The 19th annual BCMFest (Boston Celtic Music Fest) will take place in virtual format from Jan. 13 to Jan. 16, with some of Greater Boston’s favorite Celtic acts, including Matt & Shannon Heaton, Hanneke Cassel & Mike Block, Copley Street, Rakish, and Scottish Fish.

Also on hand for BCMFest 2022 will be: Jenna Moynihan; Alasdair White & Alan Murray; Glenville; Ethan Setiawan & Neil Pearlman; the trio of Nathan Gourley, Laura Feddersen & Devin McCabe; Casey Murray & Molly Tucker; the Portland Country Dance Orchestra; Leland Martin & Conor Hearn; Rachel Clemente & Dan Houghton; The Treaty Trio; Molly Pinto Madigan; the Faux Paws; Elizabeth & Ben Anderson; Sarah Collins & Jonathan Vocke; Seán Heely & Owen Kennedy; the Boston Scottish Orchestra; and the Carroll Sisters.

In addition, the festival will present a screening of “My Gentle Harp,” a short documentary by area musician Julian Loida that features Irish dance performer/choreographer Kieran Jordan.

All BCMFest 2022 performances will be available for viewing on passim.org/bcmfest and directly on the Club Passim YouTube and Facebook pages. Some acts will appear via livestream, others through videos pre-recorded in Club Passim with no audience or at other locations. Donations of $25 are suggested to support the festival artists.

BCMFest is a program of Passim, the Cambridge nonprofit that supports the Boston-area music community through Club Passim in Harvard Square, a music school, artist grants, and outreach initiatives. 

As a complement to BCMFest 2022, the Passim School of Music will present online workshops with Shannon Heaton and Alasdair White on Jan. See passim.org/school-of-music/classes-workshops for details.

After BCMFest went all-virtual last year, organizers had hoped to return the festival to an-person event, and as recently as mid-December were planning along those lines. But the rapid Omicron variant outbreak in Boston and elsewhere raised concerns over the challenges of ensuring health and safety at a multiple-day festival with some three dozen acts and a continually shifting audience.

 “Out of an abundance of caution for our artists, staff and patrons, we as a committee have decided to once again go to a virtual format for the festival,” read a statement issued by the BCMFest organizers earlier this month.

The brainchild of flutist Shannon Heaton and fiddler Laura Cortese, BCMFest is both a celebration and a showcase of the richness and diversity in Greater Boston’s offerings of Irish, Scottish, Cape Breton, and other Celtic and Celtic-inspired music and dance. With a roster heavy on locally based talent, the festival in recent years also has invited performers who, while not area residents themselves, have been major influences and sources of inspiration for many in Boston’s Celtic music community: singer Karan Casey, fiddlers Liz Carroll and Kevin Henderson, the fiddle-cello duo of Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas, Cape Breton fiddler Wendy MacIsaac and singer Mary Jane Lamond, and dancer Kevin Doyle.

Updates and other festival details are available at passim.org/bcmfest.