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Edel Fox
Music, People

Trad Music’s Newest Shining Star

Edel Fox

Edel Fox

To describe the concertina playing of Edel Fox is really to describe the woman herself: joyful, masterful, brilliant, engaging and effortlessly seductive.

At 24, her accomplishments and accolades are beyond the pale…and completely justified. The release of her first solo CD, “Chords & Beryls” coincides with her sixth summer spent touring the States, an annual tradition since she began playing and teaching at The Catskills Irish Arts Week. This year, Fox and Connemara fiddlers Liz and Yvonne Kane embarked on a collaborative concert tour that found them in Philadelphia last week for a Philadelphia Ceili Group performance.

“The name of the CD came from my grandmother and my aunt, who represent an older generation of the music,” Fox explained. “A beryl is a variation in the melody, a twist in the tune. “The Reel with the Beryl” is a tune by Mrs. Crotty–she was a very prominent exponent of the concertina. Herself and Aggie White and Mrs. Harrington all helped to put women on the map in terms of trad music in the 1950s and 60s. They were among the first to play in public. It really was a starting point for Irish women in music, allowing them to gain prominence on an instrument.”

By the age of seven, Fox was already gaining prominence on her concertina in her hometown of Miltown Malbay, County Clare, where her teachers included Noel Hill, Dymphna O’Sullivan, Tim Collins and Tony O’Connell. In 2004, Fox was named the TG4 Young Musician of the Year, and in 2006 she and fiddle player Ronan O’Flaherty recorded a CD together, aptly titled “Edel Fox & Ronan O’Flaherty.”

“We got so much enjoyment from doing that CD,” Fox said. “We were both very naïve to the whole process, but we loved being able to create something that people enjoyed.”

“I never felt ready to go into the studio to record my own CD, it really felt quite daunting. But last summer in the car ride up from Elkins, West Virginia to The Catskills, I was traveling with Liz and Yvonne, and they said, ‘You should do a solo album and have it ready for next summer so we can tour.’”

“Around Christmas I got on the ball,” Fox laughed. “I recorded in a studio in Miltown Malbay from January to April. I just needed a little push. I’m slow to do something, but once I put my head down it comes easy enough. I just need a little encouragement, that’s all.”

“I’d been learning a lot of tunes, some of them came from Bobby Casey, and there’s a few newer tunes as well. It’s quite a mix of stuff.”

Quite a lovely mix of stuff, and quite a lovely mix of musicians as well. Joining Edel on her cd are Jack Talty, Padraic O’Reilly, Mick Connelly, Brian Mooney, Johnny Ringo McDonagh and Una McLaughlin.

[And because I’m the writer, and I get to have favorites, this is where I mention that “The Joyous Waltz” which Edel plays with Jackie Daly on her album, is the track most listened to on my copy of the CD. It’s absolutely gorgeous. I’m also partial to the reels “The Honeymoon/Lough Mountain/Love at the Endngs.” But the tune that wins best title award is definitely “Kitty Got a Clinking Coming From the Fair.” On her CD notes, Edel writes that she has yet to find out what a “clinking” is.]

“It was a funny time of year. I’d been working for two years on getting my Masters degree in music therapy, and my final semester was this past January to May. But that’s a typical me thing to do, I work better under pressure instead of spreading it out,” Fox explained.

“I’m qualified to practice the psychotherapy and psychology of music. I really love it, using music to help people with social and emotional difficulties. My work experiences include counseling adults in a psychiatric unit and adolescents in a care home. Every client, every patient, has different needs…but they have problems expressing emotions or communicating verbally. Music can help with that, whether through listening, songwriting, instrument-playing. Sometimes it’s through improvisation—musical or percussive. It’s about bringing two people in one place together to create communication.”

In addition to her studies and album recording, this past spring Fox also continued the teaching that she’s been doing since she herself was 16.

“I teach concertina five evenings a week, from 4 or 5 until 9 at night. It’s so different from the work I do as a therapist. Teaching is about how to do ornamentation, it’s directive while the therapy is collaborative. It’s challenging, but I absolutely love it.”

“I started teaching at The Catskills my first summer there. My first time coming to The States was when I was 17, with the Comhaltas tour. I met so many people out of that, and got asked back to do gigs, and to do The Irish Arts Week the next year. It’s been great.”

Playing the 1896 Jeffries concertina that she bought from a dealer in England eight years ago (“I love the tone of an older instrument, nothing is better than the tone of a mature concertina”), Fox will soon return to Ireland to begin her Irish tour with The Kane Sisters, promoting their CDs at home. With September and the start of the teaching year right around the corner, Edel is poised to return to the busy schedule she knows and thrives on.

