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Lori Lander Murphy

Music

The Return of BUA

Sometimes, here in this East Coast mecca of Irish music, we tend to forget that our forefathers occasionally immigrated their way deeper into the heartland of America…all the way to Chicago, even.

Which is a very good thing, since the Irish-American group BUA calls the Midwest home. And an even better thing is that they are making a return visit to the Philadelphia Irish Center on Saturday, March 6 for a show sponsored by the Philadelphia Ceili Group.

And, if you can handle still one more great thing: BUA co-founder and fiddle player, Chris Bain, talked to me about the band whose name is the Irish word for “Innate Gift.”

“We are all actively tied to the tradition of Irish music,” explained Bain. “I grew up surrounded by Irish and Scottish music. My dad plays the guitar and mandolin, and my mom plays the harp and guitar. Music was just always around, and always encouraged. It was just normal to always have musicians like Kevin Burke and Ged Foley staying with us.”

A little bit of background on the rest of the group: Jackie Moran, co-founder of the group and bodhran player, was born in County Tipperary and moved to Chicago with his family at age 10; Detroit-born Sean Gavin, who plays the flute and the uilleann pipes is the son of County Clare fiddler Mick Gavin; Brian Hart, who plays the concertina and is the lead vocalist, is fluent in Irish; Minnesota born guitar player Brian Miller has been playing Irish music since age 17, under the influence of Twin City transplants like County Derry guitarist and singer Daithi Sproule, and County Offaly accordion player Paddy O’Brien.

“BUA is a product of the Irish diaspora. All the immigrants who came over in search of new lives, they brought the music with them,” Bain went on. “And there was a lot of back and forth in the days of immigration, songs going back and forth between the countries.”

“Jackie and I initially got the band together a little after 2000 with a few other guys. It was around 2006 when we started performing with our current line-up…I’ve always loved being part of an ensemble and I love the presentation of the music.”

An active touring band that doesn’t “tour all the time,” BUA has been garnering increasing acclaim as they play at some of the major festivals and music venues in the United States, “from Maine to Montana,” as well Canada.

“The great thing about Irish music is that it’s a social event,” Bain said. “It’s nice to go out and hear live music, and have a pint or a coffee and chat with people. And we’re looking forward to teaching the workshops in Philly, it’s always interesting doing them…there’s a real social aspect to the workshops as well.”

I was fortunate to be a witness to the backstage creative process that is behind BUA’s success when I watched them work out a new song last September at the Bethlehem Celtic Classic. “Soldier, Soldier,” a traditional ballad that tells the tale of a young lass who is sure she will get to marry the fighting man she fancies, if only she can provide him, a verse at a time, with the clothes he requires for a proper wedding.

“We like doing a bit of the obscure stuff,” Chris laughed. “But we’re also confident enough to do stuff that’s been done before with our own spin.”

“The title track on our album ‘An Spealadoir,’ we didn’t know when we were recording it that it was also on a Danu album. I’m glad we didn’t realize it before we did it…they are two totally different versions of the song.”

“We’ve got a new CD in the works, it will be our third,” says Chris. “We recorded a live album in 2007, and then ‘An Spealadoir’ in 2009. Our challenge now is that as a band we’re in a sort of limbo land. We’re not a brand-new thing anymore, we’re not a pub band, but we’re not Lunasa or Danu. It’s a good place, though.”

February 26, 2010 by Lori Lander Murphy

News, People

The Roses Beat the Winter Blues

Jocelyn McGillian, the 2009 Rose, with her sisters, all future Roses?

With a winter full of snow, snow and more snow, the Philadelphia Rose of Tralee Winter Blues BBQ held last Saturday at The Willows in Radnor went a long way towards banishing those blah feelings!

Managing Director of the Mid-Atlantic Rose of Tralee Sarah Conaghan, who was recently named one of Irish Echo’s Top 40 Under 40, organized the barbecue as a fundraiser for the Susan G. Komen Mothers Day Breast Cancer Walk.

“We raised close to $1,000 for our team, The Philadelphia Rose of Tralee. And we had a great turn-out, over 150 people,” Conaghan announced.

February 25, 2010 by Lori Lander Murphy

Music

An Irishman, an American, and a Canadian Walk Up on the Stage. . .

Shannon Lambert-Ryan and RUNA.

What happens when the Celtic music of three artists (Shannon Lambert-Ryan, Fionan de Barra and Cheryl Prashker) from three different countries (the United States, Ireland and Canada) comes together? RUNA happens.The trio, in the relatively short time they’ve been playing together, has found a way to take traditional, and non-traditional, songs that haven’t been played in awhile and “Celtic them up,” in the words of singer Lambert-Ryan.

