Arts and Entertainment
Boston-area singer Barbara Cassidy takes the big-picture view when it comes to winter: Sure, darkness comes early, the days are short, the weather outside is frightful, etc., etc., but the season has its virtues.
“You’re inside more, and you tend to slow... Read more
With live music – as we know it, anyway – in stasis these past several months, many venues, organizations, and artists have turned to virtual formats for presenting performances, whether through livestreaming or pre-recorded concerts. That includes Irish/... Read more
Need some help finding joy and comfort this holiday season? If so, we’ve got a great way to bring some light into your home. Due to popular demand we’ve added an encore virtual performance of A Christmas Celtic Sojourn on Wednesday, December 23 at 7:... Read more
It's our pleasure to share with you a very special Irish Christmas Carol commissioned by Boston City Singers and performed by our Tour Choir in collaboration with Keene State's Concert Choir (NH) and St. Peter's University Schola (NJ). The magic of... Read more
Not an album, but certainly a musical endeavor worth noting: A few months ago, I wrote about the concert Irish singer Cara Dillon and her husband Sam Lakeman livestreamed via YouTube and Facebook. Evidently, the reaction was so positive that the couple... Read more
The SíFiddlers, “SíFiddlers” • If you like lots of Irish fiddle – and fiddle only, with no other melody instrument and nary a guitar, bouzouki, piano, or any such accompaniment about – then put this album on your must-listen list. And if you like Donegal... Read more
Right from the beginning, the idea behind Christmas Celtic Sojourn was to make audiences feel as if they were enjoying the Celtic-flavored celebration of the holiday season in the comfort of their own home - even if they were sitting inside a theater,... Read more
Matt and Shannon Heaton, Hanneke Cassel, Natalie Haas, and Katie McNally, long-time performers in the Boston-area Irish/Celtic music scene, will be among the artists at the inaugural Wintery Weekend Festival, which will be held in virtual format Dec. 4-6... Read more
Record retailer Golden Discs was established in 1962 by Jack Fitzgerald and Tom Rogers under the name the Trans-Atlantic Record Agency (TARA) in Dublin, Ireland. Today Golden Discs caters to a global customer base across more than 40 countries. It is ... Read more
Pat Broaders, “Pat Broaders” • Until this year, Broaders would surely have been at or near the top of any “It’s Really Time He/She Made a Solo Album” list. The Dublin native and now ensconced Chicagoan has long been acclaimed as a first-rate singer of... Read more
Michael Maloney likes to describe his Irish/Celtic band the Boston Harbor Bhoys as “a Venn diagram.” As Maloney explains, he and his band mates – Eddie Biggins and son Ryan – each tend to favor a specific subset of Irish music: For Maloney, it’s the brand... Read more
The New England traditional folk music duo Keith Murphy and Becky Tracy managed a nice bit of symmetry earlier this year: They released their new album, “Golden,” right around their silver wedding anniversary.
Of course, Tracy acknowledges, that’s not how... Read more
While the area folk/traditional music scene (like pretty much all other music scenes) remains under quarantine, there are two special “virtual” events this month of interest to Irish/Celtic fans.
The popular Massachusetts Fiddle Hell, an annual gathering... Read more
Molly Pinto Madigan can’t tell you exactly when or how she first came across the centuries-old Scottish folk ballad “Tam Lin.” All she knows is, it has occupied a pretty large part of her life since then.
Madigan, a singer-songwriter from Salem, has... Read more
The Coronas, “True Love Waits” • Sure, go ahead and crack jokes about The Most Dubious Band Name of 2020 – no doubt The Coronas have heard them all. In fact, one of its members, guitarist Danny O’Reilly, was quoted as saying, “I’d swap ‘The Coronas’ with... Read more
It’s a somewhat improbable combination of voices: West Country English, Scottish/Orkney Islands, and west suburban Boston.
But this blend works just fine for the Anglo-Celtic folk trio Bellwether, which formed in Boston last year and has played several... Read more
Outside of the larger-than-life figure of Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967), Co. Monaghan has produced only a handful of poets whose work is known and read widely. The most notable of these include Mary O’Donnell and Aidan Rooney. Also a prolific writer of... Read more
Stephen Puleo
Voyage of Mercy
St. Martin’s Press
303 pages
By John Duff
A disease appears and quickly wreaks havoc on all it reaches. Governments situated to respond to the plight of their citizens do so slowly and ineffectively. News of the plight... Read more
Hannah Harris, “Tea for Tunes” • A native and resident of Michigan who – you may have heard this one before – started out as a classical violinist but became enamored of Irish fiddling enough to make it the focus of her music. She wound up at University... Read more
There are bands that can hardly wait to make an album. The ink is barely dry on their business cards, the official website is freshly uploaded, they’ve only just worked out a practice schedule, and they’re already making the rounds of recording studios to... Read more
