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Philadelphia Ceili Group Festival Ends on a High Note

Kevin McGillian was honored for his 30-plus years playing at the festival.

Kevin McGillian was honored for his 30-plus years playing at the festival.

They’re going to be talking about this one for a long time. The Philadelphia Ceili Group’s annual festival of Irish dance and music ended a three-day run on Saturday night, September 11, at the Irish Center in Mt. Airy with a concert that audience members were calling magical—even before it was over.

Headliners Liz Carroll—the only Irish trad artist ever nominated for a Grammy award—and Daithi Sproule, best known for his work with the Irish group, Altan, invited the performers who preceded them on stage for the finale which brought the audience to its feet before the last note sounded.
It was an appropriate finish for a festival that couldn’t have gone any better. There were crowds for the Singers Circle on Thursday—dedicated to the late Frank Malley, who ran the festival for many years—for the Gary Quinn and Anthony McGrath concert on Friday night, the ceilis on Friday night and Saturday and the workshops, from the fiddle session with Carroll to the St. Brigid’s Cross lessons and the drama workshop for kids. 
The kids were well taken care of. In fact, many stayed for the entire afternoon,  having their faces painted, coloring, learning to act, blowing bubbles, and making new friends.
On Friday night, the Philadelphia Ceili Group recognized musician Kevin McGillian, who has been playing at the festival for almost its entire 36 years, with a plaque and a lifetime membership. They also surprised festival organizer Anne McNiff—the emcee of Saturday’s concert—with an award for her work. 
 
Check out our photos of the event.
September 15, 2010 by
Music

A Night of Songs and Memories

Everyone had Frank Malley on their mind. Standing alongside the photo is his daughter Courtney.

Everyone had Frank Malley on their mind. Standing alongside the photo is his daughter Courtney.

“This is like having a big night in your own living room,” said singer and publican Gerry Timlin as he looked out on the crowd gathered in the Philadelphia Irish Center for Singers’ Night at the Philadelphia Ceili Group Festival.

It was hard not to think of the Fireside Room as Frank Malley’s living room. Frank was, for many years, the driving force behind the Ceili Group Festival. He died of cancer last July. Singers’ night was dedicated to him. In fact, a large colorful portrait of a smiling Frank Malley was propped on an easel just to the right of the stage.

Standing alongside the portrait, Frank’s daughter Courtney said she was sure her father would have approved of this year’s Singers’ Night. “He would have been thrilled,” she said. “My dad was a singer, and there were so many other singers he enjoyed. He loved all of these singers.” Courtney, a well-known singer herself, confessed to also being partial to Singers’ Night. “For me, this is my favorite night of the festival,” she said.

It was evidently a favorite of many other Irish music fans. Most of the chairs in the Fireside Room—and at the nearby bar, of course—were filled. Surely no one could have been disappointed by the showing of singers, starting with Gerry Timlin himself, who also threw in a funny little story about what would have to be the ultimate handyman, Dixon from Dungallen. (Ask him to recite it. It’s a hoot.) And he shared memories of some of the greats who have gone before, including the late musician and radio host Tommy Moffit, who died in May.

There were several superb singing performances from the likes of Marian Makins, Rosaleen McGill and Karen, John and Michael Boyce. If you came hoping for the old standards, you couldn’t have been disappointed by Karen Boyce’s tender rendering of “Skibbereen” or all the Boyces’ superb harmonies on “Peggy Gordon.” Marian Makins sang a lovely version of “Green Grows the Laurel,” and everyone loved Rosie’s take on “The Emigrant’s Farewell.”

Couldn’t be there? We have photos and videos!

Here are the videos:

September 10, 2010 by
Music

Gary Quinn: He Keeps Her Lit

Accordion player Gary Quinn from Galway.

Accordion player Gary Quinn from Galway.

There’s just no way around the truth of it—life and Facebook, they work in mysterious ways. One minute, you’re updating your status, and the next Facebook friend whom you’ve never met invites you to fly into Philadelphia to play the Philadelphia Ceili Group’s 36th Annual Traditional Irish Music and Dance Festival. (It starts this coming Thursday and runs through Saturday night at the Irish Center.)

For former All-Ireland Champion Accordion player Gary Quinn, this is exactly what happened a few weeks ago when a last minute change was made to the Festival’s line-up, and a spot became open for the Friday, September 10 Fireside Concert.