Take the song “Jealousy,” the title track from their recently released CD. “Jealousy was the first song we worked on last summer. Our arrangement isn’t the same as everything that’s out there…it’s edgy, quirky, fresh. All three of us have our own influences that include classical, jazz and musical theater. We don’t want to re-perform what’s already been done; we want to recreate the music and give it our own kick.”

The name RUNA means “mystery” or “secret lore,” and when the three are onstage together, there is truly a mystical quality to their playing. Prashker’s percussion, de Barra’s guitar and Lambert-Ryan’s vocals create a lyrical sound that is at once unique as well as seamless. Frequently joined by Isaac Alderson on the flute, whistle and uileann pipes, there’s a sense that the music is coming from one source instead of three different musicians.

Offstage, RUNA members share a similarly close connection with each other. Lambert-Ryan and de Barra were married in April of 2009. They met at the 2006 Philadelphia Folk Fest where de Barra was playing with the Scottish band Fiddler’s Bid.

“There was a performer’s party Saturday night and I bought her a lemonade. We met again on Sunday, and spent the day hanging out. We were friends for a long time, then when Shannon said she wanted to record a CD [her 2008 album ‘Across the Pond’], I said, ‘You have to come here [to Dublin] to record it,’” explained de Barra.

That could be arranged because de Barra, who has been Moya Brennan’s guitarist for over 10 years, had merged his own recording equipment with Brennan’s to form Mo Studios in Dublin.
“My first professional gig was with Moya and Riverdance, at Radio City Music Hall…it was purely by chance. I got asked to fill in for the guy doing it, and then got invited to play more afterwards.”

The Dublin-born de Barra claims a family full of musicians. Four out of the seven offspring make a professional living at it: brother Cormac plays the harp; Eamonn plays flute, whistle and piano and is part of the band Slide; and brother Ruairi plays guitar and whistle.

Lambert-Ryan is a Philadelphia native who spent a lot of time at The Irish Center growing up. “I took step dancing there, and then I studied voice and theater at Muhlenberg College. I fell in love with music and performing at an early age.”

It was while performing with Guy Mendilow that Shannon met up with percussionist Cheryl Prashker.

“Shannon and I both were a part of the Folk Alliance, and had met up a lot of times. I sat in with the Guy Mendilow Band, and I sometimes put together a little show where I invite other musicians to sit in. I asked Shannon to play because of her Celtic music,” explained Prashker.

Prashker, the Canadian native of the group, now calls Philadelphia home. She and husband Charles Nolan collaborated on songs that she performed while she was with the group CC Railroad. Prashker has an acclaimed background as a drummer with groups like Full Frontal Folk and Jonathan Edwards. Her CD, “It’s All About the Drums,” is a compilation of songs she’s performed with a multitude of artists over the years.
But it’s the three of them united as they play together that has created the RUNA sound.

“It’s how we play off one another, how Cheryl and Fionan play together,” Lambert-Ryan said. “Sometimes it’s changing the chord progression, or the rhythm. We’ll take something we like, and hasn’t been done too much, and change the arrangement to make it our own.”

Like, for instance, the song “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves”
“I came home one day and Fionan said, ‘We’re going to do a Cher song,‘” Lambert-Ryan laughed. “It’s on the ‘Jealousy’ album.” And, as unexpected as it might sound, the song works completely, fitting in with the band’s repertoire and begging to be listened to on repeat.

One of RUNA’s most engaging and addictive songs can only be experienced live, it’s not on their album…a version of the traditional song “The House Carpenter” interspersed with the chorus of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene.”

“We were playing around with the ‘The House Carpenter,’ working through the verses. There are many versions of the song, and a lot of verses…we wanted to craft the song to fit our style without changing the song. At the same time, we were listening to ‘Jolene.’ One day Fionan and I were in the car and started chatting about what to do with them, and I started humming. I realized I could sing both of them in the same key, and Cheryl could add something percussive underneath,” explained Lambert-Ryan.

Fortunately, there are opportunities for the Philly audience to experience not only this version of “The House Carpenter/Jolene” but all of RUNA’s songs beginning Saturday, February 13th 8:00PM at Concerts at the Crossing, Titusville, PA. Tickets are $20, for further information call 609-406-1424.

