From The Hob

Matt Cranitch and Jackie Daly tour

Still basking in the afterglow of the release last year at the Catskills Irish Arts Week of their new CD The Living Stream, the veteran Cork musicians Matt Cranitch and Jackie Daly are back in the U.S. giving a proper tour around the North East and Midwest over the next few weeks.

Both were steeped in the Sliabh Luachra tradition around the Northwest borders of Co. Cork and East Kerry, where the music predominated by polkas and slides percolated for decades and gave rise to many a great set dance as well.

Each has had a distinguished career playing with others in groups and also in their solo efforts as musicians and teacher/performers like at the Catskills event.  For a number of years they led the Sliabh Luachra Admiration Society that formed every summer in East Durham, and it led them to consider making an album together.  Thankfully the Arts Council of Ireland agreed and provided funding last year to help with the recording.

Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann celebrates 60 great years

There is still plenty of action to be had after St. Patrick’s Day in the world of traditional Irish music and dance. With the big holiday out of the way, moving to center stage is the cultural movement known as Comhaltas, dedicated to preserving tradition music, dance and the Irish language.

Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann (pronounced ceoltas kiltory erin) is now in its 60th year, and that occasion will be marked on several fronts over the next three weekends around the U.S.

Back in 1951, a number of musicians and individuals who were concerned about the survival of traditional Irish music with immigration depleting the populace in Ireland alongside the national disinterest in the native music, song and dance met in Mullingar to see what could be done about it.

McNulty tribute perfect . . . almost

The Peter Sharpe Theater at Symphony Space was sold out last Friday night. It seemed like the fascination with the first family of Irish music, the McNultys, had found a nostalgic vein in New York City once again.

The latest in the series of Dr. Mick Moloney/Irish Arts Center mega-shows had folks scurrying to secure ducats and ensuring a sellout a week in advance. And there wasn’t too much vacant real estate on stage either as the professor assembled a cast of 50 to help tell the tale of the Vaudeville-inspired family band led by the indomitable Annie “Ma” McNulty and her two children Peter and Eileen.

The show and tell approach has worked well in the past for these kinds of artistic collaborations for the academic Moloney and the theatrical Irish Arts Center, especially at the setting of Symphony Space, home for artistic endeavors on the Upper West Side.

New York Public Library goes green

When our imagination is employed it can lead to the kind of fertility that can help cement and also augment the 21st century bonds that remain very much in place between Ireland and America.

Opening this past weekend is a historical collection of archival material in various media dealing with the performing arts entitled “Ireland America: The Ties That Bind.”

The exhibit is housed at the Donald and Mary Oenslager Gallery at the New York Public Library (NYPL) for the Performing Arts on the plaza level of Lincoln Center for six months until August 13.

Saint Patrick's Day gigs in New York City

Visit our special St Patrick's Day section

That trend for many of the touring trad super groups to bypass New York City continues unabated this season save for one example down below.

The Chieftains (Paddy Moloney, Matt Molloy and Kevin Conneff) are currently on a long St. Patrick’s under the aegis of the Imagine Ireland program throughout the U.S. in 2011. As usual it winds up on St. Patrick’s Day where this year they will celebrate it in Toronto, Canada at the Roy Thomson Hall.

Washington Square Players Launch New CD

It has been about a decade or so since Dr. Mick Moloney decided that the allure of New York City and its bountiful research topics and academic resources, along with multitudes of talent in Irish music, were too good to resist.

He signed on with New York University’s music department as a global distinguished professor of music and also affiliated with the Glucksman Ireland House Irish Studies program.

These pages have chronicled much of the great programming, lectures and workshops stimulated by the Limerick native’s fertile and incessant creativity. One of the more intriguing projects is an ongoing one that dovetails nicely with his digging for gold in Irish Americana like Tin Pan Alley and Harrigan and Hart and the McNultys.