New York Irish Arts

Theatre Review: Beautiful Dreamer- Eugene O'Neill in Brooklyn and Chelsea

2012-03-03T13:47:00.002-08:00

Eugene O'Neill

How It's New York: Eugene O'Neill (1888 – 1953) was a Broadway baby, born in a Broadway hotel room, and there are traces of him all over the city. The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center (based in Connecticut, but has offices in NY) nurtures and develops new talent at a highly prestigious retreat every summer. It's a very New York thing to see several companies take on the same playwright in the same year, too. Right now, there's O'Neill at Irish Repertory Theatre, and at St. Ann's Warehouse, in a joint production by the Wooster Group and Richard Maxwell's New York City Players.
How It's Irish: O'Neill himself was second-generation Irish-- his father James was a famous actor. He obviously inherited some of the poetry from Dad. But you don't have to justify his inclusion at Irish Repertory Theatre by his pedigree alone. Yearning, melancholy, love of the sea, battle with depression and drink, and the dangerous call of poetry always lurk in his plays. Often there's an Irish character around, as there is in the Glencairn plays; the characters in Beyond the Horizon are clearly Irish-American.

A version of this review first appeared in Irish Examiner USA, February 28.

Seeing these early works of O'Neill back to back is enlightening in many ways. But the one not to miss is Ciarán O'Reilly's luminous production of Beyond the Horizon at Irish Rep.

THE EARLY PLAYS runs through March 11 at St. Ann's Warehouse, 38 Water Street, DUMBO, Brooklyn. BEYOND THE HORIZON runs through April 8 at The Irish Repertory Theatre, 132 West 22nd Street.

Ciarán O'Reilly demonstrates the worthiness of Beyond the Horizon to live in our imaginations: O'Neill's affecting play and the tragedy of being what you are.

Eugene O'Neill, In Brooklyn And In Chelsea

It's not Eugene O'Neill's fault that he's been over-lionized as the first original American playwright, or as the genius writer son of an actor with no peers.

He knew better--that he studied playwriting with George Pierce Baker at Harvard, that he worked with Susan Glaspell at the Provincetown Playhouse.

He won four Pulitzer Prizes over his life--the most of any playwright to date. He also won a Nobel Prize. But more than that, he was a true artist, questing, seeking, changing forms, trying things, and looking for truth. He often succeeded.

Right now, there's an unusual amount of early O'Neill showing around town.

A few months ago, the New York Neo-Futurists hilariously did their "The Complete & Condensed Stage Directions of Eugene O'Neill Volume 1: Early Plays/Lost Plays", in which Foley artists provided sound effects while actors tried to glare with burning eyes, look voluptuous, etc. There was no dialogue and none needed.

Conventions in theatre have moved on since O'Neill began writing in 1914.

But productions of that early work show that they still can have tremendous power.

You can see that power more clearly in Irish Repertory Theatre's production of O'Neill's first Pulitzer Prize-winner, Beyond the Horizon, than in the Early Plays at St. Ann's Warehouse.

***

The Wooster Group and New York City Players have joined to present three of O'Neill's early short plays, from a group known as "The Glencairn Plays," at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn.

The production officially opened on February 22 and closes March 11.

Ari Fliakos, Kate Valk, Jim Fletcher, Lakpa Bhutia and Andrew Schneider(Courtesy of The Wooster Group)

The Wooster Group and the New York City Players are both known for their experimental work. Here, the experiment mostly consists of non-naturalistic style of acting that points to what would be there rather than allowing the actors to inabit the world

The three plays, "Bound East for Cardiff" (1914), "The Long Voyage Home" (1917), and "The Moon of the Caribbees" (1918) are all about sailors on the Glencairn, drawing from O'Neill's own experiences as a merchant seaman.

In "The Moon of the Caribbees," sailors buy contraband rum from two Island women (Kaneza Schaal and Kate Valk), while on the shore natives chant a funeral song. Smitty (Kevin Hurley), one of the sailors is sensitive, a gentleman, with his heart broken. A fight breaks out.

In "Bound East for Cardiff," Yank (Brian Mendes), a tough sailor we met in the first play has been injured in a fall. His friend Driscoll (Ari Fliakos) stays with him as he dies.

In "The Long Voyage Home," Olson (Bobby McElver) a naïve Swedish sailor, is duped by a woman at a bar (Kaneza Schaal), drugged and robbed and dumped on another ship to serve--just when he'd been dreaming about finally getting off the ship and going home for good.

O'Neill creates a mood in each play, a mood of longing, despair, and yes, humor, in
each play. To capture the difficulties of communication--and because it was a convention of the time--he also wrote, meticulously, the dialect of each of the sailors, many of whom were non-native speakers of English.

It's not how dialogue is written today, though.

Maxwell's main approach to directing seems to have been to emphasize clarity of words.

But what it seems like, watching, is just archly making fun of the dialect. It's too easy to make the audience laugh at Olson saying "Py yingo." declamatory style, ultimately, did not reveal the words so much as distort them. The non-acting acting almost seemed to mock the plays--surely not the director's intent (and at times, some actors fell into more emotional acting anyway).

All of which is to say, in the end, this evening did not work for me.

In trying to keep things simple and clear, the companies seem to have chosen not to actually do the plays.

Some years ago I saw a production of The Emperor Jones in which all of the stage directions were read, in between dialogue. This was interesting for about ten minutes. The Early Plays had a similar effect. Maxwell has written three original songs (there is also a sea shanty built in to the play).The songs are evocative, modern, with lyrics that relate to the plays--but don't quite connect to them.

That is my assessment of the evening, also.

***

Wrenn Schmidt, Lucas Hall @Carol Rosegg

Irish Repertory Theatre's production of "Beyond the Horizon", on the other hand, is deeply affecting.

The play runs through April 8.

O'Neill's 1920 play established him as a significant writer to the world.