The County Galway musician was happy to take the gig. Since his debut cd, “Keep Her Lit,” launched in 2008 to critical and popular acclaim, Quinn has seen his music career take off. A performance stateside is a natural progression.

“A few years ago, I was getting near to turning 40, and I began to take my music more seriously. I’d always been playing, and writing tunes, but I decided that I mean to go out of this world the way I came in—playing music.”

Quinn isn’t kidding. He began taking accordion lessons at age 4, but a deeper interest in the chips at the nearby take-away shop caused his mother put a stop to the lessons. A year later, at age 5, Quinn was listening to the radio when a tune came on that hooked him, and he sat down and played it on his accordion.

“That was my first reel, ‘Bonnie Kate,’ and it’s still my favorite tune,” Quinn recalled. “I’ll play it next Friday night at the concert.”

“I realized that music is the international language of the world. If you can play music, you can communicate with anyone. It doesn’t matter if you can’t speak the same language … if you can sit down together and play the same 8 notes, then you can understand each other.”

Quinn immediately knew who to call to bring with him for the trip: Derry-born guitar player Anthony McGrath. “He’s a fantastic guitar player, and a really good guy. He’s played with all sorts of people.”

In fact, Quinn and McGrath joined forces recently with Limerick fiddle player Kevin Farrell and Dublin singer and bodhran player Joyce Redmond to form the band Eriuna. The name is derived from that of the celtic goddess Eriu, also the source of Ireland’s identity as Erin.

Quinn, who hails from Brierfield near Moylough in County Galway, where he still lives now with his wife and two young children, grew up in an area infused with brilliant music and brilliant musicians. His first influence was Joe Cooley, “who was a revolutionist when it came to accordion playing. You could hear his personality in his music. He played with such feeling.”

Joe Burke and Finbarr Dwyer, “both technically brilliant and fantastic players,“ also left an imprint on Quinn’s style. But it is Mairtin O’Connor that Quinn holds up as “a total gentleman. He gave me permission to record a few of his tunes on my cd.” And after the album was completed O’Connor had this to say about it: “The spirit of joyful music is alive and well in his hands and on this recording he keeps our spirits well buoyed … He is joined by some wonderful players and the overall result is a pleasure to listen to.”

Quinn could not have been more elated by this endorsement from his hero.

Many of the tunes on “Keep Her Lit” are Quinn’s own compositions, including the title track. A mechanic by trade, Quinn hears music in the whole world around him.

“I get inspiration from everything. Good feelings, happy feelings, sad feelings. For instance with “Keep Her Lit,” I could hear the tune in the lorry engine as I was working on it. I’m so fortunate to be able to combine these two things I love, playing music and working on cars.”

“I’m very, very happy right now. It’s a bit too late for me to get famous now, at 40, but my life is exactly where I want it.”

Gary Quinn and Anthony McGrath will be performing at 8PM, Friday, September 10 at The Philadelphia Ceili Group Festival, and will be teaching workshops on Saturday, September 11th from 11AM to 1PM. The Irish Center is located at 6815 Emlen Street, near the Carpenter Lane SEPTA station, in Philadelphia.

September 2, 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
Music

A Weekend of Great Irish Tunes

John Brennan and John McGillian

John Brennan and John McGillian

When it comes to hearing great Irish music, some weeks it is a very good thing indeed to be in Philadelphia. Last weekend was one of those times.

On Friday, May 21, the Philadelphia Ceili Group brought together some of the best musicians around for the Festival Benefit Concert at the Irish Center.

Paddy O’Neill played slow airs! And sang! John Brennan performed some gorgeous tunes that he’s composed. Caitlin Finley played Sligo fiddle tunes. John McGillian and his accordion were brilliant. Tim Hill got to pipe. Judy Brennan accompanied on the keyboard. And Paraic Keane closed the evening with unforgettable fiddling.

And there’s a little town called Coatesville, about an hour’s drive from Philadelphia—perhaps an hour and a half, should you make a wrong turn or two—where Frank Dalton lures some of the biggest names to play for the Coatesville Traditional Irish Music Series, at the Coatesville Cultural Society. Last Sunday, Kevin Burke and Cal Scott filled Frank’s cozy concert hall with the kind of music that makes your heart smile and your feet dance.

