Travel

How to Be Irish In Boston?

More Irish than Philly?

It’s heresy to say it in Philly, but Boston may be even more Irish than we are. It is so Irish it has its own Boston Irish Tourism Association that promotes all things Irish in Beantown and an official Irish Heritage Trail that takes visitors to over 20 sites in a three-mile radius that reflect the city’s Celtic heritage.

Among them: The Irish Famine Memorial; the Commodore Barry Memorial; the Rose Kennedy Garden; the Boston Massacre Memorial (Irish patriot Patrick Carr was the last to die in this clash between colonists and the British); the Old Granary Burying Grounds (where you’ll find Carr; two signers of the Declaration of Independence, including one descended from the O’Neills of Tyrone and John Hancock, whose ancestors came from County Down); and Fenway Park (home of the Red Sox and built by an immigrant from County Derry).

So would you like to find out how to be Irish in Boston? New Jersey-based Trad Tours is offering a bus trip from Philadelphia to Irish Boston and Cape Cod October 21-24. The $799 price tag includes roundtrip motorcoach transportation to New England, three nights lodging, breakfast, two dinners, and guided tours of Boston’s Heritage Trail, the JFK Presidential Museum and Library and a harbor tour of Hyannisport, which takes you past the Kennedy compound.

Marianne MacDonald, who runs Trad Tours, says she decided to offer the trip because she was longing to see Boston again. “I was there on tour with [singer] Annemarie O’Riordan. We had such a good time in Boston I wanted to go back,” she says. “I’ve also found that people really like our bus trips.”

MacDonald takes music-minded tourists to Ireland, Nova Scotia, and, in recent years, to Nashville, usually bringing her own musicians for nightly dancing. There will probably be a few on this trip, she says, though there’s plenty of Irish music to be found in Boston and on Cape Cod.

In fact, she’s booked rooms at the Cape Cod Irish Village, which was founded by the late Mayo musician Noel Henry and his family (his “Noel Henry Band” is still a fixture in the Boston area, headed by his brother, Tommie). Of course, the hotel in Yarmouth has its own Irish pub with traditional Irish entertainment (including dancing). Lodging in Boston is at The Onyx, a boutique, eco-friendly hotel near Bunker Hill, Faneuil Hall, and the rest of Boston’s “Freedom Trail.”

“We’re also going to go to The Druid, “ says MacDonald, referring to a popular Irish watering hole in Cambridge which has two Irish sessions every week.

For more information about the trip, contact MacDonald at (856)236-2717 or via email at rinceseit@msn.com, or Johanna Green at Mayfair Travel, (877)338-8481 or Johanna@mayfairtravel.com.

August 12, 2011 by
Sports

An Ancient Irish Sport, American-Style

Joe Harrington takes a swing.

Joe Harrington takes a swing.

It’s a quiet late summer night at Northeast Philadelphia High School. The only sounds are the rubbery whirr of tires as traffic passes by along Algon Avenue, and the occasional “clink” of an aluminum bat as someone gets a hit during a pickup game up on the school’s brightly illuminated baseball diamond.

And down on a hardscrabble pitch just below the diamond, you can hear one other particular noise from time to time, best described as a “clop.” It’s the distinctive sound of the Irish sport known as hurling.

As dusk descends over the city, seven young members of the Philadelphia Shamrocks hurling team are charging up and down the field, attempting to hit a small white ball with a flat-bladed wooden bat. The ball is called a sliotar (pronounced shlitter); the bat, which looks like a giant cheese spreader, is a hurley. As with most field sports, the goal is to drive the ball through a goal. Every time a hurley makes contact with a sliotar: “clop.” (Learn more here.)

A nearly full moon hangs over the field, casting just enough light so that you can make out the shadowy outlines of the players as they charge back and forth. Finally, out of the darkness, there comes a slightly different sounding “clop,” followed by a sharp expletive. In the dark, a player has evidently mistaken another player’s helmet for the ball. The guys quickly huddle around the fallen player to make sure he’s not badly injured. He slowly pulls himself up off his hands and knees, yanks off his helmet and gingerly rubs his sore head. He says he’s OK. With that, they all decide that this would be a good time to end practice.