It seldom gets done, and while some of it is a little creaky, director Ciarán O'Reilly demonstrates its worthiness to live in our imaginations. The play ends in mid-sentence. There's a chance for redemption, but no certainty.

It tells the story of a young man, who, like many of O'Neill's characters, has "a touch of the poet" about him. Rob Mayo (Lucas Hall), 23, sickly as a boy, is about to go "beyond the horizon," and set off to sea with his Uncle Dick (John Thomas Waite). He's never going to be much of a farmer anyway, unlike his brother Andy (Rod Brogan), 27, who is his polar opposite but who is also his best friend.

But when Robbie takes leave of Ruth (Wrenn Schmidt), the girl from the farm next door, he lets slip that one of his reasons for going is his love for her. Turns out, she loves him too (we see this growing on her face before he does, since her back is to him).

She can't go with him her mother is in a wheelchair.

Since everyone assumed she would marry Andy, including Andy, it's Andy now who goes instead. Mr. Mayo (David Sitler) is furious, and declares he'll never forgive him.

We follow this couple from 1907 - 1916. Things go badly. Rob's not a farmer, and though he tries, Ruth comes to regret her choice.

Everyone longs for Andy's return from sea. So often, people wait for him to come and fix things, that one is tempted to subtitle the play Waiting for Andy, except that unlike Godot, Andy does, ultimately appear (twice, even).

When Andy briefly returns the first time, four years later, he's about to go to the Argentine. He reveals that he's over Ruth--which breaks her heart (his declaration hauntingly echoes, in the way it's staged, Rob's in Act One). In the play's final act, illness has robbed the couple of nearly everything (one person who survives everyone is, of course, the invalid mother, humorously played by Patricia Connolly). Andy comes back, to Rob's deathbed.

What's "beyond the horizon" is not only mystery, but also death.

There are many things that make the play itself powerful. One of the strongest is that there is no villain here. There is no banker who wants to shut down the farm, no terrible jealousy to turn brother against brother. There are only people, doing the best they can, getting what they wanted and finding it not enough, changing as life changes them, looking for meaning, dealing with tragedy.

Watching events unfolded, I was struck by how rarely one sees this dramatized.

Writers are taught to find conflict, and too often, that means an antagonist who wants nothing except to be a pain in the neck to someone else (I'm looking at you, O'Brien and Thomas on Downton Abbey). O'Neill's characters, in contrast, are their own worst enemies. Aren't we all?

Lucas Hall, Rod Brogan @Carol Rosegg

Rob and Andy are both even aware of this. Andy is a born farmer, "as much a part of the land as a tree or an ear of corn," and his letters from sea are, Rob notices, like "letters from a farmer"--all business, work, practicality.

Rob is a dreamer, and even when he tries to buckle down and work hard, he can't get anywhere with it. "It's just Beauty that's calling me," he tried to explain to Andy about wanting to go away.

There's nobody to hate, and much to ponder. Characters make mistakes, but they come out of their character. You can't run from your own nature. And if your nature is at odds with your situation, you're in trouble. You an only be what you are, the play shows us. The only hope for happiness is in that understanding.

Ruth is a girl with little imagination--it's easy to see how she would be bowled over by Rob's way with words early on, and come to hate him for not being more effective once the realities of marriage set in. She married for love, and wishes she hadn't. In this, she's not unlike Min in the Teresa Deevy's play Temporal Powers, which we reviewed here on August 30. Schmidt was in that play as well, playing not the disappointed Min but the trusting Lizzie.

Some critics might call the play melodramatic, but the play works squarely against that structure in a way that would have seemed modern in 1920--and frankly feels so now.

After the father renounces Andy, you might think we're being set up for another scene of conflict or reconciliation. But the next scene takes place four years later, after the father has died.

Johanna Leister , Wrenn Schmidt, Patricia Conolly, Aimee Laurence

Similarly, when Ruth shrieks at Rob that she's always loved Andy, you might expect a showdown, or a separation, some kind of development of the triangle.

But there isn't, at least, not the kind you'd expect in from an evening soap (today's melodramas, right down to the music telling you how to feel).

When Andy tells her how the little girl is so like her father, you might think you're being set up for Ruth to kill her. Nope. And so on. O'Neill also beautifully lets us know how much time has gone by and what has happened in between scenes, without ever resorting to contemporary tricks like "four years later" onstage. The structure and control is impressive.

There's no doubt that O'Reilly is an excellent interpreter of O'Neill.

His productions of The Hairy Ape (2006, read my Back Stage review here) and The Emperor Jones (2009, my review for The L Magazine is here) were deservedly lionized for the way they brought out O'Neill's poetry, subtlety and power.

O'Reilly, more than any director of O'Neill that I've seen, understands how to pace him.

This production is overall slightly less successful than those. That's in part because the play has less of a unified tone. It calls for different styles of acting, a more naturalistic approach (which O'Reilly provides) than in the other two.

But that there are some flaws in the writing, some missteps in the acting, doesn't detract from the overall power of the production. At 3.5 hours, Beyond the Horizon could so easily be a slog. It never feels like one. He captures the spirit of the time--even its stilted language, in the first scene, when the brothers try to be cheery, knowing they are saying goodbye--without mocking it or succumbing to it.

And then there are those subtle stage pictures, where we see what's happening on the characters' faces, but others with them do not. One picture, of Ruth in a striped dress against Hugh Landwehr's bleached board flooring, was particularly memorable.

Linda Fisher and Jessica Barrios' costumes not only demonstrated character but also helped create this world.Landwehr also designed the sky backdrop, with big brushstrokes so that the artifice of it can't be missed. Musical underscoring by Ryan Rumery has a country twang and melancholy that is somehow American and Irish.

The cast rise to the heights when the characters do, although Schmidt's choice to play the entire third act in a depressed monotone worked against the language for me. Still, she's outstanding in the play's middle scenes, as a frustrated but still tender woman.