And on Sunday, February 28th 7:30PM, RUNA will be opening for Maura O’Connell at the Sellersville Theater in Sellersville, PA. For tickets and other information, call 215-257-5808.

February 10, 2010 by Lori Lander Murphy

Music

Cherish The Ladies’ Newest Lady: County Cork Singer Michelle Burke

Cherish the Ladies' Michelle Burke.

Ahhh, timing…in the words attributed to that mighty poet of ancient Greece, Hesiod, “Observe due measure, for right timing is in all things the most important factor.”

Believe it, because Michelle Burke is living proof of the power of good timing.

I first stumbled across Michelle Burke quite by accident, while surfing MySpace about a year and a half ago. I stopped to listen to the tracks she had put up on her page, and stayed to replay her hauntingly haunting version of the traditional ballad “Molly Bawn.” And, so while I was sitting around waiting for what seemed an eternity for her debut solo CD, “Pulling Threads,” to be released, Michelle was keeping quite busy being the new girl singer with the Irish-American group, Cherish the Ladies.

“In early 2008, around the same time I was recording my CD, I heard that Cherish the Ladies was looking for a new singer. I knew Kathleen Boyle (the group’s piano player), and so I decided to submit some tracks. I sent [group leader] Joannie Madden ‘Where Are You Tonight?’ and ‘I Shall Be Released.'” The next thing were some trial concerts, and then the word that the job was hers.

Growing up in rural County Cork (the nearest village was 4 miles away), Michelle was surrounded by music. “My father, Michael, played weddings and dinner dances and I would go with him. I remember I sang in my first competition when I was 7. I sang the song ‘Foggy Dew’ and I was wearing a blue dress,” Michelle laughed. “The local secondary school I went to just happened to be a great one for music; it was just a coincidence. There was a big choir there, and it was great experience.”

From there, Michelle decided to go on to the music program at University College Cork, initially with the intent of studying piano. “I didn’t know what else I could do, besides music. My mother thought I was stone mad! I switched over to singing, and did everything from medieval singing to classical to sean-nos[old-time singing]. I realized that singing the classical music wasn’t for me, but then I was lucky to be able to study the sean nos tradition with Iarla Ó Lionaird and Eilis Ni Shuilleabhain. UCC has a big emphasis on traditional music, and I began to appreciate that I could focus on singing the type of songs that I enjoyed.”

Michelle followed that up with a year at The University of Limerick doing a new course on traditional music. She returned to Cork and started teaching music to young students. After a few years, the sense of “What am I doing?” hit, and Michelle decided to join some friends in a move to Edinburgh.

“There’s a big music scene there, but I still wasn’t sure what direction I was going to go. I became involved in community projects, working at drop-in centers with teens who might not have the opportunity to study music otherwise. There would be 10 weeks of workshops, and then they’d record a demo CD.”

Meanwhile, there were singing gigs, opportunities for Michelle to find her style and develop her voice. “I didn’t have a lot of confidence before that, so it became a big achievement personally. Singing became something I got a lot of satisfaction out of.”

And then the time was right to record that CD. The mix of songs showcases her diverse tastes and talents. From Bob Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released” to Tom Waits “Broken Bicycles.” From Sandy Wright’s “Hey Mama” to Chris Stuart’s “Springhill Mine.”

“I decided to record songs that I wanted to sing…I went for it. I knew I had to sing ‘I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen.’ It’s a song my granny used to sing to my Aunt Kathleen, and my granny passed away two years ago; she used to go to all the gigs. We recorded it in one take…I couldn’t stop crying.”

“I included the song ‘I Will be Stronger than That;” it’s been recorded by Faith Hill and Maura O’Connell. Maura has been one of my biggest influences.As a teenager I used to listen to her all the time. It was such an honor to actually get to sing with her…she’s such a great storyteller and, she’s just fantastic.”

So, back to this timing thing: In addition to having “Pulling Threads” out, Cherish the Ladies has just released its latest CD, “A Star in the East,” an album of Christmas songs. It’s Michelle’s debut recording with the group. They’re finishing up their latest tour on December 23, but it will pick up again in January. And come, March 4, 2010, they’ll be back in the area to play The Grand Opera House in Wilmington, DE.

December 17, 2009 by Lori Lander Murphy

History, Music

Traveling with the Irish Down Tin Pan Alley

Limerick-born Mick Moloney, traditional Irish musician and NYU Professor of Music, admits to having once had a particular snobbishness toward the kind of Irish-American songs Bing Crosby used to sing. You know them: Songs that flaunted titles like “Who Threw the Overalls in Mrs. Murphy’s Chowder?”