His initial goal was to sell 50 tickets to be able to offer the concert; he far surpassed that number. What’s that? You weren’t able to make it to either of those events, but now you really wish you had? It is a lucky day, indeed then, for the Irish, because irishphiladelphia.com has some videos for you!

Here they are (and there are a lot):

May 26, 2010 by
Music

Calling on the Local Talent

For regular attendees of trad sessions around Philly, the playing of Paddy O’Neill, John Brennan and John McGillian is a highly regarded and well-anticipated event… to have the three of them, along with Caitlin Finley and Paraic Keane, come together to support The Philadelphia Ceili Group’s 2010 festival, is a guarantee of an evening of music worth listening to.

“People who pay attention to the local music have heard all these people playing before, but you don’t get a chance to hear everyone individually in a session,” Tom O’ Malley, PCG board member and organizer of the event, explained. “And all these guys are as good as anyone out there playing today.”

The Festival Benefit Concert is this Saturday, May 22, beginning at 8 p.m. at The Irish Center. Workshops are being offered for Northern Tunes on Flute, Guitar Accompaniment, Button Accordion from 4 to 6PM. There are no tickets to purchase, but there is a requested donation of $15 for the concert, or a combined donation of $25 for entry to both the workshop and the concert.

All the musicians are offering their talents free for the benefit. The PCG festival has been going strong since Tipperary singer Robbie O’Connell and Limerick’s Mick Moloney began the tradition in 1975. This year, Liz Carroll and Daithi Sproule are set to play the 2010 festival, September 11-13th. The PCG is hoping to be able to bring Dezi Donnelly and Dermot Byrne to the festival as well, and the upcoming benefit concert could help achieve that goal.

The players are looking forward to the concert themselves… Paddy O’Neill, flute player from Derry City, is known for his jigs and reels, but this Saturday he will be performing tunes which are more especially associated with the music and musicians of the North of Ireland.

“I think that sessions in the North tended to have a more varied repertoire than sessions I encountered in the rest of Ireland. You would get not only the usual jigs, reels and hornpipes, but also barndances, polkas, Germans, waltzes, marches and highlands. Expect to hear more of the latter than jigs and reels. Singers were a prominent feature of the northern sessions I attended, so I might even chance a song. There is, of course, the Orange fifing and drumming tradition in the North, and a fifing march or two might be appropriate,” O’Neill said.

John Brennan, on the fiddle and guitar, will be featuring his own original music, including several tunes that have been recorded by Liz Knowles and Bob McQuillen.

“John has some tunes, like ‘Owen G,’ that he dedicated to his nephew, that are just gorgeous,” O’Malley said. “Another great one is ‘The Couple That Married Themselves.’”

“John McGillian’s going to be playing some of his favorite stuff. His hornpipes, they’re gorgeous, he plays them so well. ‘The Sweeps’ and ‘Lad O’Byrne’s are two that he plays.”

In addition, Caitlin Finley will be playing fiddle tunes from Andy McGann. “Caitlin’s been under the tutelage of Brian Conway, the Sligo-style fiddler up in New York, and he learned directly from Andy McGann… she does them really beautifully.”

Fiddler Paraic Keane, son of The Chieftains Sean Keane, is going to include some of his father’s songs in the evening. “There’s a set of his dad’s reels, that Sean and Matt Molloy recorded, ‘Sword in Hand,’ ‘The Providence’ and ‘The Old Bush,’ and Paraic really kills that set… he really sounds like his old man.”

An open session will follow the concert.

More information on The PCG Festival Benefit Concert can be found on the group Web site: http://www.philadelphiaceiligroup.org/

May 20, 2010 by
Music

All-Ireland Champ Isaac Alderson, Singularly Focused on the Music He Loves

Isaac Alderson

Isaac Alderson, on one of the several instruments at which he excels, the flute.

Isaac Alderson is many things…

At age 27, he‘s young.

As a musician, he’s talented in a manner many dream of but few can lay claim to: In 2002, he was named the All-Ireland Senior Champion on the flute, the whistle and the uillean pipes, in the process making this Chicago native the first American since Joanie Madden to win a tin whistle championship.