Waite's plays Uncle Dick as a rather stock sea salt, but the caricature seemed right, structurally. Leister's Mrs. Mayo displays smart wryness. And Connolly's Mrs. Atkins twists the knife with every passive-aggressive remark, earning deserved laughs as the Irish mother from Hell. Sitler's 0-60 leap from calm to fury is terrifying. "I know your ways and they're my ways," is his desperate cry to his deserting son--whose only way of escape is to insult the thing he loves most, that is, the land. Aimee Laurence as Ruth and Rob's sweet little girl is all the more affecting in her sweet tantrums. Brogan as Andy and Hall as Rob are the play's heart and soul. Brogan brings every drop of rage, pathos, and indeed, poetry to him. And it's rare to see the man of action, the practical man, not also be the villain. Rob could easily be insufferable, but Hall infuses him with the right amount of frustration and self-deprecation.

"There I go, dreaming again, my old fool dreams," he says.

It's the Irish complaint: the dreaming, oh the dreaming..

It's in Shaw as well as in O'Neill. And it's never sadder than here when married to the unrealized American dream.

THE EARLY PLAYS runs through March 11 at St. Ann's Warehouse, 38 Water Street, DUMBO, Brooklyn. BEYOND THE HORIZON runs through April 8 at The Irish Repertory Theatre, 132 West 22nd Street.

Come One, Come All, to St. Pat's For All! MARCH 4

2012-03-03T08:57:00.002-08:00

How It's New York: The St. Pat's for All Parade celebrates the diversity of NYC, among other things, including the Borough of Queens!
How It's Irish: Brendan Fay, who started the Parade in 2000, is an Irish immigrant. He began the parade when the Ancient Order of Hibernians rejected LGBT marching under their own banners again and again.

How I love this parade-- in its inclusiveness it represents the city I love, and it would not be if not for the Irish St. Patrick's Day. It's strange to remember that, as Brendan Fay told us on the February 26 week's podcast, when he first came to NYC it was still a crime in Ireland to be gay (I interviewed Brendan for a piece on the Brokentalkers show Silver Stars for the New York Times a few years ago-- a play about older gay men and their stories in Ireland).

Times have changed, and hearts have changed, and many Irish officials, including Consul General Noel Kilkenny and Speaker Christine Quinn, support the parade now-- but the AOH still doesn't allow LGBT to march under their own banners.

But this parade is not just an LGBT parade, it's an all-inclusive parade. And it will be FUN! Brian Fleming, Niall O'Leary School of Dance, Caroline Duggan and Keltic Dreams Dancers, Mexican dancers, a Choctaw blessing, Korean drummers.... All it needs is a Jirish group and it would be perfect (and that is my new mission in life). The parade begins at 1 pm, but the party will go on all day!

Here's some of what Brendan says on the St. Pat's for All website:

Friends, A chairde
Failte! Welcome to our 13th annual St Pat's for All website! Failte roimh go leir!
Warmed by the hospitable community of Sunnyside and Woodside, we return each year to Skillman Avenue. We gather here to celebrate our shared heritage, Irish and Celtic. Whether in exile, fleeing famine, or pursuing dreams and hopes for liberty, equality and happiness, the Irish through the centuries have scattered across the globe, always enhancing the communities they join.
Here in New York St Pats for All 2012 is a generous coming together of business, community groups, Unions, artists and musicians who for few hours turns the streets of Sunnyside and Woodside into "Ireland of the welcomes!" Hospitality is at the heart of this diverse and inclusive St. Patrick's celebration which each year welcomes the diverse immigrants communities of Queens.
Each year we pay special tribute to friends and family some who have died. This year we will pay tribute to the political historian and novelist Peter Quinn, author of the now-available Book: The Man Who Never Returned, and Mary Brosnahan. Executive Director of The Coalition for the Homeless,
Annually, the parade is a result of months of meetings hosted by Sunnyside residents Patrick Langhenry and Raisa Wu.

Join us. Bring your wild and wonderful energy and color to the streets. Help liven and lighten our celebration and gathering. Help our parade sparkle!

WHEN: March 4th, 2012 1:00pm Assembly; 2:00 Kick-off

WHERE: Sunnyside/Woodside, beginning at Skillman Ave & 47th Street and ending at Woodside Ave & 58th Street.

The warm hospitable spirit of our festival is in the best Spirit of Ireland and New York! We are what we say: St Pat's For All!

Annual post-parade party at Saints & Sinners at 60th Street and Roosevelt Ave.

Many Thanks, Mile Buiochas!,

Brendan Fay & Kathleen Walsh D'Arcy,

Co Chairs

"cherishing all the children of the nation equally..."

Proclamation of the Irish Republic, Easter 1916

tele #: 718-721-2780 www.stpatsforall.com e-mail: info@stpatsforall.com

St. Pat's for All

22-22 28th St., Astoria, NY 11105

No 7 Trains running between Times Square and Queensborough Plaza.

For alternate subway service click here! Tailor your itinerary precisely at hopstop.com.

John Kearns Learns About Jim Tully: Boxer, Writer and Hollywood Star

2012-03-02T13:16:00.001-08:00

How It’s New York: The presentation by Mark Dawidziak and Paul Bauer took place and New York University’ Glucksman Ireland House-- one of New York's treasures, they present lectures, concerts, workshops on all facets of Irish culture and history.
How It’s Irish: The Ireland House event gave a vivid depiction of the life of second-generation Irish-American, Jim Tully, and a passionate and well-argued appeal for the revival of his literary reputation.

John Kearns learns about the fascinating life of Jim Tully at Glucksman Ireland House: a writer, boxer, 2nd generation Irishman who worked with Louise Brooks and Jimmy Cagney-- he might be "the missing link between Jack London and Jack Kerouac."