Speaking to a small but captivated audience at Villanova University last Tuesday evening, Moloney gave a lecture titled “If It Wasn’t For the Irish and The Jews.” It’s a moniker shared with both the 1912 song penned by the illustrious Tin Pan Alley song-writing duo of William Jerome and Jean Schwartz, as well as Moloney’s latest CD release. A CD that is the result of manifold years of research, and one that has culminated in an unabashedly uplifting celebration of just those kinds of Irish-American songs that Bing Crosby used to sing (go on…I dare ya…just try and not sing along to “Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly?”)

“I came to the United States in 1971, lured over to play at The Philadelphia Folk Festival, and then to study with Kenny Goldstein in the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Folklore & Folklife,” Moloney said. “I did a lot of touring…and it was during a 1995 tour in the Midwest, the heartland of America, that it flashed in me exactly where these songs came from.”

The tour coincided with the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Irish Famine, and it was this observance, coupled with talking to second and third generation immigrants, that sparked Moloney’s epiphany.

“The immigrants that came to start a new life in America, they came from drama. They weren’t going to talk about the real Ireland, the place they were escaping. They wanted to present images of wholeness and happiness, a place of beauty and innocence where everything was good and wholesome.”

At the same time, the music business was changing. “Stephen Foster, the great grandson of Irish immigrants from County Derry, changed the music industry forever. His song, ‘The Old Folks at Home’ sold 100,000 copies when it was published in 1851. No song had ever sold more than 5,000 copies before that.“

“But by the 1880’s and 90’s…the music business shifted from an Irish to a Jewish enterprise…[and] despite the now overwhelming predominance of Jewish entrepreneurs and performers, Tin Pan Alley continued to issue streams of songs with Irish and Irish-American themes.”

Intrigued by this early twentieth century collaboration between Jewish and Irish American songwriters, Moloney began his concentrated digging into the bygone days of America’s booming songwriting business during the years between 1880 and 1920.
Some of the most curious examples of the blurring of the Irish-Jewish cross-cultural lines show up in the surprising number of songwriters and musicians who changed their names to sound either more Jewish or more Irish, accordingly, in order to further their careers (or so they believed).

“There was the wonderful Nora Bayes, one of the most glamorous figures, she was kind of like the Madonna of her day. She started to sing and be associated with Irish songs, like ‘Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly?’ and ‘When John McCormack Sings a Song.’ She became the darling of Irish America. Turns out that Nora Bayes wasn’t Nora Bayes at all. She was Theodora Goldberg, and she had kept her Jewish identity completely hidden her whole life because she figured, inaccurately in the 1890s, that the business was going to stay Irish as it had always been in the 19th century. And this kind of ambiguity, people hedging their bets, started. And there was an awful lot of it. I’m amazed at how much of it there was.”

Among the other for-instances: William Jerome, co-composer of “If It Wasn’t For the Irish and the Jews” was in truth the son of County Mayo famine immigrant Patrick Flannery. He changed his name when he saw the dominant figures in the business shifting from Irish to Jewish.

And there was also David Braham, who collaborated on songs like “Maggie Murphy’s Home,” with son-in-law Ned Harrigan. David’s last name was originally “Abraham.”

Moloney is nowhere near finished with this topic, “I’ve kind of figured out halfway into how the business switched from Irish to Jewish, but I haven’t figured out the why of it. Why did this happen? Why was this such a comprehensive wipeout, and the Irish turned their attention to politics and business?”

In the meantime, there is music to be savored. Moloney will officially launch “If It Wasn’t For the Irish and the Jews: A Tribute to the Irish and Jewish Influences on Vaudeville and Early Tin Pan Alley” on Saturday, October 24t at the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre in New York City. He will be joined by a cast of musicians that include The Green Fields of America, Susan McKeown, Billy McComisky and Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks.

Oh, and one little Irish Philly sidenote: Musician and publican Gerry Timlin, co-owner of The Shanachie Irish Pub in Ambler, has a harmony vocals credit on the CD!

September 24, 2009 by Lori Lander Murphy

Music

Tommy Sands: His Circle is Wide

The notion of family is an elastic one for Tommy Sands, the song man from County Down. There are his brothers and sister, Ben and Colum and Anne, with whom he records and tours as The Sands Family. And now there are his children Moya and Fionan, who have recorded his latest CD with him and are currently on tour together. And there is, in a larger sense, the world he has traveled and embraced with his songs of peace and tolerance.

