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Between numbers: Angelina Carberry and Martin Quinn.

Between numbers: Angelina Carberry and Martin Quinn.

If you missed Friday night’s concert with tenor banjo player Angelina Carberry and button accordionist Martin Quinn, you missed an opportunity to hear a particularly pure form of traditional Irish music.

This is not a slam against the Irish supergroups and other, perhaps more commercial Celts, who often blend other forms of music into the traditional. Hey, there’s lots of room in our big music tent.

But there were moments during the Carberry-Quinn performance—many moments, in fact—when it seemed like you were hearing the music in a raw, unadorned form, when the lily was unquestionably ungilded.

Carberry, with her distinctive percussive style, and Quinn, with his long, lingering chords, took Irish Center listeners on a journey back to the source. Angelina and Martin made me feel like I was sitting in a bar in Doolin or Westport.

Adding to the enjoyment was Angelina’s 11-year-old daughter Shawna, who sat in on fiddle for a couple of numbers.

We’ve preserved many of those moments for you—including an impromptu traditional music session that sprang up post-concert.

Check it all out:     

Check out the videos:

A Blazing Set of Reels
http://www.irishphiladelphia.com/video/carberryquinn01

Angelina Carberry and Martin Quinn Play “The Princess Royal”
http://www.irishphiladelphia.com/video/carberryquinn02

Button Box Player Martin Quinn Sits in at a Philadelphia Irish Music Session
http://www.irishphiladelphia.com/video/carberryquinn03

Reel Time With Angelina Carberry, Daughter Shawna, and Martin Quinn
http://www.irishphiladelphia.com/video/carberryquinn04

A Set of Jigs Featuring Angelina Carberry, Daughter Shawna and Martin Quinn
http://www.irishphiladelphia.com/video/carberryquinn05

July 16, 2009 by
Music

Carberry and Quinn: In Concert at the Irish Center

A few weeks ago, I was listening to a few reels from Martin Quinn and Angelina Carberry’s eponymous CD and felt unusually relaxed. I couldn’t figure out why. I was heading off on vacation and I had a pile of laundry to do the size of Mount Agamenticus. I had a story to turn in virtually the minute we got back from Maine. I hadn’t even gotten the suitcases down from the attic.

It took me a while, but I figured it out: It’s the banjo (her) and the button accordian (him). Those are the instruments the anchor musicians play at my local session at Ambler’s Shanachie Pub. On the Tuesday nights that I’m there, I don’t have a care in the world. And one night, I even saw Angelina Carberry and Martin Quinn sitting in with Fintan Malone and Kevin McGillian.

Carberry and Quinn will be coming to the Irish Center this Friday night, July 10, for a concert sponsored by the Philadelphia Ceili Group.

Born in Manchester, England, Angelina Carberry came to Irish music naturally—her father, Peter, and her grandfather were both musicians. She gravitated to the tenor banjo as a child after a stint on the tin whistle. And Martin wasn’t the first accordian player she teamed with. In 1998, she released a CD called “Memories of the Holla” which she made with her father on accordian and John Blake on guitar. She has since released a solo album (though Quinn, now her husband, can be heard on a few tracks) called , “An Traidisiun Beo.”

Martin Quinn, a native of Armagh, comes from a long line of musicians and story tellers. He’s considered one of the finest exponents of the button box, which he teaches, and has toured Europe with the groups Dorsa and La Lugh.

I talked to Martin Quinn a couple of weeks ago by phone from his home in Longford, Ireland. Here’s what he had to say.

How did you and Angelina get together?
Well, we met in Milltown Malbay at the Willie Clancy Festival.  We were both playing a session at Queally’s Pub, and ended up playing a few tunes together. So yes, the music brought us together and we’re playing together for nine years.

Do you play concerts all year?
Mostly during the summer. We’ll do occasional concerts on weekends during the year, but don’t go away for weeks at a time because Angelina teaches lot of music, and I tune and repair accordions.

What does that entail?
I get them, take them apart and put them back together. Hopefully. [Laughing]

In your bio, your family is described as. . .
Raconteurs, yes. I have uncle  who’s quite a famous storyteller, a real character from Armagh, Michael Quinn, he’s 83 now, and he’s actually performing at the Catskills this year.  He’s a great character, a carrier of old songs and local history.  His father, my grandfather, was the same as well.

How about you?
I can tell the odd lie. But that would not have been my main pursuit.

Where did the music come from?  
My mother plays the accordian. She wouldn’t play in public, but she taught me my first tunes. Both grandfathers played fiddle and melodeon, and both  were singers. My mother can sing too. I have lots of cousins who play music and an auntie of mine plays banjo as well. And my sister plays the accordian too.

