volunteers. To sign up, send an email to admin@crirish.org.