Hurling has a long history in Ireland. In one form or another, historians say, the game has been played for 2,000 years. And unlike your average American football game, which some historians say lasts about the same number of years, hurling is lightning-fast. Games last 60 minutes, 30 minutes a half, but it’s all over before you know it.

The game is also also a little nuts. It’s brutally physical, a tangle of hardwood sticks and straining limbs locked in a struggle to the death, all to gain control over a tiny ball. Hockey-style body slams aren’t allowed, but maybe the Irish just have a different name for the high-speed collisions that regularly leave players sprawled on the ground like squashed bugs.

Players wear no padding. Helmets were not required until 2010. Hell, it only took 2,000 years.

Naturally, the Irish play this sport beautifully, effortlessly.

For the Shamrocks, though, it’s a different story. When the team formed back in 1985, it was mostly Irish guys out on the field. Now, all but four of the players are Yanks.

The Irish start to learn the sport practically when they’re still in nappies. “We’re not starting to pick it up until we’re in our 20s,” says Shamrocks player Fiachra (FEE-kra) Malone. “We’re at a disadvantage.”

For the American guys, who grew up loving and playing American sports, at least some of the rules and playing techniques of hurling are counter-intuitive.

Joshua Burns, the team PR guy and a regular player, offers a case in point: The way you grasp a hurley. When you hold a baseball bat, your dominant hand is on top, says Burns. With a hurley, it’s the opposite: dominant hand on the bottom.

“You’re reversing everything you thought you knew,” Malone says.

Picking up hurling takes about three years, Burns says. “Your third year is when you’re about as good as you’re gonna get.” And that would be OK except for one thing: high turnover. The longest-tenured Shamrock has been on the team four years.

In spite of the obstacles, the Americans who play for the Shamrocks are fully committed gung-ho types. There are 24 of them altogether, and they’re dedicated to sport, hoping to raise its profile in the local Irish community.

Coach Frank O’Mara, who first started playing the game when he was a 10-year-old boy in Tipperary, thinks he understands why such a rugged, demanding sport might be a draw for Americans.

“They’re at a point where they’re not really playing any kind of organized team sports like they might have done when they were in school,” O’Mara says. “Now they see this new sport as a challenge. It has the eye-hand coordination of baseball, the physical contact of hockey, and it appeals to them.”

If hurling is going to remain a viable concern in the Philadelphia Irish community, it’ll be up to the Americans to make it happen. “We know we either have to appeal to a broader audience, or the club could fold. We’ve always wanted to attract Americans. We’re looking to get everybody we can to come and play.”

The Shamrocks are considering starting a fall league, so now’s a good time to pick up a hurley.

Learn how to play. Visit the Shamrocks’ Web site.

August 11, 2011 by
How to Be Irish in Philly

How To Be Irish in Philly This Week

RUNA: At Musikfest in Bethlehem.

It’s a grand week for music, but Saturday night poses some seriously difficult decision-making. What to do, what to do? You’ve got Moya Brennan with Cormac de Barra at Sellersville, RUNA at Musikfest in Bethlehem, and Tempest, that crazy Celtic-Norwegian rock band from California, at John & Peter’s in New Hope.

One thing you can do is catch Tempest on Monday instead—they’re performing at the Hatfield Music Feast at School Road Park in Hatfield. As for Moya Brennan and RUNA—you’re choosing between the two de Barra brothers (Fionan plays with RUNA). Family feud anyone?

And as they say on late-night infomercials, but wait, there’s more! The Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire happens this weekend too at Mount Hope Estate Winery in Manheim, PA. Go back to medieval times, when things were so much better than they are today (oh, except for the wars, the poverty, and the plague, but who remembers those things?).

On Sunday, the GAA action starts at noon at Cardinal Dougherty High School field in Philadelphia, with championship games between St. Patrick’s and the Young Irelands, and the Kevin Barrys and the Naomh Peregrine, and Eire Og and St. Patrick’s. The Youth Football teams–the Delco Gaels, Delco Harps and Philadelphia Shamrocks–will be playing starting at 1:30 PM.

Irish dancer alert: A new play debuts at the New York City Fringe Festival. “The Bad Arm: Confessions of a Dodgy Irish Dancer,” is an account of the daughter of an Irish dance teacher who is English in Ireland and Irish in England and her flirtations with sex, booze and rock. Um, this one is not for the wee ones.