You apparently gravitated toward traditional music, but were you ever tempted to play more modern tunes?
When my mother played, it was usually a  hornpipe or a jig. That’s what I learned first.  I played with a few ballad bands when I was in my teens—people will ask you to fill in for somebody. But I always had jigs and reels ringing around inside me head.

One of the things I love about Irish traditional music is how musicians learn tunes not so much from recordings but from each other. I just heard Paddy O’Brien at a house concert and he not only remembers something like 3,000 tunes, but who he learned them from. Is that how you learned?
I probably learn tunes every week from someone. It’s inevitable that you’ll go to a session and hear something you haven’t heard before. Of course, they might have learned it off a CD themselves beforehand. You don’t know. [Laughing.} We moved away from Armagh when I was 12 to live in County Meath and we were quite close to an old fiddle player, Joe Ryan, from West Clare. I used to see him at music sessions every week, playing his unique style. It really inspired me. When he turned up it was very special and I looked forward to it. When I met Angelina I met her father and her uncle. I would sit and listen to them rather than play with them and picked up a lot. I was definitely inspired.

The other thing I really love about traditional music is that even the most famous players will take the time to pass along songs to whoever shows up at the session.
That’s beauty of traditional music.  The most famous musicians will welcome you into their houses and sit down a play a tune with anybody. That’s the way the music is. It’s what we’ve all come from. If it goes any other way, it will be lost.

Carberry and Quinn will play on Friday night, July 10, at the Philadelphia Irish Center, Carpenter and Emlen Streets, starting at 8 PM. Tickets are available at the door or online. 

July 7, 2009 by
Dance, Music

Didn’t We All Just Have the Best Time?

Stella means star ... and she is. One of many who just couldn't keep from dancing.

Stella means star ... and she is. One of many who just couldn't keep from dancing.

Not all that long ago, Irish newcomers to the Delaware Valley found a pretty fair treatment, if not a cure, for homesickness in the dances at the old VFW on 69th Street.

Rosemarie Timoney, one of the local legends of Irish dance, recalls working in Chestnut Hill in those days. She used to hop on a bus that would take her from Bethlehem Pike down to Cheltenham Avenue, and from there, she’d join her girlfriends on the E bus for the last leg of the trip down to Upper Darby.

There, she and her pals would dance the sets—Shoe the Donkey, the Siege of Ennis, the Philadelphia set (of course), and more.

A few of the folks who remember the dance hall days all too well—including Rosemarie, Ed Reavy Jr., Tommy Moffit and Kevin McGillian—were on hand over the weekend as the Philadelphia Ceili Group held its annual festival of Irish music and dance at the Philadelphia Irish Center. One very special feature of that three-day event was a Saturday afternoon dance to commemorate those days down on 69th Street. With Rosemarie herding the newbies, Tommy calling the tunes, Kevin playing accordion and Ed dancing up a storm, it felt like nothing had really changed at all. The dance hall was different, but the dance goes on.

It all felt like a great reunion party. But, then, the Ceili Festival always seems to reunite people who sometimes manage to see each other two or three times a week, as well as people who maybe haven’t been inside the Irish Center for years. Everyone just picks up where they left off, and they all throw themselves into hours and hours of great music—this year including a concert by the great New York fiddler Tony DeMarco—as well as endless hours of floor-shaking dancing. (You can hear the shoe-pounding pretty well in the parking garage under the ballroom.) The bar does a pretty fair business, and traditional music sessions go on and on into the night.

We’ve tried to capture some of the best moments in pictures.

September 19, 2008 by
Dance, Music

It’s Ceili Group Festival Time Again!

Singers Terry Kane and Rosaleen McGill are on the bill for the 34th annual Philadelphia Ceili Group music festival.

Singers Terry Kane and Rosaleen McGill are on the bill for the 34th annual Philadelphia Ceili Group music festival.

Tony DeMarco.

As far as I’m concerned, you don’t get much more Irish than that. Sure, his Dad was Italian, but the part-Irish DeMarco (his mom’s a Dempsey) is one of the finest practitioners of the so-called Sligo style of fiddling. It’s bouncy, intricate (musicians call it ornamentation), and you can’t keep your foot still for love nor money.

DeMarco, who recently produced his first CD, will be challenging you to stay in your seat on Friday night , September 12, when he performs during the 34th Annual Philadelphia Ceili Group Irish Music and Dance Festival, held at the Irish Center in Mt. Airy. The three-day event is a musical must-see for anyone interested in traditional Irish music and dance–in fact, for anyone with an interest in real folk music. 

It kicks off with one of the best additions in recent years—Thursday’s Irish Circle of Song, featuring local singers Rosaleen McGill, Matt Ward, Kathy DeAngelo, Eugenia Brennan, and Terry Kane. Also joining them on stage will be Brian Hart, the only American ever to win an All-Ireland title for singing at the Irish Fleadh Cheoil, and Canadian sean nos (old time) singer Catherine Crowe, who also usually brings her handmade jewelry to sell.

