Arts and Entertainment
Dancing feet like these will be a familiar sight when the World Irish Dancing Championships come to Boston later this month. Some 7,000 competitors are expected to take part in the event. Sean Smith photo
Already known as a hub for education, culture,... Read more
Not that Greater Boston doesn’t have plenty of Irish/Celtic music events during other months of the year, but March is unique in its offerings of concerts and special performances and celebrations evoking the name of St. Patrick or other things Celtic.... Read more
BY THOMAS O’GRADY
SPECIAL TO THE BIR
Punctuated with headlines to mark its being set in conjoined newspaper offices, the seventh episode of James Joyce’s Ulysses, “Aeolus,” itself punctuates the novel, announcing by way of its sudden typographical shift—... Read more
BY SEAN SMITH
SPECIAL TO THE BIR
While it may have only 28, or sometimes 29, days, February (along with the early part of March) can seem like the longest month: closer to spring than January, but often with cold, wintry weather and days that gradually... Read more
BY SEAN SMITH
SPECIAL TO THE BIR
There was never any doubt, really, that Colm Gannon would play music – nor any doubt as to what kind of music, nor which instrument he would use to play it. Not with a father who is an accomplished Irish accordion player,... Read more
BY R. J. DONOVAN
SPECIAL TO THE BIR
This month, Lyric Stage Company of Boston is presenting “Stones In His Pockets,” the poignant but very funny tale of what happens when a movie crew descends upon a village in County Kerry.
As the story unfolds, two... Read more
For years, Kathleen Conneely’s friends asked her the same question over and over: “So when are you going to make an album?”
Conneely has finally satisfied them, although the result may only create demand for a sequel.
A widely acclaimed tin whistle player... Read more
Boston-area fiddler Katie McNally already knew it was going to be a busy fall, what with recording her first album, getting ready for her annual stint with the Childsplay ensemble and, basically, living life as a college grad trying to make it as a Celtic... Read more
Frank McCourt’s ‘The Irish And How They Got That Way’ Opens Jan. 24 at Davis Square
by R J Donovan
Special to the BIR
Frank McCourt, born in Brooklyn and raised in Limerick, will forever be known as the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Angela’s Ashes... Read more
Forty years ago, a quintet from Gweedore, Donegal – siblings Moya, Pol, and Ciaran Brennan, and their twin uncles, Noel and Padraig Duggan – first made its way into the Irish music scene, joining a generation of influential performers like Christy Moore,... Read more
It’s a bona-fide Boston holiday tradition that, 10 years along, has now captured wintertime fancies in other parts of New England.
This month, “A Christmas Celtic Sojourn” celebrates its first decade of bringing to the stage an inimitable blend of Celtic... Read more
Symbolizing the holiday season as indelibly as the welcoming fragrance of evergreen, “The Christmas Revels” returns to historic Sanders Theatre in Harvard Square from December 14 - 27. This year, the participatory theatrical solstice celebration that... Read more
Childsplay, the all-star fiddle ensemble featuring many musicians with ties to the Boston area, makes its annual visit later this month to the National Heritage Museum in Lexington and perform three concerts.
The group – whose repertoire is taken mainly... Read more
It has been an eventful last few years for Cathie Ryan. Among other developments, she moved back to the US after living for nine years in Ireland, got inducted into the Irish American Hall of Fame in her native state of Michigan, was named as Irish Female... Read more
When “Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical” brings its tinsel and bows into The Citi Wang Theatre for a two-week run (November 23-December 9), it’s unlikely you’ll recognize Jeff McCarthy in the lead role.
It’s not that you haven’t seen... Read more
“South Boston punk becomes a Florida crime boss.” That’s how one newspaper boiled down Dennis Lehane’s latest novel. Sure, that’s one way of summarizing “Live by Night,” the Roaring Twenties gangster page-turner that will also be a big-studio film some... Read more
Larry Reynolds: Photo by Bill BrettHe was the big, amiable fellow from Galway who worked with wood in his profession and in his music, and who seemed to know, personally, just about anybody who’d ever so much as touched a fiddle, accordion or flute, or... Read more
Few bands go looking for the metaphorical crossroads, but once they encounter it, there’s no turning back. So was the case last year with Annalivia, the Greater Boston-based group that since its beginnings five years ago has drawn plaudits for its... Read more
For Boston-area Irish musician Shannon Heaton, invention was the necessity of motherhood. In the first weeks after her son Nigel was born two years ago, Heaton – like many a new parent – often found herself up at all hours for feeding, changing, and... Read more
The life and times of Brendan Behan, one of Ireland’s most colorful writers, are in the spotlight this month in “A Broth of a Boy.” The one-man show, starring Danny Venezia, is being presented from Sept. 25 to Oct. 7 at The Arsenal Center for the Arts in... Read more