If you’re in Wildwood, Jamison is performing on Sunday at Shenanigans and there’s a fundraiser at Keenan’s Irish Pub to raise money for a foundation established in the name of Joanie Logan, a Delaware County three-year-old who drowned in a Memorial Day accident this year.

Closer to home on Sunday, catch Blackthorn at Rose Tree Park in Media on Sunday night, and look for David Browne-Murray, a graduate of St. Malachy’s College in Belfast (they’ve marched in the Philly St. Patrick’s Day parade), at Maggie O’Neill’s in Drexel Hill. Browne-Murray is trying to raise money to get out to Montana to play in an international guitar competition.

On Monday, the kids are headed to Club Cultur at Sacred Heart Catholic School in Havertown to learn how to be Irish this week. Donegal’s Tina McDaid is running the summer camp for kids 5-14 who will be learning the Irish language, plus picking up on the history and geography (and saints and games, of course) of the land of their ancestors.

On Tuesday, head down to the lovely estate of Glen Foerd on the Delaware in Northeast Philadelphia to hear the musical and comedy stylings of Timlin and Kane (two of our very best favorite peeps), along with the Cummins School of Dance, the John Shields dancers, and piper Del Campbell. Frank Hollingsworth will be your host.

The Inis Nua Theatre Company continues to find fun ways to raise money. On Wednesday, all cash tips from happy hour at Chris’ Jazz Café on Sansom Street in Philadelphia will go to help send the company’s production of “Dublin by Lamplight” to the New York Irish Theater Festival in September. There are free appetizers, drink specials, guest bartenders (St. Patrick’s Day Parade Director Michael Bradley, 2009 Philly Rose of Tralee Jocelyn McGillian and 2010 Rose, Mairead Conley, and Siobhan Lyons of the Irish Immigration Center—do not, repeat, do not ask her for an Irish Car Bomb or you will be mightily sorry), music (guitarist Jim Fogarty) and the Tullamore Dew cocktail ladies with free samples.

On Thursday night, the Young Dubliners along with the John Byrne Band will be appearing at World Café Live. On Friday night, the Irish Anti-Defamation Federation will be meeting at the Irish Center.

Also this week: Look for the opening of the new movie, “The Guard,” starring the always brilliant Brendan Gleeson as a salty garda in Connemara who teams up with an FBI agent (the always wonderful Don Cheadle) to investigate an international drug smuggling ring. It’s at  the Ritz5 in Philadelphia.

As always, the details of all of the above are on our calendar.

August 11, 2011 by
Music

The Musical Evolution of Moya Brennan

Cormac De Barra and Moya Brennan

Cormac De Barra and Moya Brennan

When we called singer Moya Brennan the other day, her husband, photographer Tim Jarvis, had to put the phone down for a few moments while he went to get her. “She’s up a ladder,” he said.

A minute or two later, Brennan was on the phone, laughing, and explaining that she’d been off in her son Paul’s room painting when the call came in. “I wasn’t just putting on my wings,” she said. “I was decorating. I love DIY. It’s so different from what I do in my life.”

What Brennan does, when she’s not laying down masking tape and slathering on primer, is sing wonderfully, beautifully, expressively, passionately—in Irish, English and at least once in Mohican. And that’s just for starters. Starting in 1970, she made her mark as the lead singer for the pioneering Celtic band Clannad. The Grammy-winning, Donegal-based ensemble, which Brennan formed with her brothers Pól and Ciarán and her mother’s twin brothers Noel and Pádraig Ó Dúgáin, was one of the first to take bold liberties with traditional music. The sound of Clannad is unlike any other, effortlessly and seamlessly blending elements of Irish, folk, rock, chant, jazz, New Age and world music. Clannad never found a genre it could not bend to its will.

Brennan launched her solo career in 1992, with the release of the eponymous CD Máire. (Moya is the phonetic pronunciation of her name.) She has performed all over the world, collaborated with performers as varied as the Pogues’ Shane MacGowan and Bono. She has recorded 25 albums, and has performed for popes and presidents. And as if Brennan’s not busy enough already, lovers of Clannad will be gratified to hear that she and the rest of the band are recording a new album, to be released in 2012.