Tommy, Moya and Fionan are making a stop at The Sellersville Theater Saturday, August 22, and will be singing songs from their CD, “Let the Circle Be Wide.” Having his children on tour with him, Tommy told me recently over the phone, “is really wonderful, it’s bringing your own home with you. When they were little, I used to record songs and stories they could listen to while I was away.” Having grown up surrounded by the music, they’ve now become a part of it themselves.

“I was going to India to play over there, and my daughter Moya, who’s also very interested in traveling, she said she’d like to go, and I said ‘You can’t go unless you’re a musician!’ Suddenly I heard the fiddle being practiced very, very strongly in her bedroom. So she came with me. Then Fionan had been traveling with Sinead O’Connor, and he decided to join me too. So we all ended up coming together.”

This coming together on the album features Tommy on vocals and guitar, Moya on fiddle, vocals, bodhran and whistle, and Fionan on mandolin and banjo. The first track, “Young Man’s Dream,” (“Aisling an Oigfhir”) is a reworking of that hallowed Irish ballad, “Danny Boy.” Tommy’s version came after a lot of digging into the origins of the song, and is authentic to the words that may have originally belonged to the melody of “The Londonderry Air.”

“The ‘Danny Boy’ lyrics were written in 1910 by Fred Weatherly. He exchanged the first melody for that of ‘The Londonderry Air.’ His song was written in a style with very high notes; the famous long high note in ‘Danny Boy’ is just a passing grace note in the original.”

The last track on the CD, “Let the Circle Be Wide” shares its title with the album, and is a song that Tommy has sung live to audiences all over the world, but has never recorded until now. It’s a song that embodies the coming together between Tommy and his global audience, a means of giving and taking that leaves both artist and audience with a feeling of hope: “Each place has its own incredible type of audience, with so much to be learned.I realized any audience, they have a story to tell. I traveled around Cuba once with a group of Cuban troubadours. We went out in a bus to hurricane-hit villages, people living in little houses, their hearts were very low. But the music was very encouraging, I didn’t want to leave.” “Playing in Moscow was a bit difficult in the sense. I had a good a idea nobody in the audience would understand anything I was saying, so I wrote a song called ‘Armenia’ and the second chorus they were able to sing it with me. Now it was a wonderful situation! I loved it!”

“India is fascinating, too. Old people are very important there. They’re regarded as having great wisdom, and they have very important insight. There’s also so much I have to learn about the music of India…you know, some people say that the music of India and Ireland is connected. And so it is, as well as the music that comes from other parts of the East. What we have in Ireland is related to that.

I remember I met up with a group of people called The Bauls, in Bengal, they’d welcome anyone into their tribe regardless of religion, provided you could sing a song. And one of them asked me, ‘Do you come from the West? What’s this scale you have, do-do-do?’ I said, ‘You mean do-re-mi?’ And he said ‘Yeah!’ and turned around and said ‘Come here lads!’ and the next thing they were all singing ‘do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-si-do…and they sang this most incredible scale that sounded like a sean nos song from the west of Ireland. It was fascinating.”

A kindred spirit to Tommy, Pete Seeger, recently celebrated his 90th birthday concert in Madison Square Garden, and Tommy was asked to perform at the event honoring his friend. “I felt like I was going to see a hero. There was an atmosphere there that was quite incredible. Pete has always been a big inspiration, not only to me but I think to the rest of the world. I played in Tel Aviv, in Jerusalem, Moscow and Pete Seeger’s songs are sung everywhere.”

I asked Tommy how he knew that he, and his songs, would have such a role to play in bringing peace to Ireland, and he left me with these thoughts: “Growing up, I heard the old songs, with subjects about difficult times. I noticed these songs had been sung which I didn’t know very much about. I didn’t plan to be a political songwriter. I was going to observe what’s going on with my own people as a songwriter, you look a little bit into the future, a little bit into what might happen, so the songs are there to be listened to, to contribute to the understanding, maybe not just as an observational thermometer but as a thermostat to some degree as well.”

August 20, 2009 by Lori Lander Murphy

Music

Following in the Family Trad

Shawna and Angelina Carberry, after their show on July 11 at the Irish Center in Philadelphia.

