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Matt and Shannon Heaton

How To Be Irish In Philadelphia This Week

Shannon and Matt Heaton

Less than a month away. That’s right. St. Paddy’s Day—and all the local St. Paddy’s day activities are less than a month away. In fact, this week many pubs are celebrating “St. Practice Day” to help folks get ready for March 17, commonly known among Irish bartenders as “amateur night.”

Well, there’s plenty to do to get yourself conditioned. On Friday night, for example, Tir Na Nog in Center City is hosting the Bogside Rogues for “The Great Guinness Toast,” an international more-or-less simultaneous quaffing of the brown stuff.

And the 19^th annual Greater Philadelphia Mid-Winter Scottish and Irish Festival gets underway in Valley Forge with a concert featuring the Scottish tribal drum group Albannach and The Dubliners, as well as locals Jamison and The Hooligans. This one runs all weekend and features everything from swordplay to whiskey tasting, with a whole lot of music and dance thrown in. There are people who need to practice for this event too. Not us—we’ll be there all weekend and you can see how we handle all things Celtic.

Direct from Boston, Irish duo Matt and Shannon Heaton will be making their magic at Trinity Episcopal Church in Swarthmore on Friday night.

And you have your choice of two great Irish plays – Terminus at the Zellerbach Theatre and The Lieutenant of Inishmore at Plays and Players. Better yet, go to both. If you buy tickets for two or more plays in Philadelphia’s Irish Theatre Festival, you get a 20 percent discount. Go to the Philadelphia Theater Alliance website to order.

On Sunday, Dr. William Watson, director of the Duffy’s Cut Project in Malvern, where the bodies of 19^th century Irish immigrants have been unearthed, will be speaking at the Knights of Columbus Hall in Glenside.

At 12:30 PM on Sunday, Irish Network-Philadelphia is holding a public meeting at the Irish Immigration Center in Upper Darby to discuss future events. Tea, coffee and sandwiches will be provided. If you’re not a member of this networking group, here’s your chance to join and. . .network.

There are still a few spaces in a one-day course at Temple University-Fort Washington on Celtic Christianity, which will be held on Wednesday evening. Dr. Ken Ostrand will take you from Irish Christianity before Saint Patrick to today, and introduce you to a variety of Irish saints (some with amazing powers).

Big day next Friday. The Irish American Business Chamber and Network Ambassador’s Awards Luncheon will honor Aramark Corp, the Rev. Timothy R. Lannon, outgoing president of St. Joseph’s University, and businessman James Hasson and his wife, Sarah. The event will take place at the Crystal Tea Room at 100 East Penn Square in Center City. Irish Ambassador to the US, Michael Collins, will make the presentations.

Later that evening, Collins along with Consul General Noel Kilkenny will be attending a fundraiser for the Duffy’s Cut Project. Money raised at the event, which will feature the music of Paul Moore and Friends, will be used to cover the costs of continued DNA tests on the remains found at the archeological site and to erect a memorial to the dead at West Laurel Hill Cemetery in East Falls.

The details for all these events and more are on our amazing calendar. If you have an event you want to publicize, you can add it to our calendar yourself or email me at denise.foley@comcast.net.

February 17, 2011 by Denise Foley

How to Be Irish In Philly This Week

Double proof that you don’t have to be Irish to be an Irish musician: Isaac Alderson and Jonas Fromseier.

Isaac Alderson was 11 or 12 when he discovered Irish music. A friend of his mother’s gave him a set of practice pipes and he was hooked. By the time he was 17, he was being paid to anchor Irish sessions in his native Chicago. At the 2002 Fleadh Cheoil in Ireland—the Superbowl of traditional musicians—Alderson was named the All-Ireland Senior Champion in three instruments, uilleann pipes, flute and whistle, becoming the first American ever to perform that particular hat trick.

Alderson will be on stage at the Irish Center this Saturday, bringing with him Fromseier, the Danish-born bouzouki and banjo player who, with a grant from the Danish government, wound up in Galway studying Irish music after a stint with a Danish Irish trad group called “The Trad Lads.” (The Danes, while not Celtic, do have an Irish connection: They conquered the little island long ago when they were members of the well known group, the Vikings.)

Before the Vikings land here, check out “Cherish the Ladies,” Joanie Madden’s fabulous girl group, performing at the Sellersville Theatre on Friday night. Band members change, but the quality of these amazing musicians never dims. Plus, Madden is a hoot.

Another unusual sighting this week: Belfast-born indie musician Henry Cluney from the group Stiff Little Fingers will be performing at Kung Fu Necktie in Philadelphia on Sunday.

