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A Look Back at the 2009 Philadelphia Ceili Group Festival

Haley Richardson wowed the ballroom audience on Saturday night.

Haley Richardson wowed the ballroom audience on Saturday night.

It was 1:30 on Sunday morning, but the Philadelphia Irish Center was still jumping. Inside the Fireside Room, a clutch of musicians circled up and started banging out reels and jigs.

They were joined by members of the Midwestern traditional band Bua, which had performed to an enthusiastic crowd in the ballroom earlier in the night.

Somehow, no one was willing to let the party end.

And what a party it was. Those who love traditional Irish singing experienced quite a treat on Friday night as the Ceili Group hosted many of the area’s best singers, plus guests like County Armagh’s Len Graham and Bua’s Brian O’hAirt.

All day Saturday, superb musicians led classes in everything from bodhran to fiddle to DADGAD guitar. All Saturday night, the ballroom was filled with the strains of traditional music, including the local band Cruinn.

We have all the highlights in photos and video. Check it out.

Videos:

September 17, 2009 by
Music

Piping Hot Start to the Ceili Group Festival

Tim Britton, taking a turn on the tin whistle. Brian Miller accompanies on guitar.

Tim Britton, taking a turn on the tin whistle. Brian Miller accompanies on guitar.

Tim Britton is no stranger to the Philadelphia Irish Center or to the annual Philadelphia Ceili Group Festival. So for Britton and festival-goers alike, it was time Thursday night to become reacquainted.

Accompanied by guitarist Brian Miller, Britton held his audience in thrall for a couple of hours worth of uillean pipe mastery. From slow airs to slip jigs, Britton demonstrated the range and breadth of his talent… and Miller his clever ability to just go with anything Britton did.

For most of the night, Britton stuck to pipes, but he also played a few tin whistle tunes. He even sang “Lagan Love”—a tribute to recently deceased Ceili Group vet Frank Malley, who he says often implored him to sing.  

The festival goes on Friday and Saturday at the center, 6815 Emlen Street in Mount Airy. Be there.

In the meantime, if you couldn’t make the opening concert, here are some photos and videos.

Videos:

September 10, 2009 by
Music

How New York Got Its Pride

Paul Keating can’t take credit for the amassed talent of the super ceili group, “Pride of New York,” but maybe he can take credit for the name.

It happened that in 2005, all four of what Keating now calls “the PONY people”—flute and whistle whiz Joanie Madden, fiddler Brian Conway, button box player Billy McComiskey, and pianist Brendan Dolan—were at the Catskills Irish Arts Week, where Keating is the artistic director.

“When I knew all four of them were there together, I wanted to put them on the stage for the Thursday night concert,” he recalls. “I’d had a lot of experience with them, and I knew they had a style of music that was spot on for dancing, with rhythms and comfort levels and a certain spirit and lift that was natural. I introduced them as the Pride of New York Ceili Band. I figured it was an appropriate name.”

The PONY people wowed the Catskills crowd, of course—how could they not?—but that concert marked the beginning of something bigger.

They came back and played again the next year, Keating said, and soon began looking for more opportunities to perform together. It wasn’t that they were strangers to the idea, after all. Keating recalls Joanie, Billy and Brian playing together with Brendan’s father Felix at the Eagle Tavern in Greenwich Village about 1989. Even then, he says, they had a “special sound.”

But this was something else. It was a concept that soon took on a life of its own. Not long after their 2006 Catskills performance, they landed a gig at the Irish American Community Center in East Haven, Connecticut. They played again at Lewisburg in County Mayo, and again at Lincoln Center’s outdoor dance series.

“It became clear that they really liked playing together,” says Keating. “I thought they should be documented—they should be recorded.”

With some grant proposal-writing help from Peter Brice, one of Billy’s students, funding for the project started to come together. Soon, the four were taking time out of their separately quite busy schedules to occasionally meet and record at Joanie’s home studio. The goal was to have a CD ready to go in time for launch at the 2009 Catskills festival.