“I’ll be job hunting,” Fox laughed. “But I’ll have plenty to keep me busy. I love it.”

August 5, 2010 by
Music

Celtic Woman: A Review

Fiery fiddler Mairead Nesbitt takes center stage. Photo by Brian Mengini

Fiery fiddler Mairead Nesbitt takes center stage. Photo by Brian Mengini

By Brian Mengini

A jam-packed crowd filled the Mann Center to see and hear the angelic voices of Celtic Woman last weekend as the group, founded by Riverdance’s David Downes and Sharon Browne. They brought a nice mix of songs from their new CD, “Songs from the Heart,” and favorites from past recordings.

With voices that are classically trained, Celtic Woman can send you into a drift with their soft ballads then bring you back in with a fiery fiddle solo by the irrepressible Mairead Nesbitt. Nesbitt is sexy, energetic and passionate with her bow. Watching her play is an almost spiritual experience; she can take you to church! Celtic Woman is backed by a group of male singers who add a nice undertone, two percussionists and a full band.

The backdrops and sets were magnificent. The lighting, the ethereal gowns, the heavenly voices create a sense of magic, while the pipes and fiddle carry you back to ancient Ireland. From the time you sit down till the concert ends, you will sway, dance, sing, toe tap and leave feeling full!

August 5, 2010 by
Music

The Plinkety Plink Diaries Part 2

The harpers have all headed home from the 10th annual Somerset Folk Harp Festival. Here’s a wrap-up of our intrepid Chief Harp Correspondent’s final days at the festival.

Sunday, August 1

First off, I apologize for the less-than-anticipated number of posts. I had originally envisioned cranking one out every day, but quickly realized that I wasn’t going to have time for much of anything other than eating, sleeping and harping.

And actually, looking back on it, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

My last post covered the workshops and concerts, but I now realize I neglected to mention the vendor mall, which was pretty interesting in its own right. I’m not looking to buy another instrument right now, but that didn’t stop me wandering from harp maker to harp maker, sitting down to play with anything that struck my fancy.

The coolest thing I saw there was undoubtedly the new light-weight carbon-fiber models made by Heartland Harps. They’re sleek, shiny, vaguely futuristic looking—and they’re 10 pounds where my harp (a Camac Hermine) is closer to 30, even though they’re the same size. So picking one up makes you feel kind of like Superman. Or maybe that’s just me.

Friday afternoon was a trip through centuries of Irish harp history squashed into three hours with two workshops taught by Grainne Hambly, one on the Bunting Collection and the other on the music of Turlough O’Carolan.

The Bunting Collection is a group of tunes that Edward Bunting, a classically trained organist, gathered from the playing of the harpers at the Belfast Harp Festival in 1792.

Good thing: in doing so, he preserved a lot of music that might otherwise have been lost.

Bad thing: he couldn’t leave well enough alone and “corrected” some of the tunes as he transcribed them—some are in keys that the harpers couldn’t possibly have played in.

Really cool thing: many of his manuscripts are now available online as part of Queen’s University Library’s digital collection. And no, I haven’t forgotten about O’Carolan…

On Saturday night after another amazing concert series, a big group of us gathered for the Carolan Marathon. Turlough O’Carolan was a blind Irish harper born in 1670 who is famous for his skills as a composer—he wrote over two hundred pieces of music influenced by the older Irish harp tradition as well as classical baroque pieces. Our goal? To play as many of his tunes as we could over the course of the next few hours.

Somehow we all managed to fit ourselves and our harps into a fairly small conference room, as well as those who showed up just to listen, and a sprinkling of other musicians (mostly fiddlers and a couple of flutes) who came to join in. We didn’t even come close to 200 (thirty would be nearer the mark), but we had a lot of fun. And really, isn’t that the point of it all?

August 4, 2010 by
Music

No Rivalry Here: A Chat With Trad’s Top Sister Act

The Kane Sisters

The Kane Sisters

Seamless. Synchronized. Fluid. Flowing. Liz and Yvonne Kane are well used to hearing adjectives like these bestowed upon their beautifully matched fiddle playing. So it’s no mystery where The Kane Sisters got the name for their new CD, “Side By Side.”

“We get that all the time,” Yvonne laughed. “It’s a sibling thing, like. I think it happens for any siblings at all when they play together. Seamus and Manus McGuire are like that when they play. It’s nothing you could plan, it just happens naturally.”

