•The annual Rockport Celtic Festival at the Shalin-Liu Performance Center will take place Sept. 10-13 with a focus on the four seasons as expressed through music and words. Among the performers joining artistic director and harpist Maeve Gilchrist will be Nuala Kennedy, Seamus Egan, The Fretless, as well as locals like Copley Street and David Coffin. You can get details here and read a preview here. Some of the artists also are appearing at other events in the area [see below].

•Boston-area Scottish fiddler Isabel Oliart is celebrating her new album this month with a launch concert at Club Passim on September 15  and a show at City Winery Boston on September 30. She’ll be accompanied by fiddler Anne Hooper and multi-instrumentalist Sammy Wetstein. [Look for an interview with Oliart coming up this fall in Boston Irish].

•The Lowell Irish Festival returns on Sept. 12 at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium, free of charge and open to all ages. Along with festival headliner, U2 tribute band The Joshua Tree, this year’s lineup includes Boston-area musicians like the duo of Clare Fraser (fiddle) and Simon Lace (guitar, tenor banjo); singer-songwriter Jimmy Kelly, who recently released his first album – and yes, we’ll get to that; vocalist Shelagh Rose and guitarist-backing vocalist Brendan Keenan, who perform classic Irish songs as well as contemporary folk-rock and country material. Other performers:  JD and The Stonemasons, Rebel Collective, The Pourmen, Indiana Stones, Heavey Quinn Step Dancing, Tom O’Carroll, and Eamonn Sheehan. Details at the festival website.

•The Gothard Sisters open The Burren’s Brian O’Donovan Legacy Series fall season on Sept. 16. Native to the Pacific Northwest, the sisters (Greta, guitar, violin, octave mandolin; Willow, violin, mandolin, bodhran; Solana, violin, whistle, bodhran, djembe, percussion) are known for their high-octane stage energy featuring original music built around traditional and modern Celtic styles along with world and classical influences, as well as fleadh-level dance prowess and instrumental and vocal firepower. Their 2025 album “Moment in Time” – their 17th overall, including a live recording – displays a band that knows how to entertain: tune sets played with precision and power, and songs mainly built around natural elements – sun, wind, water, mountains, forests – that are sung with agreeable amounts of sincerity and sentiment. Tickets, details here.

•Club Passim in Harvard Square will host the Sept. 21 concert by vocalist-guitarist Adam Hendey to celebrate his new album, “Illuminate”; you can read more about that here.

Cécilia, which performs at the club on Sept. 3, showcases the fascinating amalgam of First Nations, Irish, Scottish, Cape Breton, and American influences in the Quebecois music tradition. Built around the rapport between accordionist Timi Turmel and pianist Erin Leahy (a member of the renowned Leahy family band), as well as fiddler Xavier Leahy, Erin’s nephew, Cécilia’s sound can be explosive, lithe, dramatic, contemplative, and, above all, buoyant – sometimes in the same medley. Witness their take on traditional Irish tunes like “Morning Dew” and “Morrison’s Jig,” for example, or O’Carolan’s classic “Si Bhèag Si Mhòr,” Adam Sutherland’s crazily infectious “Road to Errogie,” or “Hommage à Dorothée” by the legendary Quebec accordionist Philippe Bruneau. Probably at least as much fun to watch ’em.

Scottish quartet Cantrip, making a return trip to Passim on Sept. 9, has been around a good long while (starting in the late 1990s, albeit with a different line-up), but has never shown any signs of staleness. That’s certainly true since they were joined a few years ago by Alasdair White, who along with original member Jon Bews forms a talented and dynamic fiddle duo, a potent complement to Dan Houghton (pipes, whistles, flutes, guitar, vocals) – another co-founder – and Boston-area native Eric McDonald (guitar, mandolin, bouzouki, vocals). But all along, Cantrip has shown a penchant for bringing in other musical influences – funk, metal, bluegrass, swing, klezmer – to enrich its traditional Scottish roots.

On Sept. 13, it will be The Fretless (also appearing at the Rockport Celtic Festival), a Canadian “chambergrass” quartet with ties to Boston. Chambergrass mixes Celtic, old-time, bluegrass and other folk/traditional styles with chamber music instrumentation and dynamics. Former Berklee College of Music students Trent Freeman (violin, viola) and Eric Wright (cello) originally co-founded the band with Karrnel Sawitsky (violin, viola) and another Berklee student, Ivonne Hernandez, who was succeeded by Ben Plotnick (violin, viola). Over its 15 years, The Fretless has been open to new routes: Their 2021 release “Open House” featured all vocal tracks with guest singers, including a cover of Bruce Cockburn’s “Wondering Where the Lions Are”; they co-wrote three songs with singer-songwriter Madeleine Roger on 2024’s “Glasswing.” 