“I encouraged them,” Keating says. I said that if you would do this, this would easily be the centerpiece of Catskills Irish Arts Week. We all agreed it was the right thing to do.

“They plodded ahead. They knew the end game would be to have it ready in time. They met the deadline.

“It was really an ambitious poject, but then again it wasn’t. This style of music and their respect for it is just second nature for them. they had exposure to the best players who came from Ireland to New York. They all mentored with people who came deeply from the well of traditional music. They had a heart and soul that went into the music, they developed a great respect for where the music came from. It stayed with them.

“They were also coming along at a time when there was a lot more comfidence and pride associated with the music. The music scene was evolving in part because of them, and around them. They kind of had this brash attitude toward it, and their music came across that way.”

Keating, naturally enough, is hugely proud of the band and the recording. “You have expectations,” he says, “but when they go beyond that, it’s especially satisfying.”

September 3, 2009 by
Music

Review: Pride of New York

It’s just a brace of reels, a smattering of hornpipes, a few jigs, a set of marches, and an air. But that’s like saying the Empire State Building is just a steel skeleton and a stack of bricks.

Like the famous Fifth Avenue landmark, the new CD, “Pride of New York,” is a towering achievement in its own right.

Just consider the musicians who make up this killer ceili band: Joanie Madden on flute and whistle, Brian Conway on fiddle, Billy McComiskey on button accordion, and Brendan Dolan on piano. Toss in essays by Catskills Irish Arts Week artistic director Paul Keating, journalist Earle Hitchner and Baltimore Singers Club director Peter Brice, with tune notes by the percusssionist Myron Bretholtz. It all adds up to a memorable, very nearly flawless Irish traditional recording that is not only one of the best of the year, but probably one of the best of any year.

“Pride of New York” is pure dance music. Yes, I know it’s supposed to be dance music. But not all modern American Irish music invites people to put down their beers, get up out of their chairs and dance. But with Brendan Dolan laying down the delicate rhythms, it’s all too easy to envision folks whirling about the hardwood floor, feet stamping, whoops of unbridled joy.

Each of the artists is well-known individually, but here they come together as a solid, perfectly harmonious group. There’s a cohesiveness that is possible only when individual motivations are set aside and the music moves to the fore. Again, it all sounds blindingly obvious, but there’s a world of difference between a mere assemblage of prodigies and a band. Make no mistake: this is a band.

Which is not to say that there are not standout individual performances. Not to emphasize one contribution over all the others, but Dolan’s sure and confident hand is what makes “Pride of New York” a ceili band. His entry on one set of jigs, Happy Days/Boys of the Lough Gowna/The Knights of St. Patrick, and again on the introduction to a set of slip jigs, Redican’s Mother (The Barony)/The Bridal/Humours of Whiskey, shows him at his best, setting not a merely metronomic cadence but playing with great expression—light, airy and musical.

Joanie, who plays flute on most of the tunes, offers up a memorable tin whistle performance of the haunting air Slán le Máigh. She makes a dime store instrument sound symphonic. You’ll tap your feet to McComiskey’s accordion on a brisk set of reels, Mulhaire’s #9/Grandpa Tommy’s Ceili Band. Conway sets a masterful pace on a set of hornpipes, The Stage/The Fiddler’s Contest/The High Level.

I’m not a fan of waltzes generally—to me, they have too much of a “man on the flying trapeze” quality to them—but the band’s performance of Sean McGlynn’s Waltz shows “Pride of New York” at its most impressive. There’s a gentle lift to this tune, contrasted with some seriously complex but deftly played melody. I promise I didn’t think about the circus, even once.

Though it seems unfair that the Big Apple should play host to so many monuments, you can add this recording to New York’s trove of treasures.

September 3, 2009 by
Music

It’s Ceili Group Festival Time!