More about that in a moment.

Next Saturday, she’ll appear in concert with friend and world-class harper Cormac De Barra at Sellersville Theatre.

Brennan’s collaboration with De Barra is just one of many intriguing turns in her 40-year musical career. Looking back on her career, she said she has always craved challenging new creative opportunities.

“I’ve matured so much in the way I sing and the way I know I can carry my voice and use it to the best of its ability, and in the way I have shared musical spaces with so many different artists,” Brennan explained. “There’s so much great music out there—great genres, great young acts coming up. It’s great to brush up with them at festivals or in a session. You have to be open to creativity at all times. There’s so much to be had out there. I’m in the middle of so many different projects. That’s what I love about it. That’s what keeps me going.”

Brennan’s quest for the new and experimental has its roots, of course, in Clannad. The band’s constantly changing perspectives, she recalled, sometimes perplexed fans who couldn’t understand why they didn’t just stick to one particular sound and keep pounding away at it. But Clannad’s members knew no other way. The band just kept evolving.

And soon, fans will get to hear and judge the latest stage in Clannad’s evolution. The band had played together from time to time in recent years, and a new album was promised. Toward the beginning of the new year, the band will make good on that promise.

“We started recording at the beginning of the summer,” Brennan said. “Because of all our different commitments, we’re not in the studio all the time, but we hope to be finished by the end of November, to be released at the beginning of the new year, and we’ll go out and do a bit of touring. It’s exciting because we haven’t been doing the same thing for years.

“This is going to be a very interesting album. I think it’s going to be our strongest album ever. It’s to do with all the different influences we’ve gained and surrounded ourselves with over the last 15 year. We’re coming to the table with different takes and new ideas. When I go into the studio, I’m just very excited about it.”

In between recording sessions, Brennan continues to maintain an active and varied touring schedule. She’ll be at the Dublin, Ohio, Irish Festival this weekend, then back to Ireland for the Kilkenny Arts Festival on Tuesday and to Lorient, France, the next day for yet another festival.

And then, at last, to Sellersville, which has nothing in common with the south coast of Brittany, but it’s a pretty nice town all the same.

The last time Brennan performed at Sellersville Theatre, she had a terrible cold, and felt bad about not giving the audience her best. This time, health permitting, will be a different story, she said. She’s especially excited about sharing the stage with De Barra, with whom she released a CD, “Voices & Harps.” Also on stage, playing guitar, singing and playing whistle, will be Brennan’s 19-year-old daughter Aisling Jarvis.

“We (Brennan and de Barra) had been around and playing together for years,” she said. It’s been kind of a nice gradual thing. He’s the best harper in Ireland. We always knew we’d do an album together. It just fell into place at the right time. It’s really special doing this project with Cormac—old songs, new songs, but creating a different sound from our harps and voices. Cormac is a lovely singer as well. I do a little bit of harp; he does a little bit of singing. It’s kind of nice, you know.”

You can hear for yourself. Learn more about the Sellersville Concert here.

August 5, 2011 by
Arts

New Offerings from Inis Nua Theatre Company

A character from "Dublin by Lamplight." Photo by Katie Reing.

The Inis Nua Theatre Company, the only local theater group that produces only contemporary Irish and UK plays, announced its new season of plays and readings this week. The plays include the Philadelphia premier of “Little Gem” by Elaine Murphy which played to sellout crowds at Dublin’s 2008 Fringe Festival and Enda Walsh’s “The Walworth Farce.” Inis Nua has produced Walsh’s play, “Bedbound,” a Fringe Festival first place winner.

Recently, Inis Nua was invited to bring its production of “Dublin by Lamplight” to next month’s New York Irish Theater Festival. (You can help send them there by donating here.) The company is holding an “All-in for Dublin” charity poker tournament on Sunday, August 7, to raise money. It starts at 4 PM at the Latvian Society of Philadelphia at 531 North 7th Street.

Here’s what’s coming up on stage:

Landscape with Weapon by Joe Penhall (From England)
A reading on October 17th at 7pm
A well-meaning engineer has invented a new super-weapon with infinite and wonderful capabilities. That was before issues of financial gain and government control crept into the picture. Landscape with Weapon is a wry account of private anguish, public responsibility and a problem with no solution. By the writer of the award-winning play, Blue/Orange.