For a profession, he is making a living playing the Irish music he loves. “Irish music… I came across it when I was 11 or 12. My mom had a friend who gave me my first practice set of pipes, and I started playing them at 14. The pipes, they’re the most awkward thing for a beginner…I was really enthusiastic about it; through my high school years it was almost like an obsession. I practiced all the time,” Alderson recalled.

“I grew up in a musical household, not Irish music, but my dad had been a professional musician for a short time when he was young. He played the bass, the guitar, the harmonica. I played the saxophone when I was 10.”

Alderson’s teachers, once he discovered his passion for Irish music, were the likes of John Williams, Laurence Nugent, Al Purcell and Kieran O’Hare.

“I had a lot of people helping my interest along the way. I played a session in Evanston, and I learned a lot, hearing them play. Laurence Nugent was a primary influence.”

“My parents, my mother especially, worried about me a lot, about whether I’d be all right financially. When I was 17, my parents said, ‘Well, we think it’s about time you got a job,” and then I got handed down the session at The Hidden Shamrock in Chicago, paying $75,” Alderson laughed.

After graduating from Sarah Lawrence in 2005, Alderson made the decision to move to New York to pursue professionally the career that had begun as a fascination with Irish music and culture.

“I never saw myself getting into it in a professional capacity… I had no idea I’d ever make any money in it at all. New York’s a great place. There are tons of bars to play in, and always lots of traffic from Ireland… you don’t feel like you’re stepping on each other’s music toes.”

There’s a regular crowd of Irish musicians in New York, many of them around the same age, having arrived in the city about the same time. A camaraderie has developed among them, and an ease in playing together.

For Alderson, a collaboration between two of those musicians in particular has emerged: Fiddle player Grainne Murphy and guitar player Alan Murray.

“Alan and Grainne and I started playing together about two and a half years ago, a regular session at the Pig ‘n’ Whistle on 3rd. Six hours of playing together every Sunday for two years… slowly over the course of time, we’ve started to feel really comfortable together musically. We work very well together.”

The Philadelphia Ceili Group has thoughtfully and affectionately arranged for the trio to play at The Irish Center tonight, Friday, April 30, at 8:30 p.m. A last-minute scheduling conflict for Murray is bringing John Walsh and his guitar to town instead with Alderson and Murphy.

“I’ve played loads with Johnny. He was born in The Bronx, but raised in Kilkenny… he’s a remarkably versatile trad musician. He often plays with Paddy Keenan. He also has a recording studio in Westchester.”

The same studio, in fact, where Grainne Murphy recorded her recently launched CD, “Short Stories.”

Murphy hails from Boston, where she was gifted with her first fiddle at the tender age of 4. She learned to play from County Clare’s All-Ireland champion fiddler, Seamus Connolly.

Alderson is effusive in his praise for Murphy, with whom he “absolutely loves“ playing. In addition to her talent on the fiddle, “she has an incredible ability to pursue lots of different things at once. She’s a lawyer by trade, and an avid runner… she maintained her job as a lawyer, finished up her solo recording, kept up her running, and went back and forth to Massachusetts to help her brother, Patrick, in his campaign for city council, which he won.”

For Alderson, for now, his focus is on the music.

“It’s not a glamorous living, but I make enough to get by, and to have fun at the same time. I have thought at times of finding something a little more stable,” Alderson mused.

There doesn’t seem to be much need for that anytime soon. In addition to his regular gigs with Murphy and Murray, Alderson is pretty well booked.

“I freelance, and I get a lot of gigs by virtue of playing the pipes… I get way more gigs as a piper than as a flutist. They share me, I guess. The pipes are the quintessential Irish instrument, especially for stage gigs; people like to see the pipes.”

Oh, yes, Isaac Alderson is many things, including modest.

He can be seen playing with Shannon Lambert-Ryan, Fionan De Barra and Cheryl Prashker in RUNA.

He can be found performing with the group Jameson’s Revenge.

He recently returned from touring with Celtic Crossroads, and is set to go back out on the road with them in July.

And he is working on his first solo CD, which he hopes to finish up this June.

“What I like best above everything else is just playing tunes…playing trad music in its unadorned form.”

For information on their Philadelphia Ceili Group performance, Friday, April 30, visit their Web site. 

April 30, 2010 by