On Thursday, February 23rd, at Glucksman Ireland House, television, theater, and film critic Mark Dawidziak and Paul Bauer, author and owner of Archer's Used and Rare Books in Kent, Ohio, gave an outstanding multimedia presentation about the life and works of Irish-American novelist and journalist, Jim Tully (1886-1947) in support of their new biography, Jim Tully: American Writer, Irish Rover, Hollywood Brawler. Through stories, photos, film clips, and readings, Dawidziak and Bauer recounted how Jim Tully, a ditch digger’s son and teenage hobo, rose from extreme poverty to become the critically acclaimed author of 14 books , a close friend of movie stars, and, as the industry’s first serious journalist, the most feared and hated man in Hollywood. This former homeless juvenile, the biographers contend, could very well be the missing link between Jack London and Jack Kerouac. He could also be, as Professor Linda Dowling Almeida offered in her introductory remarks, the link in Irish-American literature between Finley Peter Dunne and James T. Farrell.

The remarkable life of the man who in novels such as Emmett Lawler (1922)
and Shanty Irish (1928) and in non-fiction works such as Beggars of Life (1924), and Circus Parade Circus Parade (1927) would earn fame depicting the lives of the forgotten and the outcast began in St. Mary’s, Ohio in 1886. Tully’s grandfather, Hugh, a refugee from the Ireland’s Great Hunger of the 1840s, had made his way to Ohio, where he and the author’s father dug ditches in the flat Midwestern farmlands. From his grandfather, a raconteur who could make audiences in the local pubs of Saint Mary’s laugh, cry, and buy him drinks, Jim Tully learned the value and the techniques of a good story well told.
Tully wrote of his grandfather, “Drama came as naturally to him as corn to an Ohio farmer.”

Jim Tully’s mother died when he was six and Jim was sent to an orphanage, where he spent the next six years in what was effectively a prison. While many of the nuns at the orphanage were cruel, others taught him how to read and write, to appreciate good books, and to memorize and recite well-written sermons.

At age 12, he was sent to a work on a farm, which proved worse than the orphanage. He suffered some of the coldest temperatures in Ohio history in threadbare overalls stuffed with newspaper. Tully escaped from the farm and made his way back to St. Mary’s where he soon became acquainted with the underworld brought to town by the railroad: the world of prostitutes, hobos, and their young counterparts known as “Road Kids.” Tully decided to take to the road himself and spent six years, riding in box cars and often “riding the rods” — underneath the train cars. He also worked for a traveling circus and did time on a chain gang in the South.

It was a very dangerous life, explained Dawidziak, where “death literally waited around every corner.”

However, it was these six years that would provide the material for almost all of his later writing.

One place where Jim Tully could get away from danger, the police, and bad weather was the public library. There, Jim could also educate himself about literature. He became enamored with writers who knew life on the road, especially Jack London and Joseph Conrad. Perhaps because of his literary interests and his ability to spin a yarn, both Jim’s sister, Virginia, and a librarian he met in Kent, Ohio suggested to Jim that he could become a writer.

He married a Kent High School girl and in 1912 moved to Los Angeles, where he worked as a tree surgeon and a boxer. Standing just five-foot-three, Jim fought as an unskilled featherweight who would take a lot of punishment and dole it out when he got the chance.

At the same time, Jim worked hard on his first novel, Emmet Lawler. In Los Angeles, he managed to meet his hero, Jack London, who got him drunk but gave him no valuable advice. Popular sentimental writer of the day, Harold Bell Wright, advised Tully to change the novel’s point of view from first to third person. Jim made the change and, in 1922, found a publisher.

His literary success did not equal financial success, however. He still needed to find a job to support his family. Through connections made at a Hollywood party, Tully found work at the studio of Charlie Chaplin. He wrote marketing copy and contributed script ideas.

Dawidziak pointed to a photo of Tully with Chaplin costumed as the “Little Tramp” and remarked, “Here is a picture of the ‘Little Tramp’ with the genuine article.”

Mark Dawidziak

Jim’s second book, Beggars of Life (1924), a memoir about his life as a vagabond, sold well and earned him a reputation in the literary world. Beggars of Life was adapted for the stage by Maxwell Anderson as Outside Looking In and was staged in Greenwich Village. Looking for someone to play Tully, a short, red-headed, charismatic, tough guy, the director cast an unknown song-and-dance man from Yorkville, a young fellow named James Cagney. This gave Cagney his first serious acting role.

While Tully was making a name for himself as a literary author writing stunning books about the underclass, he was also becoming famous/infamous as the first journalist to cover Hollywood seriously.

Tully’s third book, a non-fiction work about his life in the circus, appeared in 1927. Circus Parade was perhaps Tully’s most disturbing book and one of two of his works that were banned.
The following year Jim published what was perhaps his most affective book, the novel, Shanty Irish, which depicted the life of his family in Ohio.

Other notable books from this period include Shadows of Men (1930),a portrait of criminals, addicts, drifters, and other outcasts of society, and Blood on the Moon (1931),describing Tully’s becoming a writer.

Beggars Abroad (1930) is a travel book about offbeat locations in Europe, perhaps most interesting for the interviews it contains with luminaries such as George Bernard Shaw (who only wanted to talk about boxing) and James Joyce (who had an early manuscript of Work in Progress a.k.a. Finnegans Wake on his Left Bank desk.)

With his literary fame starting to fade in the mid-1930s and 1940s, Tully tried to write himself back into the limelight with The Bruiser(1936) and Biddy Brogan's Boy (1942). The comeback never materialized, however. In 1947, Tully, already suffering from arthritis and circulation problems perhaps caused by his hard years on the road, died from a massive heart attack.

As they presented the odyssey of Jim Tully’s rise from “Road Kid” to literary artist and scourge of Hollywood, Bauer and Dawidziak also presented the odyssey that they themselves went through in writing the Tully biography.