The Error of Their Ways by Torben Betts (From Scotland)
A reading on November 28th at 7pm
From a playwright lauded by many as the most exciting new voice in British theatre comes a shattering re-imagining of life as we live it now, set in the context of a bloody revolution. Witness to a brutal political assassination, we are introduced to a society fractured by a lack of belief in anything meaningful, in which everyone has something to protest against.

Random by Debbie Tucker Green (From England)
A reading on January 23rd at 7pm
Random explores a single day in the ordinary life of a black Londoner and the random incident that changes her life and that of her family. Tucker Green’s poetic rhythm and keen details create a spellbinding, elliptical story that shatters stereotypes by humanizing an all-too common inner-city event. Olivier Award winner.
Little Gem by Elaine Murphy. Directed by Kathryn MacMillan (From Ireland)
Philadephia Premiere
January 31-February 19. Location TBA.
This is the Philadelphia premiere of this amazing look into one transitional year in the lives of three generations of a Dublin family. Daughter Amber is taking an unexpected break from binge-drinking with the girls, mother Lorraine is testing the waters of love on the north side of 40; and granny Kay is watching her dear man slip away. Come have a listen. These women will shock, delight, and steal your heart.
Love Steals Us from Loneliness by Gary Owen (From Wales)
A reading on March 19th at 7pm
A drunken evening leads to an argument with repercussions lasting over forty years. This play explores viewpoints and how they change with age. This is playwright Gary Owen’s response to the media frenzy that followed twenty teen suicides in Bridgend from 2007-2010. From the author of Crazy Gary’s Mobile Disco.
Didi’s Big Day by Paul Walker (From Ireland)
A reading on May 21st at 7pm
Didi and Peter have planned a beautiful dream wedding. What could go wrong for such a perfect couple? Missing rings, inappropriate speeches, and bridal party brawls collide in this hilarious story of the wedding from Hell.
The Walworth Farce by Enda Walsh. Directed by Tom Reing (From Ireland)
Philadelphia Premiere
June 12th-June 30th at Christ Church Neighborhood House
What can happen when we become stuck by the stories we tell about our lives? Following on the success of Inis Nua’s production of Bedbound in 2010, visit the world of Enda Walsh again in the rundown London bedsit of a seemingly exiled father and his two sons. Twisting and turning, this farce combines uproarious comedic moments with shocking realism to portray a family absorbed by their own personal mythology

August 5, 2011 by
Music, News, People

Benefit for the Fleadh Boys

They could have called it the “Brittingham’s Session Orchestra.” More than 15 Irish musicians crowded into the Lafayette Hill pub’s event space to provide music for the dancers who managed to find a few square feet in which to do their thing.

Alex Weir

And they were all there for a good cause. The event, which included a brunch, raffle, and 50-50, was organized by fiddler (Belfast Connection) Laine Walker Hughes, to raise money to help defray expenses for the families of Alex Weir, 12, and Keegan Loesel, 11, who are traveling to Ireland this month to compete in the All-Irelands, the Olympics of Irish music.

This is Alex’s second and Keegan’s first trip to the Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann, which draws regional competition winners from all over the world, this year to Cavan Town. To qualify, musicians must come in first or second in the regionals.

The boys have been raising money on their own by busking—that time-honored Irish tradition of playing on the street for donations. In fact, two fellow buskers—teenagers Michael and Eamon Durkan of Wilmington, DE—came to participate in the fundraiser. They met, well, on the street. “We played with them,” said Eamon Durkan. “They’re really incredible players. We came to support them.”

As you’ll see from our photos, so did many others.

Read more about the boys here.

August 5, 2011 by
How to Be Irish in Philly

How To Be Irish In Philly This Week

Thrills, spills, and curls!

Irish dancer alert: The documentary “Jig” starts a run at the Bala Theatre in Bala Cynwyd this week. Put on your ghillies and get over there. It was filmed at the Irish Dancing World Championships in Glasgow in March 2010—or, as it is better known, the big, wonking world oireachtas.

 

There’s also a beginner summer Irish dance camp at the Irish Center in Mt. Airy starting Monday. Olivia Hilpl, director of the Rince Ri School of Irish Dance, is the instructor. Kids will be learning slip jigs and reels all morning for a week.

