Mick Moloney At St. Malachy Church
On Sunday, for the 24th year in a row, musician and folklorist Mick Moloney, PhD, brought his most musical friends to the soaring, gilded sanctuary of St. Malachy Church, a parish founded by Irish immigrants and the Sisters of Mercy more than 150 years ago, in North Philadelphia. As usual, “Mick Moloney and Friends” played to a standing-room-only audience.
The annual “Irish Concert” raises money for the church and particularly the school, which is not financially supported by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Instead, as an independent parish school, St. Malachy relies on donations, much from the Irish community, to help the families of its mainly African-American and Hispanic students afford tuition. There aren’t a lot of dropouts–or even no-shows–at St. Malachy’s School. More than 90 percent of its kindergarteners test 10 percent above grade level in reading and 83 percent test at “mastery.” Most students go on to independent, parochial, charter, or magnet high schools after graduation.
Moloney brought with him a stellar group of performers, including some local lights. Dana Lyn, a native of Los Angeles, who often accompanies Moloney, is a classically trained violinist of Chinese extraction who took up Irish traditional music after graduating from Oberlin Conservatory. She has toured with Moloney’s “Green Fields of Ireland”–a collection of some of the finest Irish traditional players in the world–and has accompanied traditional singer, Susan McKeown. Robbie O’Connell, a nephew of the Clancy Brothers, is a musician and singer-songwriter from Tipperary who also tours with Green Fields of America and has appeared before with Moloney at St. Malachy. Button accordanist Billy McComiskey was at St. Malachy last year. A Brooklyn native, he is a master of the East Galway accordian style, gleaned from his teacher, the legendary Sean McGlynn. New to the Moloney coterie of friends is Joey Abarta, a California native who has won national and international championships in both uilleann pipe and bodhran.
Also on the bill, Paraic Keane, son of The Chieftain’s fiddler Sean Keane and nephew of noted button box player James Keane, who is a fiddler of note himself. Now living in Philadelphia, he plays with many different groups in the region, including the Paul Moore band. Joining the group again this year was Moloney’s friend, Saul Brody, a folklorist, singer, and blues harmonica player who offered a song, he said, he “learned from Lead Belly,” the legendary American folk and blues musician from Louisiana.
The concert was dedicated to the memory of the late Robert F. Mcgovern, professor emeritus of the University of the Arts, sculptor, and long-time supporter of St. Malachy church. His carved wooden statue of Nazi-era martyr Franz Jagerstatter sits just outside St. Malachy’s sanctuary.
View our photos of the event.
