Arts and Entertainment

    Joe Gibney is the lead singer for The Jeremiahs, which will perform on July 16 in the Burren Backroom series. Formed almost 10 years ago, The Jeremiahs are among the vanguard of Dublin-based acts that have put a new gloss on the blending of... Read more
The annual Summer BCMFest on Sun., July 2, and concerts by The Jeremiahs and the Kane Sisters highlight upcoming Irish/Celtic events in Greater Boston.  Club Passim’s Summer BCMFest is a daylong affair that starts at 10 a.m. with its live music brunch,... Read more
No shortage of excellent new instrumental albums over the past several months – which I promise we’ll get to, eventually – but for now here are a couple of quite striking all-vocal releases that have leapt to the fore. • Sandra Joyce: “Since You and I... Read more
Understand: It’s not as if Massachusetts native Natalya Kay pined and prepared for years to be the fiddler for Gaelic Storm. The 27-year-old Kay, who grew up in Lowell and spent time in Boston before moving to Nashville, joined the popular Celtic rock... Read more
A full day and evening of Celtic music is in store at the annual Summer BCMFest, which takes place July 2 at Club Passim in Harvard Square. This year’s festival includes free outdoor concerts and participatory ceilidh outside Passim in Palmer Street, and... Read more
Readers of Boston Irish Magazine and bostonirish.com are well-versed in the work of Sean Smith, whose finely wrought writings and reviews of the work of performers in the Celtic arts of music and dance, in particular local and regional standouts, have... Read more
This past February, the movie “Till” was screened at the White House for President Biden, First Lady Jill Biden, and their guests. Among the team that brought the powerful true story of Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, to the president’s... Read more
During my long and rich teaching career (1984-2019) at UMass Boston, I had the rare good fortune of being able to offer, multiple times—both as a graduate seminar and as an undergraduate senior seminar—a course centered on Irish Nobel Laureate Seamus... Read more
Courtney O’Connor has a solid history in the Boston theater community as a director, educator and arts administrator. Having directed several shows at the Lyric Stage Company of Boston over the years, she joined the full-time staff at Lyric in 2018 and... Read more
Here's R.J.Donovan's preview of what's on in Boston's theatrical world for the summer of 2023 “Jagged Little Pill”, “Clue”, “Rooted”, “Oklahoma!” “The Normal Heart”, “Evita”, “A Man of No Importance”, “The Lehman Trilogy”, “Oppenheimer” Editor's Note: The... Read more
By R. J. DonovanSpecial to Boston Irish Courtney O’Connor has a solid history in the Boston theater community as a Director, Educator and Arts Administrator.  Having directed several shows at The Lyric Stage Company of Boston over the years, she joined... Read more
Reviving a tradition of summertime musical extravaganzas, the Irish Cultural Centre of Greater Boston in Canton will present “Sounds of Summer” on June 17, with several hours of entertainment from three acts that have longstanding ties with the center: •... Read more
A look at some upcoming Irish/Celtic events in Greater Boston: • UPDATE: The US tour of Frankie Gavin and Catherine McHugh has been postponed to a later date. Anybody with a passing interest in Irish traditional music over the past, oh, five decades knows... Read more
Next up at SpeakEasy Stage is the Boston premiere of the funny, feel-good, musical with a message, “The Prom.”  With music by Mathew Sklar, lyrics by Chad Beguelin, and a book by Beguelin and Bob Martin, “The Prom” tells the story of Emma, a student in a... Read more
It’s not just a concert/album launch, it’s a homecoming. Fiddler Doug Lamey, a Boston-area native and a denizen of its Celtic music and dance community – particularly that of Cape Breton – for a number of years, will be at the Burren Backroom in... Read more
Emerging from the Covid-19 pause, Boston-area Celtic fiddler Hanneke Cassel felt she had a lot of unfinished business – musical and personal. Going into 2020, she’d had plans to work on a new album featuring tunes she’d written since her 2017 release, “... Read more
A look at some upcoming Irish/Celtic-related music events in Greater Boston (and perhaps a little farther afield): •You can read elsewhere in the BostonIrish entertainment section about local fiddler Hanneke Cassel’s May 12 appearance at the Second... Read more
It had all the trappings of a feel-good Christmas story. Last December, Boston-area resident Hilaryann Gray suffered a rare, sudden form of heart failure for which there was only one recourse: a heart transplant. On Christmas Eve, Gray received a new... Read more
2023 is a landmark year for Boston-area quintet Scottish Fish, which is commemorating its first decade as one of the most energetic and creative acts to take root in the local Celtic music scene this century. After releasing its second full-length album... Read more
You might think that after its busiest March in years, the Greater Boston Irish/Celtic music scene would collectively put its feet up and take a breather. Wrong. There’s plenty to enjoy in April, too. •The Le Vent du Nord concert (part of the Global Arts... Read more

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