Sunday is also the second in a series of fundraisers for the Philadelphia St. Patrick’s Day Parade, this one at AOH 39 on Tulip Street in Philly. On board for this one: Winners of the “best Irish band” in the US battle of the bands sponsored by Strangford Lough Brewing Company in Northern Ireland, Jamison Celtic Rock.

For Valentine’s Day, the Irish Immigration Center is hosting a luncheon and party at the Irish Center, 6815 Emlen Street, in Philadelphia on Monday at noonish. Great food, music, dancing—and love, they promise, will be in the air.

This week, two great Irish plays debut as part of the Philadelphia Irish Theater Festival. The Abbey Theatre of Dublin’s “Terminus,” a playing serial killers, avenging angels, and love-sick demons (of course, you’ll laugh), is at the Zellerbach Theatre. On February 16 and 17, Father David Cregan, OSA, PhD, associate professor of theatre and English, will host a post-show question and answer session with the cast. On February 17, catch the opening of The Lieutenant of Inishmore, one of the Martin McDonagh’s wildly dark and comic plays about a soldier who returns home to find that his only friend. Wee Thomas, the cat, has been assassinated. Bad things ensue. This one is at Plays and Players Theatre on Delancey Street in Philadelphia.

On Friday, Boston’s Matt and Shannon Heaton (with new baby, Nigel!) will be performing at Trinity Episcopal Church in Swarthmore. Shannon, whose newest CD is “The Blue Dress,” was named Live Ireland’s Female Musician of the year two years running (2010 and 2011).

Friday night is also the kick-off concert for the Mid-Winter Scottish-Irish Festival in Valley Forge, now in its 19th year of making winter bearable for fans of Celtic everything. There’s music, drink, food, dancing, and Irish tchotchkes for sale. Always fun.

February 10, 2011 by Denise Foley

Music

Review: “The Blue Dress” by Shannon Heaton

The Blue Dress

“The Blue Dress” is all softness and satin. On her new solo album, the delicate sound of Shannon Heaton’s Irish wooden flute is accompanied nearly throughout by lighter-than-air instruments such as Maeve Gilchrist’s harp and her husband Matt’s guitar and bouzouki. The result is 12 tracks of beautifully played tunes that all blend together like the threads of some silvery, fairy-spun fabric.

That’s not to suggest “The Blue Dress” is insubstantial. All of the choices are firmly rooted in traditional music, from “Boil the Breakfast Early” and “Eddie Duffy’s Reel” to “Campbells Are Coming” and “Irish Washerwoman.” The tune selection is a nice balance of reels and jigs, with a set of hornpipes (“Grandfather’s Thoughts” and “Fairy Queen”) and a pair of polkas (“#99 Polka” and “High Caul Cap”) thrown in for balance.

Heaton also is supported by Paddy League on bodhran, percussion and bouzouki, and by Liz Simmons on guitar. League is especially effective on the polka track, playing what sounds like djembe on these very syncopated tunes. It’s the kind of set that, on a Lunasa CD, probably would transition to a mazurka. League’s bodhran play on the “Dennis Watson’s” reel set (“Wheels of the World,” “The Flogging Reel” and “Dennis Watson’s”) really propels the tunes with wild, burbly energy in support of Shannon and Matt Heaton. He shows up again in a few places; he provides an interesting contrast to Heaton and Gilchrist on the last track, a set of reels (“Hornless Cow” and “Boil the Breakfast Early”).

There are three more pensive tunes, as well, all of them Heaton’s own, including the delicate “Blue Dress Waltz,” one of the highlights of the CD. Gilchrist begins the tune, with Heaton joining a couple of verses in. It’s a lovely dance, a perfect pairing of two very complementary instruments and styles. “Blue Dress Waltz” is dedicated to all the fans who supported the recording on Kickstarter.com.

Two other pieces by Heaton, “Nights on Caledonia Terrace” (a slow air) and “Frost Place” (a slow reel) are especially lovely and show off her talent and sensitivity. She’s one of the leading wood flute players in the world, and these tunes help illustrate why she is held in such high regard.

All told, this is music played with a sure hand and faithfulness to the tradition, aided by a strong supporting cast. Together with Flook frontman Brian Finnegan’s earlier “The Ravishing Genius of Bones,” “The Blue Dress” is one of the most impressive and most completely realized albums of the year.

November 24, 2010 by Jeff Meade

Music

No Silly Love Songs

Shannon and Matt Heaton are performing in Bethlehem on April 25.

When Shannon and Matt Heaton sent me their new CD, “Lovers Well,” in February, I thought, “Perfect, love songs, just in time for Valentine’s day.” Then I listened.

At least two of the tunes involve dogs and guns. Several describe some serious flirting that could be called by another name, but we can’t say it here. And yes, there are sweet songs of undying love, but there’s also some dying going on too.

