Elementary school assemblies tend to be one of those mixed blessings of childhood: a respite from the typical school day, but – depending on the content – often lacking in entertainment value. Yet sometimes they can provide inspiration for what turns out to be a lifelong pursuit. 

Such was the case for Elias Cardoso, who in recent years has become one of the more ubiquitous and highly regarded figures in the Greater Boston Irish music scene.

A Newton native, Cardoso didn’t grow up in a particularly musical family (an uncle had a five-string banjo, which he never played, and eventually gave to Cardoso). But as a young child, he developed an interest in the violin – one that spiked after he watched a group of youthful fiddlers perform Irish tunes at his school.

“I just really liked the sound a lot, and I wanted to try it,” he recalls. “Unfortunately, violin wasn’t offered at my school, so I had to wait until middle school. Once I was there, the music teacher – who had an interest in Irish music and kept a stash of tin whistles – told me about a place in Brighton called The Green Briar, which had these things called ‘sessions.’”

With that recommendation for one of Boston’s most beloved – but now sadly defunct – Irish sessions, Cardoso formally embarked upon the musical odyssey that this fall reached an important milestone: the release of his debut album, “Come In Through the Window,” which he formally launched at Club Passim in October.

The nine-track CD displays Cardoso’s multiple talents: not only as fiddler, but also accordionist, guitarist, and vocalist (not to mention his Quebecois-style foot percussion). He shows himself as equally adept at arrangements for instruments and voices alike.

Most of all, “Come In Through the Window” indicates the scope of Cardoso’s musical interests, which include – but are not limited to – the Irish traditional music he plays at sessions (notably Thursdays at McCarthy’s Tavern in Porter Square) and elsewhere. Alongside the trad tunes like “Killavil Fancy” and “Antrim Rose” are contemporary ones, including an untitled jig of his own, plus the delectably edgy “Cigüeña,” from Spain, featuring his accordion and multi-tracked fiddles.

And then there are the songs, encompassing the British Isles ballad tradition as well as the unapologetically bellicose “Blackleg Miner” and the gospel song “Gabriel’s Trumpet,” which has its origins in mid-19th century Maine. 

Joining Cardoso on “Come In Through the Window” are two of his regular accompanists, Kat Wallace (fiddle, vocals) and Adam Hendey (guitar, vocals, and album co-producer with Cardoso), along with bassist Simon Lace and Sam Babineau — all part of a vanguard of talented musicians in the 20s/early-30s demographic who, like Cardoso, have made an impression in local folk/traditional/acoustic music settings in the past several years. Patrick Bowling and Dave Try – who supply bodhran and trumpet, respectively, on the album – are from a slightly older generation but have their own sweet spot in the area music scene.

“It felt great to have the closure, to get everything finished and then do the show at Passim,” says Cardoso. “I’m so grateful to Adam, Kat, Simon, Sam, Patrick, and Dave, as well Brennish Thompson, who worked with me on the mixing, and Everest Whitman for the mastering. When everything is in process, of course, you have to concentrate on all the details, big, small and in between. But when I listen to the CD now, it’s a lot easier to enjoy the art instead of focusing on the craft.” 

Cardoso has been working on both the art and the craft for years: sitting in at The Green Briar; taking fiddle lessons through the Boston Comhaltas Ceoltóiri Éireann music school (his teachers included George Keith, Cara Frankowicz, and Brendan Bulger); attending Berklee College of Music, where he focused on recording and arranging music; teaching himself accordion, thanks to a borrowed instrument from a friend; learning to play bodhran (“It seemed fun”) at the Catskill Irish Arts Week; and picking up guitar, which he said was “a necessity, before I was good enough to gig on the fiddle – but I could at least do chords.”

Make the rounds of sessions, concerts, ceilis, and festivals often enough, and you’re bound to make connections that lead to formative experiences. So it was that Cardoso became acquainted with other local musicians like Calum Bell and Eamon Sefton, with whom he and Bowling formed the supercharged trad Irish/Scottish quartet Glenville (now on hiatus due to members’ various other commitments). He also was an accompanist for local musicians like Mari Black and Isabel Oliart, both Scottish Fiddle Champions, and crossed paths with Hendey, Wallace, and Lace. His connections also reached outside Boston, and the US, as he toured with Scottish band Old Blind Dogs and Ireland’s Socks in the Frying Pan.

“I haven’t had a real job since college, when I was a sign maker for Trader Joe’s,” he quips.

More reflectively, Cardoso adds: “What I found was that pub sessions are a great lab for developing your music. Maybe you’re backing somebody on guitar, and you hit upon this chord sequence you hadn’t tried before; or maybe you add a variation to the tune you’re playing on fiddle. You think to yourself, ‘Oh, I’ll have to remember that’ and so you have these ideas to work on with someone if you’re getting ready for a performance.” 