The Kane Sisters, along with concertina player Edel Fox, are playing a Philadelphia Ceili Group concert at The Irish Center this Sunday, August 1, as part of their summer tour of the United States. It’s a routine that has become an anticipated annual follow-up to their presence at The Catskills Irish Arts Week.

“This was our fifth year in The Catskills, Paul Keating has kept asking us back,” Yvonne said. “It’s been great. And for the last three years, we’ve been down in Elkins, West Virginia, [for Irish/Celtic Week]. And then we do a few gigs.”

And this year, they launched “Side By Side,” their third CD, in The Catskills. It’s been six years since the release of their last CD, “Under the Diamond.”

“It didn’t feel like that long…but when we left the Catskills last year, we said, ‘We need to get to work on a new album.’ And we’ve gotten to know Edel through playing at CIAW. She was working on her first CD, ‘Chords & Beryls,’ so we also said, ‘We have to tour together next summer.’”

“It feels weird to have launched the album over here first… it hasn’t launched at home yet. We were supposed to launch it at Miltown Malbay, but we didn’t get the CDs until the day before we left for the States. But once we’re back home, we’ve got a good list of gigs beginning August 11th.”

Home for The Kane Sisters is their birthplace of Letterfrack in North Connemara.

“We love living there. We both lived away for a number of years. I was in Galway for 11 years, and Liz was in Cork for six years, then Galway for five. We’ve been back for nearly four years.”

“During the school year, we both teach… we love it. We have about 180 students, both kids and adults, and we travel all around Connemara. Liz commutes throughout South Connemara, and I have students in North Connemara… Clifden, Letterfrack, Inishbofin.”

Inishbofin? The island about five miles off the coast of Connemara?

“Yes,” Yvonne laughed. “I’ve got 10 amazing students out there… there’s only 18 kids in the entire school. I love going out there, and although I do now draw the line at taking the ferry in the bad weather, I have gotten on it before on bad days!”

Their musical heritage is steeped in the rich sounds of Ireland’s West. Their first instrument was the whistle because “everybody starts off playing tin whistles in school, whether you want to or not.”

They then moved on to the fiddle, being taught by musician Mary Finn as well as their grandfather, local fiddle player Jimmy Mullen.

“He would have us listening to all kinds of tunes. He just loved great tunes, flowing tunes. Like Michael Coleman from County Sligo, and Finbarr Dwyer.”

And they are much influenced by Paddy Fahey.

“He’s got great rhythm in his tunes… the East Galway fiddle style has got a good lift to it, similar to East Clare. The style’s not necessarily a slower one, I don’t know why people say that.”

The new CD, in addition to having tunes composed by Paddy Fahey, Finbarr Dwyer, Paddy O’Brien and Martin Mulhaire, also has three tunes composed by Liz.

“She’s the one who writes,” Yvonne explained. “I haven’t taken to it yet, but you never know…”

“When we make an album, we usually like to root and find new tunes, or tunes that haven’t been recorded. We’re always on the lookout for new tunes. We don’t work well unless we’re under pressure,” Yvonne acknowledged. “We’d be gone during the day teaching, and then we’d practice the tunes starting at 11 at night for about a week before we began recording, so the tunes were fresh in our minds.”

“We keep changing up the tunes all the time… we like changing the key of tunes, it makes them brighter, more enjoyable to play.”

And this time, esteemed musician and producer (and grandson of songbird Delia Murphy) Ronan Browne brought the recording studio to them.

“Ronan has a mobile recording studio, so we were able to sit at Liz’s house and record the tunes. We had great fun recording this CD… it probably has a different sound from the others, more of a live sound.”

And they are not alone; they are joined on “Side By Side” by Patsy Broderick on piano, Mick Conneely on Bouzouki, Dáith Sproule on Guitar and Ottawa Valley Step Dancer Nathan Pilatzke.

In fact, Nathan Pilatzke will be joining Liz and Yvonne and Edel onstage for some of the PCG concert, and his footwork is not to be missed. Seeing him dance last year in The Catskills was a thoroughly memorable experience.

And one last thing not to be missed: the notable and distinctive fashion style of these three brilliant women of Irish music.

“We’re all about our style,” Yvonne laughed when I couldn’t resist bringing it up at the end of the interview. “We love our style. When we get a day off, we go out and do some mini shopping. We love the fashion in New York, but it doesn’t compare to the fashion in Ireland—it’s too good.”

July 30, 2010 by
Music

The Plinkety Plink Diaries

Wednesday, July 28

Hello all, and welcome to the first installment of the Plinkety Plink Diaries.