Although the Philadelphia Ceili Group Irish Music Festival lost its long-time director, Frank Malley, this year to cancer, the show that must go on is going on in his honor.

 And, says his daughter Courtney Malley, his spirit will be all over it. Singer’s Circle, for example, will be moving from Thursday  to Friday night, a prime spot. “Dad and I are singers, that’s our big passion, so it’s going to be a fun night,” says Malley, who is a co-chair of this year’s festival.

 On Saturday, the emphasis will be on education. “My Dad was a natural-born teacher. He taught us the tradition, how to run festivals, do it on a shoe-string, find the manpower, and to be nice to the volunteers so they come back year after year,” she says.

 There will be workshops on genealogy, sean nos singing, dancing, and instruction and showcases on a variety of instruments, from the whistle to the harp.

 “In past years, we’ve really focused on more local musicians and we’re doing that this year too,” she says.

 Piper and flutist Tim Britton, who grew up in the Philadelphia area, will be back from his new home in Iowa for a concert on Thursday night and will be playing the whole weekend. (If you’re hankering for some new uillean pipes, you might want to talk to him. He’s one of the leading makers of these smaller, sweeter-sounding pipes.)

 On Friday, the singers will include locals Rosaleen McGill, Terry Kane, and Matt Ward, along with County Armagh singer Len Graham and all-Ireland ballad champ Brian Hart of St. Louis,who was the first American to win the title—and the youngest person ever. Graham, who was Ireland’s Traditional Singer of the Year in 2002, has been singing and recording for more than 30 years. He was one of the Irish singers featured in the Smithsonian’s 2007 Folklife Festival tribute to Northern Ireland. (He actually gave a concert at the Library of Congress. No one said, “Shhhhh!”) There will be a session afterwards, so bring your instrument and lilting voice.

 The ever-popular McGillian Family—some combination of patriarch Kevin, sons Jimmy and John, and perhaps Mary–will provide the music for the Friday night ceili dance.

 Saturday’s workshops will certainly be punctuated with music and there will be vendors and food. That evening, our out-of-town visitors Len Graham, Brian Hart, and Hart’s group, BUA, will share the stage with a new local trad group, Cruinn, featuring singer Rosaleen McGill. Also on hand—two remarkable fiddlers: Pairac Keane, who hails from Dublin and is the son of Chieftans’ fiddler Sean Keane, and six-year-old Haley Richardson from New Jersey, who won first place at the Mid-Atlantic Fleadh Choil (Music Contest) in Pearl River, NY.

 And at 10 PM, all the chairs will be shoved aside in the Fireside Room for an old-fashioned Irish house party—music, dancing, and whatever else happens—all in honor of the late Frank Malley, who sang and danced and enjoyed whatever else happened.

You’ll want to be there. 

Buy tickets here.  

Here’s the way it looked in past years. 

 

Here are the workshops:

From noon until 2PM onSeptember 12th, attend workshops with

Brian O’hAairt (Sean Nos Singing/InIrish)

Sean Gavin (Uillean Pipes)

Chris Bain (Beginning Fiddle)

Len Graham(History of Ulster)

Brian Miller (DADGAD Guitar)

Josh Dukes (Flute)

TerryKane (Irish Language)

John Shields & Cass Tinney (Ceili/Set Dancing).

From3 until 5PM, attend workshops with:

Len Graham (Singing in English)

Sean Gavin(Tin Whistle)

Chris Bain (Intermediate Fiddle)

Will Hill (Genealogy)

BrianMiller (Accompanying Irish Music)

Josh Dukes (Bodhran)

Ellen Tepper (IrishHarp)

Brian O’hAirt (Sean Nos Dancing).

September 3, 2009 by
Music

Ceili Group Festival Tickets on Sale

You'll be dancing too.

You'll be dancing too.

The Chicago supergroup, BUA, called by Irish Music Magazine “the essence of a superb band,” will headline the Saturday night concert at the thirty-fifth Annual Philadelphia Ceili Group Irish Music and Dance Festival, scheduled for September 10-12 at the Irish Center in Philadelphia.

