Paddy O’Brien and Nathan Gourley
This Sunday, the annual Mass of the Golden Rose will be said at St. Patrick’s Church in King of Prussia, starting at noon. Irish Thunder Pipes and Drums, the AOH Notre Dame Div. 1 Color Guard, and St. Patrick’s Choir will take part. An Irish festival, with music, dancing, food and drink, will follow.
A ceili, featuring Tom McHugh and Jimmy and John McGillian, is scheduled for Saturday night at St Patrick’s–bring your dancing shoes.
Semi-finals and finals are scheduled for the Philadelphia GAA this Sunday, along with camogie (girls hurling) and a face-off between the Delco Gaels and the Glenside Gaelic Club. See our story.
On Wednesday, Cork musicians Diarmuid MacSuibhne and his brother, Amhlaoibh McSweeney, will be performing together at Tir na nOg, 1324 Hamilton Avenue, in Trenton.
Things are relatively quiet until next week, when Blackthorn, Galway Guild and the Shanty’s perform at Harrah’s Philadelphia—which is actually in Chester–for Irish Paradise Night. Sounds dreamy.
Then on Sunday, August 30, one of Irish traditional music’s noted players and song collectors, accordion champion Paddy O’Brien, of County Offaly, will be performing in concert with Nathan Gourley, a fiddler from Wisconsin, at the Coatesville Cultural Society in Coatesville. O’Brien has collected more than 3,000 jigs, reels, honrpipes, airs and marches, including some rare tunes. He has also taught at the prestigious Willie Clancy Summer School at Milltown Malbay in County Clare, at North Carolina’s Swannanoa Gathering, at the Catskills Irish Arts Week in East Durham, NY, and has served as a master artist in the Minnesota State Arts Board Folk Arts Apprenticeship Program.
You can save $3 on tickets by ordering in advance from the Coatesville Irish Traditional Music Series.
September is just around the corner, and you know what that means. Yes, school starts, but so does the Philadelphia Ceili Group’s annual Festival of Irish Traditional Music and Dance (September 10-12). The all-girl group, Girsa, is scheduled for the Saturday night concert, but there’s music for two days before that–a singers’ night, a ceili, and music and workshops all of Saturday. We’ll have more details later.
Running simultaneously: the Northeast Irish Festival featuring country and Celtic rock bands at Canstatter’s in Northeast Philadelphia. For you boxing fans, on September 11, the boxers from Holy Family in Belfast will go up against the Harrowgate boxers from Philly in their annual match-up, also at Canstatter’s.
The AOH Fall Irish Festival in N. Wildwood will be clashing with another big event this year–the Pope’s visit to Philadelphia the weekend of September 25. Our advice: Get outa town early and just stay at the shore until Pope Francis is safely gone. Hotel and motel reservations are hard to come by at this late date, so don’t delay in making yours. Cathy Maguire is the headliner for the concert at Wildwood High School and she’ll be accompanied by 13-year-old New Jersey fiddle phenom Haley Richardson. There will be Irish music everywhere all weekend. We’ll have more later.