If you really, truly can’t keep your feet still during Tony DeMarco’s performance on Friday, or it gives you a case of the restless legs, head into the Irish Center’s Big Ballroom where you can kick up your heels to Danny Flynn’s The Bog Wanderers, a topnotch ceili band from Maryland. The Washington Post called their first CD “consistently enjoyable.”

On Saturday, the doors open at noon to one jam-packed day, tailor-made for the multi-tasker. There are workshops in fiddle, accordian, bodhran pipes, sean nos singing, and step-dancing from noon to 2 PM in the Ballroom. There’s a tin whistle workshop followed by a pipes, flutes and whistles concert so everyone can show off what they learned.

In the Ballroom, what’s billed as a “continuous killer ceili” will keep you moving and grooving from 2 to 10 PM , followed, if you have the energy or are still living, by a traditional Irish House Party (a dance so called because it was traditionally held in someone’s home, with the furniture pushed against the walls to create a dance floor) with set and figure dancing to live music. 

On the Fireside and John Kelly Stages, there will be concurrent performances, from 2 PM to 10 PM, by a variety  of performers. They include the father-son team of Kevin and Jimmy McGillian, brother and sisters John, Judy, and Eugenia Brennan, Brendan Callahan, Sean McComiskey, Fintan Malone of Blarney, Tom O’Malley, Caitlin Finley, Dennis Gormley, Kathy DeAngelo, Tony DeMarco, Danny Flynn,The Bog Wanderers, Brian Hart, Jeremy Bingamen, Mary Malone, Paddy O’Neill, Matt Ward, Matt Heaton, Brendan Mulvihill, Kieran Jordan, Tim Britton, McDermott’s Handy, Catherine Crowe, Rosaleen McGill, Terry Kane, Tim Hill, and more. All are welcome to stay for the Open Music and Song Jam Session (seisiún in Irish) until the wee hours!

But if your bent is more the spoken word, at 6 PM there will be a presentation by, well,you, if you want to read or recite a piece of poetry and prose. Festival director Frank Malley says he’ll “tell a story to start it off, then call on one, then another and another for about an hour to recite, read poetry, or tell stories.”

Local Irishspeaker, Tom Cahill, will recite in Irish, then translate into English.

All-festival tickets are $35. Individual tickets cost $12 for Thursday’s Irish Circle of Song, $15 for Friday’s Tony DeMarco Concert and The Bog Wanderers; and $20 for Saturday’s musical extravaganza. 

Check out some of last year’s photos here. 

And here. 

Here’s where you can buy tickets.  

And here’s why I love Tony DeMarco’s music so much.  Listen to tracks from his new CD here.  

This is why I can’t get enough of Terry Kane’s angelic voice. Listen to clips from her CD here. 

September 4, 2008 by
Music

Inside the Heart of a Dreamer

I would fly from the woods’ low rustle
And the meadows’ kindly page.
Let me dream as of old by the river,
And be loved for the dream alway;
For a dreamer lives forever,
And a toiler dies in a day.

—John Boyle O’Reilly

Sean Tyrrell, the singer-songwriter from the West of Ireland, has performed in Philadelphia twice—including a memorable set with fiddler Tommy Peoples at the 2001 Philadelphia Ceili Group Festival. (You can hear it on the group’s commemorative festival CD, “Toss the Fiddles.”)

I’ve missed his local appearances, but I ran into him a few years ago on a trip to Ballyvaughan, County Clare. He was playing his regular weekly session at Green’s, a pub roughly the size of a confessional booth in the center of town.

After a strong set of the traditional stuff, Sean started noodling around on the guitar, getting set to play something soft and slow. It took me a few notes before I recognized the tune: “South of the Border (Down Mexico Way),” the peppy 1939 standard written by Jimmy Kennedy and Michael Carr, and a big hit for singers as diverse as Gene Autry and Frank Sinatra.

Tyrrell’s version was a different tune altogether. Gone was the hokey Latin syncopation. And that mental image of Dorothy Lamour with a bowl of fruit on her head? Forget that. This was a far more wistful treatment than ever I’d ever heard.

Tyrell’s great gift lies in his ability to interpret songs—even those, and perhaps especially those, that have otherwise been done until you’re sick of hearing them.

“I have often said that I don’t regard myself as having the greatest voice,” Tyrrell said in a phone interview from Seattle, “but that (his interpretive skill) is something that I do have. There aren’t that many bad songs, really, but there are a lot of bad singers. What I mean by that is, people who just don’t care about the lyric. You can take a song like “The Black Velvet Band” or “The Wild Rover,” and if you really read those lyrics, you’ll find that they’re great songs, but they’ve just been done to death.”