The 10th annual Somerset Folk Harp Festival is about to begin. This event is a gathering for harpers of all levels, taking place this year in Parsippany, N.J., and is run by Kathy DeAngelo, half of McDermott’s Handy and director of You Gotta Have Harp Productions.

This is my first year attending, and I am simultaneously thrilled and horrified.

I am thrilled because I’ll get to meet harpers from all over the world. (The preliminary e-mail from Kathy mentions that there will be attendees from the Netherlands, South Korea and Taiwan.) I’ll also get a chance to listen to and learn from some of the best harp players out there (including Grainne Hambly and William Jackson, who have been featured on Irish Philadelphia before).

I am horrified because I’ve just realized that I have no idea what I am doing, have never bothered to learn what key anything is in and actually my playing is terrible. That’s a moot point, really, because I’ve suddenly forgotten every song I ever learned. Also, my suitcase won’t shut.

My status as a festival first-timer will be marked by a green dot on my name tag. I feel it would be more appropriate to stamp “NOOB” in large red letters on my forehead, but perhaps that would be excessive—after all, I’m not exactly a beginner. I’ve played Celtic harp for roughly six years, took lessons for a handful of them, and competed in the Mid Atlantic Fleadh in 2005.

However, I haven’t had lessons for some time now and, to
perfectly honest, do not practice every day. So I’m not really a total noob, but I am most definitely an amateur and a slightly rusty amateur at that.

Here’s hoping the other kids will want to play with me.

Friday, July 30

On Thursday morning, a low rumble wakes me at seven, and I wonder: was that thunder, or someone’s harp falling over upstairs?

Fortunately, it was only thunder. Within an hour or so, the morning rain cleared up and we had a sunny day for the beginning of the festival.

Figuring I might as well jump in with both feet, I’ve signed up for as many workshops in advance as possible. First up is Creative Marketing Techniques with Pamela Bruner, a Celtic harper and singer turned small business marketing coach. She possesses
apparently boundless energy and is full of smart, no-nonsense info for harpers looking to build a stronger brand and get more gigs.

My favorite piece of advice from her?

“There’s three cases in which you don’t follow up [with potential clients]: if they’re dead. If you’re dead. If they tell you to buzz off. And that last one’s negotiable.”

In the afternoon I have back-to-back workshops with Billy Jackson and Grainne Hambly: one is an introduction to Scottish music for harp, the other is on Irish traditional dance music.

Both classes are full to bursting, and at times they both gently remind us to stop noodling about on the strings. And with good reason: when twenty-some harpers all begin practicing trebles at the same time, they tend to sound like a room full of drunken
Tinkerbells.

By the time we’re finished, I have the beginnings of quite a few new tunes to work on and I’m pooped.

Luckily, we all have a chance to relax at the first of the evening concerts. Tonight’s performers are Nancy Hurrell, Janet Witman and Nicolas Carter. What strikes me most about the performances is how different their individual styles are, from Witman’s jazzed-up hornpipes to Carter’s more percussive Paraguayan pieces.

Yet all of them have that surety, a certain precision of fingering and control over volume (from feeling the bass in the floor to being just barely audible) that marks them as true masters (or
mistresses, as the case may be) of their instrument.

Before Nancy Hurrell begins her set, she says something to the new festival attendees: “You have no idea what you’re in for.”

I’m beginning to get an idea.

July 30, 2010 by
Music

A Little Lunch Music

Kathleen Murtagh enjoys the music.

Kathleen Murtagh enjoys the music.

It takes a lot to quiet down the regulars at Wednesday’s Senior Lunch at the Irish Immigration Center of Philadelphia, but this week the usual chatter din dimmed as Dublin-born musician John Byrne and bandmate Chris Buchanan serenaded the ladies—and gents—who lunch.

There was some singing along too, though the many song requests caused Byrne at one point to retort, “Ladies, you need a jukebox.”

Videos:

July 23, 2010 by
Music

Don Stiffe in Concert

Don Stiffe

Don Stiffe in concert at the Philadelphia Irish Center.

He’d already sold dozens at the Catskills Irish Arts Week in East Durham, NY last week. Arts Week organizer, Paul Keating, writing about the “magical” week when the best and brightest of Irish trad come together, noted that “Galwegian singer Don Stiffe made a big impact right away with his booming voice that sent listeners scurrying to the CD booth to take away more of his music.”

Stiffe has that effect on his audiences. Nancy Pidliski of Warminster said she came to the Irish Center after many years’ absence to hear Stiffe, whose CD she’s been listening to since her sister met Stiffe in Ireland a year ago. “Even my 17-year-old nephew listens to it all the time,” she said. She bought one for herself to take on her trip back to Canada, where she has a summer home.

