As if there weren’t already plenty of Irish/Celtic-related entertainment choices in Boston-and-vicinity this month, here’s another: Ireland’s Lúnasa, a band brimming with vast musical experience, creativity and innovation, will appear at the Somerville Theatre on March 8.

Over the course of its nearly three decades, Lúnasa has won critical acclaim for its layered, harmonically sophisticated, and quite modern treatment of Irish traditional music, marked by inspired and polished arrangements full of passion and power. They’ve released 10 albums, including last year’s “Live in Kyoto,” and played in 36 countries – including at venues such as the Hollywood Bowl and Carnegie Hall, and events like the Celtic Connections festival. 

The Somerville Theatre concert is presented by Cambridge nonprofit Passim, and produced by Summer McCall, director of the Boston Celtic Music Fest (BCMFest), a program of Passim. (Tickets and other information are available at www.somervilletheatre.com/production/passim-presents-lunasa]

One of the more fascinating aspects of Lúnasa is that on various tours their core line-up – Kevin Crawford (flute, whistle), Cillian Vallely (uilleann pipes, whistles), Sean Smyth (fiddle), Ed Boyd (guitar) and Trevor Hutchinson (double bass) – has frequently been supplemented, with no loss of quality, by other accomplished musicians: Colin Farrell, Patrick Doocey and Tola Custy, among others, have traveled with the band.

But for this trip to the US, it’ll be the fundamental five – Crawford, Vallely, Smyth, Boyd and Hutchinson – plus a couple of impressive guests: singer Daoiri Farrell and fiddler/banjoist Cathal Hayden.

Recently, Cillian Vallely talked about the upcoming tour, and reflected on his years with the band as it draws closer to its 30th anniversary.

So, just to confirm: It’ll be you, Kevin, Ed, Sean and Trevor playing at Somerville Theatre. How has the band handled international tours in the past?

Sean, who was the main founder of the band, has always been a medical doctor. He usually only did it part-time when the band wasn’t touring, but some years ago he decided to take over a clinic in Ennis and move to full-time doctoring work. We replaced him with Colin in the US, and Tola toured with us a lot in Europe. Recently, though, Sean has changed things around at work and is able to do much more of the touring. He’s with us this March and most of the European gigs, but Colin will still be working with us later in the year. Ed is occasionally busy with the band Flook, and so we often have Patrick fill in on guitar. Trevor, Kevin and I do all the tours.

Tell us about your special guests, Cathal and Daoiri.

We’ve all known Cathal a long time: His father and my father were old friends, and my father learned a lot of his music from families like the Haydens and Comacs in Co. Tyrone. They had a family pub that was a key center of the music scene in that area and a lot of the greats would have travelled there to play. Cathal has long been considered one of the greats of traditional music and a huge influence on younger generations, known especially for his founding of the band Four Men and a Dog. He’s a very creative and stylish player and a master of both the fiddle and the banjo. We did many tours of Holland and Germany in the past with Cathal but this is the first time he’ll be with us in the US.

Daoiri, who’s from Dublin, is of a younger generation but has made a big splash on the folk scene in the last 10 years. He has won numerous BBC and RTÉ folk music awards at home and has been touring with us in the US for the last three years. He’s a really great singer with a big personality, so he’s a lot of fun on the road. 

We played for 20 years without any vocalist, apart from special one-offs, but since our album “Cas,” we’ve done a lot of work with singers. It’s been a nice change for the band and adds to the enjoyment of the gigs. This will be Daoiri's first time in Boston with us, so we’re looking forward to you all hearing him. 

You joined Lúnasa a couple of years after the band started. What impressed you about what they were doing? 

Yeah, it was up and running for about two years when I joined, so I had seen them live and heard their original live album. I thought they were all great players and creating a new sound in Irish music so it was nice to be asked to tour with them. 

I had noticed they had a different piper every time I saw them play, so I suspected they wouldn’t want to keep doing that. When they released their first album on a label and went full-time, they asked me to join – that was actually 26 years ago now! I definitely was into the music they were playing and could hear all the influences. I was probably into many of the same bands, like the Bothy Band and Moving Hearts, and knew it was what I wanted to play. I was never too much into pure solo playing and always enjoyed playing with guitar and in bands, creating arrangements where the melody players would play harmony and rhythm lines. I hadn’t played with the upright bass in traditional music before so I could see it was going to be a unique feature of the band and the arrangements.  

It's probably amazing to you all that Lunasa is closing in on its 30th anniversary. What do you see as some important developments in Irish traditional music during those three decades?

Yeah, it’s a bit scary that we’re not far off the 30-year mark! Outside of bands, traditional music itself wouldn’t have changed hugely in that time; it’s a fairly conservative tradition and the vast majority of it is not professional and not on stage. It’s people playing with each other in informal sessions where a lot of the music is very similar and we all just get a big kick out of playing these great melodies, new and old. There’s probably more and more “rhythm” players in the sessions now, as the standard of guitar and bodhran playing has risen dramatically. There’s more of every instrument, in fact, and way more young people playing compared to when I was young. 

My parents have been teaching for nearly 60 years, so they’d have a much longer reference for this, but the standard of the young people playing now is incredible. I’m not sure if the best young players are any better than the great musicians of the 1970s that I idolized, but there’s just so many more great young players now. One big factor to all this is the access to great teaching and great instruments from a young age. This helps hugely, especially with complicated instruments like the uilleann pipes, wooden flutes, harps, and so on. There are pipers all over the world and I notice this a lot when teaching. Access to recordings and videos is a huge help, too, and probably a factor in the popularity of the music.

In terms of the band and the professional music world, there has been plenty of innovation: probably more creative use of rhythm sections, more self-composition and less old melodies in the bands. I suppose with a few other acts of that era, Lúnasa probably influenced band tune-writing – the idea that the harmony was as important as the melody in forming the set and writing and selecting tune sets. The use of the bass lines in forming the arrangements was a big factor, too. 

Some of the current young bands employ very contemporary influences in their sound, and there’s a lot of technology use - with pedals and beats and computers on the stage – and it can get to the point where it’s very much a fusion. It’s played by trad musicians and can sound great, but it’s obviously debatable what the music should be called when sometimes there’s little melody and the dominant feature is the technology. I’m not into over-labelling music, so it’s never bothered me as long as it sounds good and doesn’t just become mediocre pop music.