Ivan Goff
Piper Ivan Goff and singer/guitarist Eamon O'Leary are a couple of Dublin lads, transplanted to New York City, who nonetheless have a pretty good sense of how tunes are played in Ireland's West.
On Saturday in the Fireside Room at the Philadelphia Irish Center, as part of the Philadelphia Ceili Group's series highlighting the music of the West, Goff and O'Leary played a good many tunes evocative of Ireland's wil
d places. If you closed your eyes, you could imagine yourself in McDermott's Pub in Doolin, the tang of stout mingling with the heady aroma of peat smoke.
It's a concert that almost didn't come off. The Irish Center lost power in the late afternoon, and the juice didn't come back on until just before the show. And during the show, there were times when the Irish Center's clanging heating pipes competed for attention with Goff's uilleann pipes, but he and O'Leary made light of the fact and quickly moved on. There's no question whose pipes won that battle.
We captured the excitement of this concert in video (above) and pictures.