Invested as he was in the instrumental music, Cardoso also built up a song repertoire, drawing in part on his family’s interest in ballad traditions and other folk music, including Appalachian as well as Celtic, as reflected in their CD collection. Making the round of sessions, festivals, concerts, and more informal musical gatherings gave him plenty of material. 

A few years back, Cardoso says, he got the idea that “maybe I’d better make an album,” to showcase the musical interests he’d been pursuing for a decade or more. In 2023, he applied (“whimsically,” he says) for and was awarded an Iguana Music Fund grant from Passim, to help cover the cost of making a CD. There was no timeline to complete the project, and Cardoso had various musical obligations to fulfill, so the actual recording didn’t take place until earlier this year – after he had been booked to do the album launch show at Club Passim. 

“I had a plan for what I wanted to do, and who I wanted to play on the album with me. I said ‘OK, now, I just have to make the damn thing.’” 

(And, yes, he got it done in time for the show.)

Among the instrumental tracks are “New Jigs,” featuring the aforementioned unnamed jig (with Cardoso on fiddle, accordion, and bodhran), dotted with rests that lend it a whimsical stop-and-go character; the sweet-natured “Ellison Avenue,” leading into “Antrim Rose,” bolstered by Wallace’s complementary fiddle; Cardoso’s original hop jig (“Kat’s Hop,” named for her) is the starting point of another medley, segueing into a pair of reels (“Come In Through the Window/Killavil”). Hendey’s guitar backing is solid and sympathetic throughout all these tracks, as elsewhere.

The songs on “Come In Through the Window” are flat-out exquisite, especially the three with Wallace and Hendey’s backing vocals, which perfectly round out Cardoso’s mellifluous, mellow bassy tones. This combination strikes the appropriate urgency on “Blackleg Miner,” which dates back to 19th-century England. Recorded by numerous artists – including guitarist/singer-songwriter Richard Thompson, Cardoso’s source – the song is unapologetic in its scorn of scab miners (and, by implication, all scab workers). The aggressive language has long left some listeners uneasy, but others have noted that union miners of the age faced long odds in agitating for better working conditions yet felt impelled to do so, even if it meant committing violence against the non-union “blacklegs.”

“It rocks,” sums up Cardoso. “It’s powerful, driving and catchy. And when you listen to songs like these from centuries ago, you can’t help but wonder how much has really changed?”

In contrast is “The Unquiet Grave,” a ballad found throughout the British Isles, and with variants in other parts of Europe, that offers a different take on the ghostly-lover theme. Here, the survivor’s lamentation for his (or her) dead sweetheart summons the deceased, who is unable to find peaceful rest because of the constant mourning. Don’t be so anxious to join me, advises the ghost, but move on and make the most of the life you have left. While some versions accentuate the supernatural element, this incarnation is simply heartbreaking, due in no small part to the tune composed by Scottish singer-songwriter Kris Drever, whom Cardoso met while on tour in Glasgow.    

The Cardoso-Wallace-Hendy vocals also enrich “One I Love” (thought to have emigrated from Ireland to the US, with some verses attributed to Appalachian singer Jean Ritchie) and “Bonnie St. Johnstone,” a variant of “The Cruel Mother” ballad tree – both songs whose themes and narratives refute the notion of folk music being quaint and irrelevant in our modern age.

Massachusetts native Babineau joins Cardoso and Hendey on vocals for “Gabriel’s Trumpet,” which came to his attention via Western Massachusetts folk singer-musician and musicologist Tim Eriksen. Their forceful voices are in turn propelled by fiddles, bass, foot percussion, and a cameo by the titular instrument, making for a rousing final track. 

Has “Come In Through the Window” whetted Cardoso’s appetite for recording?

“I’m already thinking about the next one,” he replies. Moreover, he’s been contributing to the album Hendey is working on, in keeping with their ongoing mutual collaboration: Hendey is a member of the Elias Cardoso Band, while Cardoso is part of the Adam Hendey Band; both are slated to perform in BCMFest next month.

Meantime, Cardoso continues to enjoy the numerous opportunities to play for the sheer enjoyment of it, whether at McCarthy’s or in a friend’s living room. 

“We’re just having a whole golden-age trad moment here in the Boston area,” he says. “It’s so exciting to get together with people and find out what we have in common – what tunes we like, which musicians we listen to, what albums we have in our collections – and to learn from one another. I could do this all day, every day.”

Elias Cardoso’s website is elias-cardoso.com