In 1992 a friend came into Paul Bauer’s used book store in Kent, Ohio and asked for a copy of The Bruiser by Jim Tully. Bauer didn’t have a copy of the book and knew nothing about its author. He was surprised to learn that Tully had lived and written in Kent.

When he asked Mark Dawidziak about Tully, the TV critic said, “Based on what little I know about him, I think you’ll like him.”

Dawidziak then stopped in a bookshop in Akron and asked for anything by Tully. There
was one copy of Shanty Irish. He took the book home and the writing, he declared, “Took the top of my head clear off.” Tully’s style mixed short, sharp, boxer’s jabs of sentences with passages of Irish lyricism that no other hard-boiled writer had attempted. Dawidziak later learned that Tully considered the hard-boiled prose writer and the dreamy Irish poet within him to be at war with each other.

Instead, Dawidziak argues, they created a “dynamic tension that gives off sparks.”

Next Dawidziak paid a visit to the “morgue,” the storage place for dead copy from the Beacon Journal. It turned out that in 1908 Tully had twice tried to be a reporter for that very paper. He immediately called Bauer with this exciting news — the first link in the chain that they would construct to tell the story of Jim Tully’s life and work. It was also just one of the many serendipitous moments in the authors’ researching and writing Jim Tully: American Writer, Irish Rover, Hollywood Brawler.

Their deciding to write the biography was an act of faith: Bauer and Dawidziak didn't know if they would ever have enough material for a book. Their big break came when a local librarian discovered that a trove of Tully’s personal papers — 100 boxes worth — had been donated to UCLA. Overnight, they had gone from having perhaps too little information to perhaps having too much.

Paul Bauer

In their research, Bauer and Dawidziak uncovered many photos and film clips, some of which they shared with the audience at Ireland House. They showed a sequence about jumping onto a freight train from the movie Beggars of Life, starring Louise Brooks. They also ran clips featuring Tully himself in the movie, Way for a Sailor. In this 1928 film, Tully appeared alongside John Gilbert, a star whose opportunity to replace the late Rudolph Valentino as the reigning male sex symbol was destroyed by an expose of Tully’s. The movie contains perhaps the only footage showing how Tully moved and spoke.

Dawidziak concluded the presentation with a reading from Shanty Irish, a lyrical passage in the voice of a character modeled after Tully’ grandfather, with a photo of Tully’s tombstone projected behind him. It was a fitting conclusion and one that argued strongly for readers to rediscover the work of forgotten prose stylist, Jim Tully.

Dawidziak and Bauer’s presentation was intriguing, informative, entertaining, and funny. It also made an eloquent and convincing plea for the restoration of Jim Tully and his works to prominence. However, their passion for their subject matter did keep their presentation from being as concise as it might have been. They ran out of time before they had a chance to discuss Tully’s disappearance from the public eye and from the world’s bookstores and websites. Unfortunately, this part of the story was only touched upon in the Question and Answer session after the presentation.

I look forward to reading Jim Tully: American Writer, Irish Rover, Hollywood Brawler and hope to review the biography for New York Irish Arts.*

And, because of the fascinating and impassioned case made by his biographers, Mark Dawidziak and Paul Bauer, I am especially eager to read the works of Jim Tully himself.

*Editor's Note: YAY!

Suze Sylvester is the Oscar Grouch

2012-02-28T07:23:00.000-08:00

How it's New York: we here in the Empire State like to take a glance at the annual LA-LA Land fête.

Natalie Wood and Tab Hunter at the 28th Academy Awards, 1956

How it's Irish: Oorlagh George, the Irish producer of The Shore, sporting traditional Celtic braids, showed more class than most of the others onstage that night - and all without losing her youthful exuberance or clothing. And her dad, Irish director/writer Terry George, was rightly proud of her! Don O'Neill, Irish clothing designer and Creative Director for THEIA, dressed both Oprah Winfrey and six-months pregnant Eimear O'Kane, the producer of the Oscar-nominated Irish short film Pentecost.

Suze Sylvester wonders:
Where was the glamour, the charm, and the genuine wit. Where were the glittering stars in the front row?

Why can't the Academy Awards be a night when the movies are the stars? (Yes, I'm the grouch...) When the awards show began 84 years ago, it lasted 15 minutes, and the movies took center stage. Last night's took 3 hours, very little focused attention (which was kind of a blessing). The presenters grabbed and held onto center stage with all their might.

There were appropriately nostalgic leanings: stage performances were mostly replaced by entertaining black-and-white movie shorts (even that awful disclaimer was a film using written words and a voice over), older actors both winning (Best Supporting Actor Christopher Plummer) and simply seated in the audience were honored. Presenters Will Farrell and Zach Galifianakis successfully (They practiced! See below.) enacted the silly old dropping-the-cymbls routine; two movies about silent movies ran off with most of the awards (The Artist and Hugo), and even the long career of seat-filler Carl Swaybo got honorable mention by Tom Hanks.

By Antoine Taveneaux (Own work)

And there were modern touches: Cirque du Soleil turned the house into a huge circus tent by flying from trapeze to catcher and back again over the heads of the astonished glitterati, there was a send-up of documentary making (Note to Downey: no amount of badgering will make Gwyneth Paltrow - or us viewers - understand your disjointed parody.), and Chris Rock delivered funny observations and barbed jokes with a laughing, deceptively nonchalant attitude. However, from the beginning of the program some things became very clear:

Most actors don't do very well unscripted. Presenter bits need to be rehearsed before they hit the stage. Even screen sirens like presenter Angelina Jolie need to practice reading the promptor. (These awards ARE talkies!) Somebody needs to mic emcee Billy Crystal - believe it or not: the orchestra drowned out his jokes...unless it was intentional. Lovely, voluptuous presenter JLo should definitely fire her stylist - or not quote the legendary costume designer Edith Head: “A dress should be tight enough to show you're a woman and loose enough to prove you're a lady.” Myrna Loy-style high-brow camp still trumps slapstick. (Emma Stone, you do it well - with Ben Stiller as your straight man, yet!)