Music lovers alert: ‘Tis the week of Musikfest in Bethlehem and, as usual, they have a fine lineup of Celtic acts, starting with Amarach on Friday night, with those wild rockers from DC, Scythian, taking the stage on Monday night. Barleyjuice is up next on Wednesday with Gaelic Storm closing out Wednesday night. The Jameson Sisters will be performing on Thursday night, and you can catch RUNA next Saturday.

Actually, you can catch RUNA twice this week. Shannon Lambert-Ryan and her merry band of contemporary Celtic music makers are appearing with the Canadian group, The Town Pants, at the Sellersville Theatre on August 11.

Sellersville is feeling Celtic lately. On her way is singer Moya Brennan of Clannad, appearing with harper Cormac O’Barra. (Cormac de Barra’s brother, Fionan, plays with RUNA and is married to Shannon Lambert-Ryan.) Brennan and de Barra are on the bill for August 13. You probably won’t see Fionan sitting in—he and RUNA are at Musikfest that night.

If you’re downashore, Celtic rockers Jamison are playing at Casey’s in North Wildwood on Friday night, at Keenan’s Irish pub in NW on Saturday, and at Shenanigans in Sea Isle on Sunday. The Broken Shillelaghs are at Tucker’s Pub in Wildwood on Saturday night.

Coming up: There’s a benefit to raise money for a new foundation established in the name of Joanie Logan, the Delaware County three-year-old who drowned on Memorial Day, at Keenan’s Irish Pub in North Wildwood on Sunday, August 14.

On August 18, the Young Dubliners come to World Café Live in Philly. Also on the bill, local phenom The John Byrne Band.

August 5, 2011 by
News, People

Annabella McAleer Manley, 1925-2011

Annabella Manley

The Philadelphia Irish community lost a beloved friend and one of its brightest spirits this week when Annabella McAleer Manley passed away at age 86 on July 26th. Her presence will be especially missed at The Irish Immigration Center, where she was a cherished regular at The Center’s weekly lunches.

Born in Donaghmore, County Tyrone in 1925, Annabella was just 23 years old when she came to the United States. She embraced her adopted country, but carried with her always a love of her Irish culture and homeland.

In December of 2009, I had the pleasure and honor of interviewing Annabella for a video project at the The Immigration Center. Her own words tell the story of her journey from a happy childhood spent on a farm in Northern Ireland to a new life in America.

“We had what we called a small home, it wasn’t a large farm. It was beautiful country. We had nothing really extravagant; I guess we were poor, but not church mouse poor. It was just the four of us, my brother Johnny, my mom and dad and myself.

“I always felt that I would come to America eventually. But I didn’t know this when I used to listen to my grandmother’s records. She had one called ‘I’m Off to Philadelphia in the Morning’ and I would play that one over and over. So in the back of my mind I had an idea I was coming here one day.”

Annabella’s first stop was Derry City.

“I was working there. There were a lot of girls from Free Ireland. I was from The North, and they were from The Free State. So we became very good friends. This girlfriend of mine was born in America and she said she was going back. She was going to take her sister and her brothers, and told me that if I decided to come to America like I said, she’d sponsor me.

“I left Ireland for England when I was 18, and I stayed for 5 years. My girlfriend Florence brought all her sisters and brothers out to America, and then when I was living in London, I got a letter saying she was ready to sponsor me.”

That was how it was done in those days. Annabella followed her friend to the U.S., and lived with her family while she started her new life. The lovely young Irish woman got jobs modeling and then found her way to Philadelphia. She loved to tell stories about the evenings spent dancing at The Irish Center in Mt. Airy and at 69th Street in Upper Darby.

“We’re just going to miss her so much. She was such a smiley, happy person,” Siobhan Lyons, the Director of The Irish Immigration Center said. “She was always laughing and joking, so full of joy. And I will miss her great stories. She was so inspiring. She came over to America when she was young, and witnessed so many of the changes in the country. I am going to miss her terribly.”

Annabella’s funeral will be held on Saturday, July 30th at 11a.m. at St. Bernadette Church, Turner Avenue, Drexel Hill. Further details can be found in The Delaware County Daily Times.

July 29, 2011 by