Her great-great grandfather Peter played the melodeon and her great-great grandmother crooned traditional tunes to her grandchildren in “The Holla” near Kenagh, County Longford. Her great-grandfather Kevin played banjo for County Longford ceilis and house dances alongside his pipe-playing brother, Peter. Her grandfather Peter is a stalwart of Irish traditional music, renowned for his accordion and banjo playing, as well as the Manchester trad bands like Toss the Feathers, Skidoo and Good Tradition that he formed.
And her mother Angelina has performed with the all-girl trad group The Bumblebees, and is an outstanding banjo player whose flowing confident style is celebrated for being steeped in the tradition.
So it should come as no surpise that there’s a new kid on this musical block now, and she got to shine onstage at The Irish Center last week alongside her mother, Angelina, and her stepfather Martin Quinn. Shawna won’t turn 12 until August, but she has already discovered her own passion and talent for playing the fiddle.
“I’ve been playing the fiddle for about 7 years I think. I played the piano, too, but I got bored with it. I know 3 or 4 tunes on the banjo, and I took Kathleen Coneely’s class on the whistle at The Swannanoa Gathering in North Carolina,” Shawna told me when we sat down for a chat after her lovely performance. “I don’t really read by music, I learn by ear. Listening to the tunes and then learning them. Most days I practice for an hour. I did get really lazy for a bit, and went off it for a month,” Shawna laughed, “but now I’m always playing.”
Her teachers have included Connemara’s highly acclaimed fiddler Liz Kane, as well as step-dad Martin. “I like playing with him and my family. It’s more fun practicing with them.”
Shawna has so much fun playing with her family, in fact, that she has started a band with her aunt Roisin Carberry, 10, on the box, and her cousin Hannah Lane, 12, who sings and is learning the banjo and whistle. “We play in the pubs and at sessions. I like doing it, it’s really fun. We need more practicing but since we moved to County Longford from Galway last year we’re closer now and see each other more.”
Moving back to Longford also means she gets more lessons and encouragement from her grandfather Peter, as well. “Whenever I see him, he always asks ‘How are ya hon, have you been practicing?’ and if I say no, he says ‘Why not?’ and starts giving it out to me,” Shawna giggled. “But if I say yes, he says ‘Good woman. What tunes have you been learning?’”
All that practicing is paying off in a big way; Angelina revealed that Peter is going to ask Shawna to play on the CD that he’s currently recording. Pretty exciting stuff, as Shawna’s hazel eyes grew wide and her smile beamed even brighter, “He is? I didn’t know that!”
But for the next few weeks, this lovely and talented young musician is going to be kept busy touring the States. “It’s my third time here,” she says. “ I get to travel with my parents when I’m not in school and I like when I get to play a few tunes at the gigs with them.”
She also has found a way to preserve a little of the trip to take home with her, “When we’re going from place to place, I have my video camera with me, and I take video as we’re driving, telling a little bit about where we are.”

Her mother smiled as Shawna relayed this information, clearly quite delighted with every facet of her daughter–this brightly emerging talent in the next generation of the Carberry musical dynasty.

If you missed the Carberry-Quinn concert, and can’t wait for Shawna’s appearance on Peter Carberry’s upcoming CD, listen to her here.

Check out our photos too.

And see even more photos of the event.

July 16, 2009 by Lori Lander Murphy

Music

A Video Tour of Irish Philly’s Music Scene

Our pal and wandering videographer Lori Lander Murphy has been everywhere these past couple of weeks, with a particular focus on music.

Let’s start with Lori’s piece de resistance, Celtic Woman. She offers a few views of a recent concert at the Mann. There’s video of the band Cruinn at the Mermaid, and a session at St. Stephen’s Green.

Without further ado:

Celtic Woman performs “Danny Boy” at The Mann, Saturday, June 13, 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twBbdC_uig4

Mairead Nesbitt, with Celtic Woman, performs at The Mann
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTTbEZeNmxg

Celtic Woman, “Isle of Hope, Isle of Tears,” with Tommy Martin on the pipes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNVNQwtS2bU

St. Stephen’s Green, Friday, June 12, 2009 ~ 40th Birthday Party Session
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNYDSrJJ8ko

Tommy Martin, Darin Kelly and Padraic Keane on the garden patio at St. Stephen’s Green
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPgs06MSF2M

Paraic, Paddy, Darin, Tommy and Sean
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7SmXY1LoXs

Cruinn performs “The Town I Love So Well” at The Mermaid June 17, 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVhxX_455u4

Cruinn and “The Boys of Barr na Sraide” at The Mermaid June 17, 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10CPwPVVSHU

Cruinn performs “Hard Times” at The Mermaid June 17, 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_gkXupUGPc

Jim McGill sings “Stuttering Lovers” at The Mermaid June 17, 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwN1yB-3JsA

July 3, 2009 by Lori Lander Murphy

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