“Okay, they’re relationship songs, really,” laughed Shannon when I pointed this out to her. “When we tried to have love be the hook, it was cumbersome. Relationships are complicated. A friend told me about a book she’d read by [psychotherapist and spiritual writer] Thomas Moore who said ‘Every relationship has an end.’ It’s really simple. A lot of time the end is parting, somebody’s died, or jealousy gets the best of you. When we say these are love songs, we’re talking about so many different aspects of relationships. It’s how we manuever them.”

They’re not Barry White and they’re certainly not Paul McCartney, but they are tunes that certainly do capture the richness and poignancy of love. Some may actually be familiar to you, like “Lily of the West,” a traditional American folk song that’s been covered by Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Peter, Paul and Mary, but which has been “Irish-ized” by Shannon Heaton (Flora is now Molly and she comes from Ireland, not Lexington). It’s a story of obsessive love, betrayal, and eventually murder. “The Golden Gloves” is a delightful tale of a young betrothed woman who falls in love with the man chosen to give her away and discovers a clever way to marry the true man of her dreams on her wedding day.

And there is the lovely, lilting “Lao Dueng Duen,” which I at first thought was in Irish but is actually a Thai song Shannon learned when she spent a year in Thailand on a Rotary Club scholarship when she was a teenager. The child of globe-trotting parents (she spent some of her childhood in Nigeria where her mother was teaching on a Fulbright Scholarship) Heaton had wanted to go to France to learn the language, but chose Thailand after she heard all of the other scholarship winners opt for either Paris or London. “I was ambarrassed that no one had chosen Africa or Asia so when they got to me I said, ‘How about Thailand?’ My mother picked me up and said, ‘So, are you going to France?’ and I said, ‘No, Thailand,’ then burst into tears. All because I was too stubborn to be like everybody else!”

Since she didn’t speak Thai, she asked to be placed with a bi-lingual family. Looking back on it, she says, she should have been more specific. Her family was bi-lingual—they spoke both Thai and Chinese. Heaton didn’t speak Chinese either. But she did learn Thai eventual.

“My first year of college I was doing cooking, banana leaf folding, doll making, and music,” she laughs. “ It was kind of like home ec, called life sciences. Eventually my language got good enough so I majored in ethnomusicaology.” (She returned to spend her junior year there as well.)

She still speaks Thai fluently, so for the CD, she sings in Thai, only translating the melody so it would have a Celtic sound. The liner notes include her rough translation of the lyrics—and this one is a classic love song:

“Oh my love, my moon.
Like the fragrance of a flower
Such is the heady perfume of her essence.
It envelopes me completely, like nothing before.
The scent of her, [my soul mate], this beautiful woman
Oh the sweetness of this love.”

“I’ve always been really nervous to do that song when we perform, but [musician and folklorist] Mick Moloney encouraged me to do it,” she explains. “We performed it at a benefit Mick organized in October to raise money for the Mercy Center in Thailand. Mick has a home in Thailand and he’s studying meditation and aiming to spend more time there.”

And she added it to “Lovers Well” not only because it’s a pure love song, but because “ singing it, I’m immediately transported back to Thailand, where I’m sitting in my teacher’s livingroom, I’m 17, and it’s hotter than hell. I don’t speak Irish, but I can imagine that the same thing happens to people who might have learned sean nos in Ireland. When they sing in that language, there’s an immediate transportation back home. ”

But what about her own love story? The Heatons met in 1992 “because I need a guitar player for a wedding gig. He was the first person I called who was home so he got the job.” (Their friend, Steve, was first on her list. “Musically we’re not compatible and personally I don’t think it would have worked out, so I’m glad Matt was home and Steve wasn’t,” she says.)

Matt had an eclectic background. He studied classical guitar, played in rock bands, and was writing tango music when they met. “At the same time he was doing independent study in Irish traditional music because he was interested in it,” she says. The two picked up tunes and techniques (he for guitar, Shannon for flute and voice) playing in sessions in Chicago and later on many trips to County Clare. Moving to Boston—one of the most Irish cities in America—also helped cement their bond to Irish trad. “Matt really got into it, so it’s really the only music he plays now. He kept up the tango stuff and had me try tango music with him. But we settled on Irish music.”

They married in 1995, after finishing college, and decided to perform together, a decision that has been both a joy and a challenge, Shannon says.

“It is a profound challenge—how to keep thing separate and how to integrate things, especially,” she laughs, “when you live in a small house.”

And when you’re also on the road together, as they are now, promoting their CD of eclectic love songs. Matt and Shannon Heaton will be appearing on Saturday, April 25, at the Godfrey Daniels Coffee House in Bethlehem (http://www.irishphiladelphia.com/calendar for details). If you decide to go—and I encourage it—you’ll see that, despite the challenges, these two make beautiful music together.

April 16, 2009 by Denise Foley