It is vital to cut the mike feed before a jumble of men acts like X-rated-mouthed Keystone cops (the team from Best Documentary winner, Undefeated) . And I guess we all need to see the "popular" movies like Bridesmaids, whether we want to or not, or else the bits and jokes just look weird.

But where was the glamour, the charm, and the genuine wit? Where were the glittering stars in the front row? Billy Crystal making jokes half the night to a subdued George Clooney and date about being kissed by Clooney in an earlier skit/film is not a reasonable substitute. Where were the sweet stories of first-time winners, like the wonderful Octavia Spencer? She was so overcome that she needed help to walk to the stage for her Best Supporting Actress award, and received a standing ovation while she quipped "Thank you for putting me with the hottest guy in the room." Meryl Streep may be a "safe bet", but she's also one of the most versatile actresses today.

It was a strange night of change and juxtapositions. Commercials about smart phones, other "smart" equipment, and their ability to stream movies and TV programs were an ironic contrast to filmed interviews hailing the virtues of actually going to see movies "on the big screen". (I wonder what the AT&T, Sprint, and Samsung ad execs made of that?!)

Christopher Plummer and Chris Rock were genuinely funny in their own different ways. When a film made at an earlier date of Oprah Winfrey, James Earl Jones, and David Smith receiving their special awards was shown, no one expected the next announcement to be that the winners were in the theater - and they were, in a balcony that acted like a wonderful frame for their august presences. The performers of Cirque du Soleil, fabulous troupe de tromp-l'oeil, wore business suits and evening gowns. (While the stunts were thrilling, they also seemed out of place at a celebration of movies.)

The vision of Terry and Oorlagh George running up to the stage to collect their Oscar when The Shore won for Best Short Film, accompanied by a voice-over intoning that a lot of the cast and crew were family members of the Georges', was followed by a shot of Ciarán Hines in the movie.

Pleased to report that Oscar was surrounded by Celtic influences: not only did an Irish film win, but a trailer from Brave (due out on June 22, 2012 ), a Pixar film set in Scotland, came galloping across our screens during a break. Then a travel commercial with panoramic views of Britain worthy of a Merchant Ivory film wafted by. (Could Britain be the new Bahamas?) And of course there were the dresses from Irish designer Don O'Neill.

Towards the end of the night, there was another commercial: the Titanic movie has been adapted to 3-D. The Titanic of course was built in Belfast, Ireland, its maiden voyage began in Southampton, England with a stop in Queenstown/Cohb, Ireland before setting out on the high seas.

What is to become of Oscar? Well, he will be getting around more than the Travelocity gnome, judging by the recipients impassioned thank yous in many languages. And, considering that many countries have their own film industry, perhaps its about time the rest of the world participates in the Academy Awards shows.

We need the world view: to see where we came from, who is "in it" with us now, and where we can go in the future.

For a full list of winners, check out the Oscar site!

Oscar Winner Terry George: The Irish Are Great Talkers!

2012-02-26T20:09:00.000-08:00

How It's New York: All over the city and tristate, people are holding Oscar parties and watching together-- Hollywood may be 3000 miles away, but the acting community hops back and forth. And of course, we all love the movies!
How It's Irish: Writer/Director Terry George is from Northern Ireland, and his short "The Shore" was filmed there-- with a cast and crew, as the voiceover told us, made up of family and friends.

What a thrill to have the winner in the short film category be "The Shore" be Terry George and Oorlagh George.

CONGRATULATIONS to them both!

His remarks:

"This is my daughter the producer," he said as he bounded on stage with a lovely woman in blue, with braids in her hair. He went on to say, as she leaned her head on his shoulder,

"I want to thank the academy. Now I don't have to wait for her wedding to tell the world how brilliant she is!"

"Our little film was inspired by the people of northern ireland, protestant and catholic, who after 30 years of war, sat down, negotiated a peace and rpoved to the world that the Irish are great talkers.

I want to dedicate this to them and thank you again, thank you very much."

And Oorlagh shouted, after the camera cut to a very happy looking blonde woman with a young man sitting next to her, "Mom, this is for you!"

(and if you haven't seen it yet, you can now download it from itunes!)

Music Review: Ashley Davis - Fireside Songs for the Celtic Winter

2012-02-26T18:19:00.001-08:00

How It's New York: Ashley Davis brought her musical talents to the stage of Joe's Pub, joined onstage

@Therese Cox

by New York-based musicians Mike Cassedy (piano) and John Hadfield (percussion).

How It's Irish: The show featured songs from Ashley's latest album, Songs of the Celtic Winter

featuring songs in Irish, storytelling, and the musicianship of Irish harpist Cormac De Barra.

New blogger, author Therese Cox, reviews Ashley Davis at Joe's Pub on February 23, and joined her on a

sustained journey into a beautiful netherworld of plaintive verses and haunting choruses...

An unseasonably warm February evening set the stage for some uncommonly lush Irish music as Ashley Davis performed songs from her latest CD, Songs of the Celtic Winter, at Joe's Pub Thursday night. The wintry mood settled in early as the house lights dimmed, candles flickered, and Ashley's softly soaring vocals caressed the opening lines: "Snow has come and the night is fallen."

As the singer, dressed in black with a few gold spangles and long blond tresses, introduced the theme to the audience, she remarked with a sly wink: "The irony of the day that this is the hottest day registered on February 23rd is not lost on me." Still, she invited the packed house to join her in suspending disbelief and welcoming an evening of winter-inspired songs. The irony was only fitting: much of the album, she told the audience, had been written in Lawrence, Kansas at the height of a 95 degree summer.