One example is Tyrrell’s take on the standard “Coast of Malabar.” It could be a cheesy or sentimental tune, he admits. It has certainly been performed in that way. But, he said, “If you really look at the lyrics, it’s about a man who has fallen in love with a woman who’s a different color. And he can’t bring her back to England, because she’s the wrong color. I just wanted to get that across.”

Tyrrell’s other great passion, for some time, has been poetry, including the works of the well-known—Oscar Wilde, for example—as well as some other poets who are not as well known, such as Louis MacNeice.

The poet with whom Tyrrell is most closely identified is John Boyle O’Reilly. O’Reilly was a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, captured and jailed, and subsequently transported to Australia. He escaped to Boston, where he became editor of the Irish newspaper, The Pilot.

Tyrrell’s interest in setting poetry to music stems from a chance encounter in New York City with a book called “100 Years of Irish Poetry,” edited by Kathleen Hoagland. “It’s still available, actually,” he said. “About 50 percent of my repertoire for years has been from poems from that book that I set to music. One of the poems was was John Boyle O’Reilly, ‘Cry of a Dreamer.’ I recorded it on my first album, and gave it (the album) that title.”

Tyrrell now performs five of O’Reilly’s poems set to music in a one-man show, also entitled “Cry of a Dreamer.” The show also includes music and poetry from a number of other diverse sources, including Wilde, as well as Bob Dylan and John Lennon. The show is meant to document O’Boyle’s life.

“He was an amazing human being,” said Tyrrell. “The magnitude of his soul just amazes me.”

You’ll get a chance to see the show here in Philadelphia on Saturday, May 17, at 8 p.m. at the Philadelphia Irish Center. The show is sponsored by the Philadelphia Ceili Group. The show has earned standing ovations in just about every city on the current tour where Tyrrell has performed it.

May 9, 2008 by
Dance, Music

It Was a Grand Party

Lunasa's Kevin Crawford gets crazy with his bodhran.

Lunasa's Kevin Crawford gets crazy with his bodhran.

At one point on Saturday night, Dennis Gormley, fiddling with the mike on the Fireside Stage at Philly’s Irish Center, leaned over and expressed his thanks to the Philadelphia Ceili Group and its Irish Music Festival director Frank Malley  for “throwing this great party.”

“And inviting all our friends,” added his wife, Kathy DeAngelo, from behind her harp.

The duo, who have been performing as McDermott’s Handy for nearly three decades, could look out at the audience and see rows of familiar faces. But even if you didn’t know a soul, you would have thought you were among your closest friends at an intimate little party for hundreds. That’s the atmosphere of the Philadelphia Ceili Group’s annual Irish Festival, which ran for five days from September5-9.

You could have mingled with legends.

If you had stayed late on Friday night, for example, after the performance by the incredible Irish group, Lunasa, you could have shared a pizza with the band and piper Tim Britton, a former Delaware Valley resident, who opened for them.

On Saturday, you might have been in the food line behind the towering form of Breanndan Begley, the Kerryman who had just mesmerized the crowd with his emotional singing. Or struck up a conversation with Sligo-born Kevin Henry, a venerable flutist and piper, now of Chicago, who wasn’t going to have a bite until he found “herself”–his wife, who was somewhere in the crowd.

If you hadn’t brought your own dance partner for Irish radio personality Marianne MacDonald’s House Party on Saturday night, you didn’t have to worry about being a wallflower. Someone could be convinced to dance a set or two with you–or even teach you the steps in the hall. It might have been Ed Reavy, son of the legendary fiddler, who, with his wife, Mary, are the Fred and Ginger of Irish set dancing.

And you could have seen four-time all Ireland fiddler Brendan Callahan perform superhumanly, fiddling for the Irish dancers, playing with a trio, sitting in on sessions. . .admitting only once on Saturday night that he might be “a little tired.”

The 31st festival opened on Wednesday night with an evening of poetry and prose, read by local Irish literary lights including Father John McNamee, pastor of St. Malachy’s Parish in North Philadelphia and the author of four books, and his friend, Father Michael Doyle of Sacred Heart Parish in Camden, NJ, author of the book, “It’s a Terrible Day, Thanks Be to God.” On Thursday, local singers including Terry Kane, Rosaleen McGill, Eugenia Brennan, Sharon Sachs, and John Winward, joined Canadian sean nos singer Catherine Crow and, from the Midwest, Brian Hart, the 28-year-old singer and dancer who is the only American ever to win an All-Ireland title for singing at the Irish Fleadh Cheoil for the Circle of Song.

The festival ended with a set dance event on Sunday.

We were there for mostly everything, as these photos will prove. If you couldn’t make it this year, mark it on your calendar for next year. It’s a party, and everyone is invited.

Relive the festivities here:

September 10, 2007 by