From chambergrass to “chamber-folk”: Skye Consort & Emma Björling returns to Passim on Sept. 30 with a mix of early music and Scandinavian, Irish, British Isles, and French-Canadian traditions as well as their own compositions. Percussionist Björling — who’s also worked with a cappella Scandinavian group Kongero — shares lead vocals with Seán Dagher (bouzouki, banjo), while cellist Amanda Keesmaat and Alex Kehler and Simon Alexandre (the two alternate on appearances with the group) provide a striking bowed-string presence on nyckelharpa and violin. Their repertoire includes a pairing of the French-Canadian song “Un Ivrogne à Table” with the Irish jig “Foxhunter’s”; a song in Swedish that interpolates the Scottish tune “She’s Sweetest When She’s Naked” and references a Quebecois tune as well; a set of Shetland tunes; and familiar songs from the British Isles/Irish tradition like “Sam Hall” and “Blow the Windy Morning.”

Tickets and other details on all Club Passim shows available here .

•Nuala Kennedy and Alan Murray – also playing at the Rockport Celtic Festival – kick off the fall season on Sept. 12 for the Live at The Druid series, which actually takes place at The Lilypad, next door to The Druid in Cambridge’s Inman Square. Kennedy (flute, whistle, vocals) has brought her innovative approach to Irish and Scottish music on her five solo albums, as well as to a host of collaborations that include Eamon O’Leary and John Doyle in The Alt, the Snowflake Trio (with Norwegian musicians Vegar Vårdal and Frode Haltli) ,and more recently as part of the revived Solas. A masterful accompanist and singer, Murray (guitar, bouzouki, vocals) has also been in Solas, as well as Lúnasa, Eileen Ivers, Battlefield Band, We Banjo 3, and FourWinds. Tickets here. 

•Something a little different: Father Ray Kelly, better known as “The Singing Priest of Ireland,” comes to the Irish Cultural Centre of Greater Boston in Canton on Sept. 10. A native of Tyrrellspass, Co. Westmeath, Fr. Kelly gained worldwide fame for his performance of REM’s “Everybody Hurts” on “Britain’s Got Talent” in 2018. But he’d already made an impression in 2014 when a video of him singing the Leonard Cohen classic “Hallelujah” at a wedding he officiated went viral and led him to record a 10-track album, “Where I Belong.” He’s also appeared on BBC Radio 4 and, believe it or not, the Irish edition of “Dancing with the Stars” (no, he and his partner didn’t win). Singing has been a lifetime pursuit for Fr. Kelly, even while he was studying for the priesthood: He was part of a boy band named Rafiki that entertained at various gigs and concerts and recorded a single to assist local charities. Tickets, information available through the ICCGB website .

•Celtic Thunder will make stops at Memorial Hall in Plymouth (Sept. 18) and Medford’s Chevalier Theatre (Sept. 19) as part of its “Celebrate Your Favorite Songs” tour – spotlighting popular selections from its almost two decades of big-stage performances full of theatricality as well as sumptuous orchestration. Starting out as a quintet, the ensemble often tours now as a quartet with a rotating cast; original member Damian McGinty, Emmet Cahill, Neil Byrne and Ronan Scolard are the principals for Celtic Thunder’s 18th tour of North America. Tickets for both shows are available through this link. 

•Rocking Scottish Celtic octet Skerryvore appears at The Center for Arts in Natick (TCAN) on Sept. 2, touring in support of its upcoming album, “Beautiful Mistakes,” which they say “celebrates the beauty found in life’s imperfections.” Formed by the Gillespie brothers Daniel (accordion) and Martin (pipes, whistles, accordion), the band early on took inspiration from the “West Coast Ceilidh” style, adding in rock, pop, jazz, Cajun and country influences. Besides the Gillespies, its members are Fraser West (drums), Alec Dalglish (guitar, vocals), Scott Wood (pipes, whistles), Craig Espie (fiddle), Jodie Bremaneson (bass), and Alan Scobie (keyboards). A four-time Scotland’s Live Act of the Year award, Skerryvore has also launched its own annual festival, “Oban Live,” while touring Europe, the US, the Middle East, and China. Tickets, information here.