Prior to Thursday night's performance at Joe's Pub, I'd been fortunate to catch Ashley Davis a few nights earlier at the Irish American Writers and Artists Salon, where she performed two songs from her new album, Songs of the Celtic Winter, and I can tell you this: two songs of this singer is not enough. While her immediate talent as a vocalist is obvious, much of Ashley's gift is to create a mood: a sustained journey into a beautiful netherworld of plaintive verses and haunting choruses, a place where traditional Irish melodies blend with classical literature and poetry to create an overall musical experience. You can try to cram that into two songs, but an evening of it is best. Pull up a chair. Have a Guinness. And ignore the rumble of the 6 train as it tunnels twenty leagues under the New York pavement. These are fireside songs, and this night with Ashley Davis was a perfect Celtic winter.

The singer was joined onstage Thursday night by her musical collaborator Cormac De Barra on harp, along with Megan Hunt on fiddle, Joe Pickett on mandola, John Hadfield on percussion, and Mike Cassedy on piano. On the opening number, Cassedy's piano arpeggio set a meditative atmosphere while the harp and mandola played in perfect counterpoint, joined later by a soft driving beat and the low mournful swell of the fiddle. After the last wintry wisps of the first song died away, applause broke out. Wherever the songstress of this Celtic winter wanted to take us -- from snowy lanes inspired by Thomas Hardy to 9th-century Irish carols -- we were on board the caravan.

@Therese Cox

The band provided a perfect accompaniment to the evening, from the bewitching madrigal "Banquet" to the quiet 3/4 lilt of "Fare Thee Well" (inspired by a Tennyson poem) to the jolly call and response of "Winter Jig." "Winter Jig" also showcased the charming chemistry between Ashley and Cormac De Barra as the two alternated verses and grins. The harpist then took it away for a rousing 4-jig instrumental, followed by a stirring full band rendition of "Nollaig Moon." Still, the highlight may have been the evening's closer, a stripped-down "Raglan Road," featuring Cormac on harp and Ashley on vocals. She added some gorgeous ornamental flourishes to the verses, a departure from her usual understated vocal delivery. It ended the evening on a note of emotion that was more urgent than wistful, and truly showcased the depth of this singer's talent.

As a performer, Ashley is not flashy yet commands the stage with a calm, riveting presence, interpreting occasionally with soft, ethereal gestures. My one complaint (and it's a small one) was that I wished there had been no music stand in front of the singer to cut her off visually from her audience. While she didn't rely on the stand (as far as I could tell, she hardly referenced it at all), it was a small obstruction that wouldn't have been missed had she been able to do without.

@Therese Cox

Musically, Ashley Davis has been compared with Loreena McKennitt, and the comparison is apt: both singers have a similar, haunting timbre to their voices, and both use traditional Irish instrumentation along with Middle Eastern influences. Add to that the seasonal theme of Ashley Davis's Songs of the Celtic Winter, which calls to mind McKennitt's 1994 album, To Drive the Cold Winter Away.

It will be interesting to watch to see what Ashley does next. If this evening was any indication, she has a respect for tradition but an eye for innovation, and seems to have found her ideal musical partner in her work with Cormac De Barra.

If you do have the opportunity to catch this singer live, do yourself a favor and get thee to the box office. In the meantime, it's never too late (or too early) to do some Winter Solstice shopping for the Celtic music lover on your list. Or pick up her Songs of the Celtic Winter for yourself, then bundle up for an evening of poetry and lush Irish melodies that sound lovely all year round.

@Therese Cox

Altan's Poison Glen is Heavenly

2012-02-26T17:42:00.000-08:00

How It's New York: Altan have been known to perform at the tiny NY pub Puck Fair, in addition to large venues like Symphony Space, where they performed in 2010. Their NY shows are always warm, and to see them at City Winery-- one of my favorite venues-- on March 8 to support their album The Poison Glen will be a treat.

How It's Irish: This band are one of the most acclaimed trad bands, with fans that include Mick Jagger and Dolly Parton. They play a Donegal style, the county in Ulster that Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh calls home.

A version of this article was first published in Irish Examiner USA, Feb. 21.

You can hear Mairead on the Feb. 26 podcast, with some of the music from the album (and a featured song!)

Discovering The "Heavenly Glen"

One of the freshest trad cds out this spring, in time for St. Patrick's Day, is from a band that's been around nearly 30 years.

The Poison Glen (Gleann Nimhe) from Altan, the band's first studio album in almost seven years, crackles with life.

The group wanted to channel the spirit of a pub session. They do.

The 13 tracks are both stripped down and lush, revealing the bones of the music in their gorgeous simplicity, augmented by sweet harmonies and fierce musicianship.

They are playing City Winery on March 8.

Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh, speaking to me from her home in Donegal, is delighted by the words "lush" and "stripped down" when we speak.

"We wanted a really fresh approach," she says.

"To just bring the music that's there. We don't have to disguise it. It has been perfected from generation to generation, because it's good."

Learning not to over-ice the cake stems from the band's long experience together.

The new album "really exposes who we are," she says. She was nervous about it but adds, "We like it, so..."

The "we" consists of long time band members Ciaran Tourish on fiddle, Dermot Byrne on accordion, Mark Kelly on guitar, Ciarán Curran on bouzouki and Dáithí Sproule on guitar.

The album includes lovely songs in Irish, well known jigs like "The Lancer's Jig;" lesser known tunes like "Tommy Potts' Slip Jig," new songs that sound traditional, like Martin Tourish's "An Ghealóg," and newer composed tunes as well, including as "The House on the Corner" from Dáithí Sproule.

Guest musicians include Harry Bradley on flute and Jim Higgins on percussion.

"The Poison Glen" is an actual glen near where Mairéad lives in Donegal.

