Patrick Mangan and Ryan McGiver
In case you missed it: last Saturday night, a packed house was treated to the Philadelphia Ceili Group’s presentation of the Pat Mangan and Ryan McGiver concert.
Mangan, the fiddle player who joined the Riverdance troupe at the tender age of 16, and McGiver, who plays regularly with singer-songwriter Susan McKeown, met three years ago at the summer traditional music mecca otherwise known as The Catskills Irish Arts Week.
“I saw Pat playing, and I asked ‘Who is that guy? He’s good.’ Even though we both had played around New York, our paths had never crossed before,” McGiver explained. But to see the two of them now, you’d think they’d been musical partners all their lives. “We have a lot of fun playing together, it’s really good energy. We’d been playing together in sessions in New York, and we realized that it just works. So we thought, why not do a tour.”
Why not, indeed? With both musicians working on upcoming solo CD releases (Mangan already has an album titled “Farewell to Ireland” and McGiver can currently be heard on McKeown’s brilliant “Singing in the Dark” cd), there will hopefully be more tours by this duo in the near future.
But for those who missed out last Saturday, we have some videos to introduce you to these two.