If you missed Don Stiffe’s concert, you can view the many videos—bad lighting makes them a little more like audio—and our photos of the concert, which also featured fellow Galwegian Gabriel Donohue as Stiffe’s one-man band accompanist.

Videos by Lori Lander Murphy:

July 23, 2010 by
Music

A New Voice You Won’t Forget

Don Stiffe

Don Stiffe

A few months ago, a friend gave me a stack of Irish CDs she liked. “You have to listen to Don Stiffe,” she said as she handed them over. “You’ve never heard a voice like his.”

It was a busy time so I stuck the CDs in a cabinet and didn’t pull them out till a few weeks ago when I was taking a car trip. I unwrapped Don Stiffe’s solo CD, “Start of a Dream,” and popped it in the CD player. Stiffe, a singer-songwriter from County Galway, was barely through the first few bars of the first track– Richard Thompson’s “Waltzing for Dreamers”– when I realized I had goosebumps. And it wasn’t the air conditioning.

Virtually unknown in the US, Stiffe is an up and coming folk singer in Ireland where he’s worked with the likes of Frankie Gavin (who produced and played on his CD), Sharon Shannon, and Lunasa’s Kevin Crawford. He’s poised to join the Keane family (Dolores and Sean), Dessy O’Halloran, and Sean Tyrell as Galway’s gift to Irish music.

Stiffe will be sharing that gift with Philadelphia audiences for the first time on Tuesday, July 20, at the Irish Center, accompanied by Gabriel Donohue, another of Galway’s finest.

“Dolores Keane was a big influence on me growing up,” he told me a few weeks ago on the phone from Ireland. “I don’t live far from the Keanes—maybe 15 miles. I also loved Luke Kelly [one of Ireland’s greatest folk artists] though I would never try his approach to the music.”

Yet, like Keane and Kelly, Stiffe’s voice has that same complex mix of smooth and rough, like an Aran sweater. Like them, no matter what he’s singing—there are a couple of Richard Thompson tracks on his CD, four of his own songs, and even his take on Nat King Cole’s classic “Mona Lisa”—it becomes an irresistible siren song, rich with emotion, stirring, soul-satisfying.

Unlike many Irish singers, Stiffe does not come from a family of musicians. “Oh, my Mum and Dad will sing a song if they’re out at function, but I’m not from a musical family,” he says. “My Dad bought me a guitar when 7-8 years old. I had two lessons. I kept thinking, how am I going to get around all the stringy things on the guitar? After a few years came together. But I was always singing. I played in a local brass band in Galway City and I was always listening to an abundance of music.”

I asked Stiffe about the songs he chose for “Start of a Dream.”

“Most of them are diaspora songs—songs about longing for home,” I said.

“I lived in the States in the 90s,” he told me. “I was in Boston for two years and in St. Louis for a few months. I worked for a few different companies, doing landscaping, doing contruction as we all do.” He laughed. “But while I was there I was playing the circuit around the Boston area and in St. Louis.” While in St. Louis, he played with legendary accordian player Joe Burke who dubbed him “The Bard of Bohermore,” acknowledging the poetry of Stiffe’s lyrics.

Take, for example, “Grosse Isle,” which tells the story of the Irish immigrants, fleeing Ireland’s An gorta mor—the Great Hunger–who landed on this little island (Grosse-Ile) 30 miles east of Quebec City that was designated a quarantine station to prevent the spread of cholera. Today, a tall Celtic cross greets visitors to the island where an estimated 6,000 Irish are buried.

“In their thousands they died on the island of sorrow
Not from the under, but the feverish course
They left pillage behind them, in the land they loved dearest
But to land is Gross Isle, to die in the dirt.”

“I had been reading about the people who left Ireland in the coffin ships, only to land in Gross Isle and die there,” he explained. “I was really moved by it. . . I could go months without writing a song because it can’t be fictitious. It has to be the truth of the story.”

It’s my favorite track on the CD—that and Stiffe’s take on Richard Thompson’s poignant, “Dimming of the Day.” I first heard the song on a Bonnie Raitt album and loved it. Stiffe’s version is just as good. He’s joined on the track by singer Fionnuaula Deacy.

“That one got an award from Irish Music Magazine,” he acknowledges. “It’s a tricky slope doing a cover song. People listen to it and they want it to sound like the version they heard.”

Even if it’s your favorite song, Stiffe—who promised to sing it on Tuesday—you won’t be disappointed. And even if it’s 98 degrees and steamy, don’t forget your sweater. For the goosebumps.

July 15, 2010 by