Also on tap: noted County Armagh singer Len Graham; Pairaic Keane, a brilliant fiddler from Dublin and son of Chieftain’s fiddler Sean Keane; and Brian O’hairt, of St. Louis, who was the first American and youngest person to take first place in the All-Ireland Fleadh ballad singing competition, senior division.

But if there’s a theme fort his year’s festival, it’s that Philly has plenty of local talent. Sharing a stage with the out-of-towners will be Cruinn, a local trad band featuring RosaleenMcGill, Augie Fairchild and Tom O’Malley, and six-year-old Haley Richardson, the local fiddler who won first place at the Mid-Atlantic Fleadh Cheoil in Pearl River, NY, and will be traveling to Tullamore, County Offaly,  this year to match her skills with other under-12s at the Fleadh Cheoil na hEireann, the all-Ireland music festival.

The festival kicks off on Thursday with Tim Biritton and Friends in Concert. Britton, who now lives in Fairfield, Iowa, is a virtuoso on the Irish uillean pipes (and a noted maker of same) who grew up in the Philadelphia area and was a fixture, with his musical family, on the Philly folk and Irish scene. He has performed with the likes of Eileen Ivers, Mick Moloney, Robbie O’Connell, and Bela Fleck.

On Friday, a set/ceili dance is scheduled at 8 PM in the ballroom with the local and popular McGillian Band. In the Fireside Room, A Night of Irish Song will be hosted by local singer and Ceili Group member Courtney Malley and feature Len Graham; Brian O’hAirt; the Jameson Sisters (local singer Terry Kane and harper Ellen Tepper), Matt Ward, and others. After the event, there will be a session to which all musicians and singers are invited.

After the concert on Saturday night there will be a traditional “House Party” in the Fireside Room honoring the late Frank Malley, a local musician, singer, and longtime CeiliGroup member and festival director, who died recently. His daughter, Courtney Malley, will perform, as well as other singers, musicians, and story tellers. And, since it’s a House Party, there will also be dancing and it won’t break up until the wee hours, if at all.

There will be food, the bar is open, and there will be vendors and workshops, some by festival performers. This is one of our favorite events of the year–don’t miss it. 

For more information on thefestival or to purchase advance tickets, go to the Ceili Group website or emailphillyceiligroup@gmail.org.

August 20, 2009 by
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
Music, People

A Memorial to Frank Malley

Frank's daughter, Courtney, with her husband, Sam Cohen.

Frank's daughter, Courtney, with her husband, Sam Cohen.

Her father, longtime Philadelphia Ceili Group member Frank Malley, knew he was dying, so Courtney Malley broached the difficult subject: his memorial service.

“He said that we could do something at The Mermaid,” said Courtney, referring to the tiny bar off Mermaid Lane in Chestnut Hill where Frank—and Courtney herself—frequently performed. “’I said The Mermaid? It’s too small.’ He didn’t expect that many people would show up.”

He was wrong. Courtney chose to hold the memorial service to her father at the Philadelphia Irish Center on Saturday, August 1, which bulged with more than 600 who came to say goodbye to the man they knew as father, friend, lover, grandfather, brother, neighbor, singer, story teller, and skilled artisan.

All around the Fireside Room, Malley’s family and friends posted family photos, scattered his architectural drawings, trademark hats, and tacked up a quilt, sewn by Malley’s longtime companion, Connie Koppe, made from his t-shirts, including those from the Philadelphia Ceili Group Irish Festival he so often directed.

Musicians played and sang, and friend and family offered stories and poems to honor a man whom a friend said “didn’t always consider himself adequate.”

“He would have been stunned at the outpouring of emotion,” said Connie Koppe. And, she added, “he would be trying to figure out how to get that many people to come to the Irish Festival and pay full fare.”

August 7, 2009 by