The Poison Glen @NUIGMC

In fact, says Mairéad, whose first language is Irish, it's a mistranslation from "heavenly glen," but the name "poison glen" is now so old that a lot of stories have been created around it.

The band are photographed in it on the album's cover, with colors from a Maxfield Parrish painting (artwork was created by Edain O'Donnell).

The Ireland of myth and legend is just home to her:

"It's part of our psyche and makeup. When we were growing up, it was just a matter of fact, this is where Balor of the Evil Eye lived. These giants and fairies were real."

When the wind is howling outside, it's easy to understand why people believed.

"It's misty and mysterious. You woudn't know who's lurking outside in the shadows."

Her pure, high voice has always had an evocative quality, as if she's singing from a misty twilight herself. The music the band makes is very rooted in place.

"Where you live really is what you're about creatively. In a place like Donegal, which is so naturally beautiful and very very wild, the elements are ruling your life in a way still, even in this modern age. You realize how incredibly powerful that was years ago when people would have to walk everywhere."

As for whether she believes in the Gentle Folk, she wisely replies, "I don't say I know everything. I wouldn't close any doors."

Altan originally consisted of Mairéad and her husband, the late Belfast flute player Frankie Kennedy.

When Frankie died of cancer in 1994, Mairéad thought of quitting, but Frankie had made it clear he didn't want that.

Dermot Byrne then joined the band. He and Mairéad later married - they are now divorced but still play together in the band, which I think is unique in musical performance history.

"It's about respect, and knowing each other's spaces. Whether within a community or a band, you fill the space that's needed for you," she says.

Asked when she knew she wanted to be a musician, she laughs,

"I'm still wanting to be a musican. It was never a hobby, just part of my life, like eating and drinking and breathing."

She didn't begin playing the fiddle until she was the ripe old age of 10, though she sang all of her life.

Her father, Proinsias Ó Mhaonaigh, was a well known teacher and composer in her home town of Gweedore.

She already knew many of the tunes from going around with him, and faked sight reading after a bar or two.

She gets the music from her mother too - in fact, her parents met when he used to go to her parents' house, which was a Ceili house.

Mostly, she picked up the fiddle herself.

"It was like learning an accent, it was all so natural. It was all there at my doorstep."

Later on, she began collecting local songs to keep them in the repertoire.

She also helped found Cairdeas na bhFidléirí, a school of Donegal fiddle music, to keep the tradition of Donegal fiddling alive.

The Poison Glen comes out on February 28, 2012, and is available through Compass Records.

Altan play City Winery, 155 Varick Street, on March 8.

Today, she says, a lot of the songs she got are sung on a nightly basis.

And there are many young fiddle players playing the Donegal style, which she describes as a blend of Scottish fiddling, with strong bowing, with the Irish element of a lot of fluidity.

There's an excitement to it, especially when combined with the strong and subtle playing of her band members.

The space she was talking about is perfectly melded here-you hear just enough guitar when needed, just enough accordion.

From the first bars of the first track, a set of slip jigs beginning with "A Fig for a Kiss," there's a slow-burning build. "The Lancer's Jig" makes you want to dance.

Then the delicacy of the reel "The Wheels of the World" evokes the mists she describes.

You can hear how the music is connected to the Irish language, which Mairéad describes as "rich in metaphor - you'd say "it's a soft day," instead of a wet one.

"If you love someone your love is upon them. You don't say I love you, but my heart is within you."

Irish is her first language, on both sides of her family, although she also learned English young as well.

"Thinking in Gaelic and thinking in English are two different ways of thinking. If the language goes, a way of thinking goes that is intrinsically ours."

When she panics, Gaelic comes out. "It's a blathering of Irish language."

That metaphor fills in Irish songs as well.

"An Ghealóg," about a bunting who freezes, is by Martin Tourish.

Mairéad is the first to record it - she heard him sing it at a late night session last year. "It's a big song of loss," she explains.

"Caitlín Triall" is a sad love song she got from her uncle Jimmy Dinny, about a man whose love deceives him.

She heard it when she was a little girl and was so keen to get it right she went to another niece to get it down right.

"Hopefully now a lot of young ones will be singing it," she says.

The album also includes some songs in English, including the well known American ballad "The Lily of the West."

As Mairéad says, "Love songs will speak to everybody no matter where you're from."

The tunes talk right to your heart.

And The Poison Glen is for everyone.

New York Irish Arts Podcast February 26

2012-02-26T12:37:00.000-08:00

Get it here!

Terence Mulligan on The Craic Festival, Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh from Altan on the new album, The Poison Glen, the Irish language, and Courtly Love (the band is at City Winery March 8!); Brendan Fay on the St. Pats for All Parade, March 4 (fundraiser concert at Irish Arts Center March 2); and excerpts from Taoiseach Enda Kenny's speech at the Consulate February 9.

Featured tune from Altan!

Watch Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill in California, Live! Feb. 24 & 25

2012-02-24T13:35:00.000-08:00

@Derek Spiers

How It's New York: Martin Hayes lives much of the year in Connecticut, so definitely tri-state. He often performs in the area, and even did a master class and Masters in Collaboration at Irish Arts Center.
How It's Irish: Their music is Irish, and it's so wonderful. Really. I dare you not to feel elated by his version of the Pachelbel Canon, "Pachelbel's Frolics." And how great is it to watch a live concert for just $3?

LIVE from the Freight & Salvage in Berkeley California. Martin and Dennis in concert.

Not in California? Don't worry!

They will be live-streaming our upcoming concerts on Friday, February 24th and Saturday, February 25th at the Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse in Berkeley,California. The shows start at 8pm Pacific Time. Wherever you are in the world, you can tune in! You can purchase online tickets for $3 any time the day of each show at www.concertwindow.com/thefreight.

The shows will not be taped, but you can watch them live in HD! Payment can be made using PayPal or a credit/debit card.

IMPORTANT: Don't try to buy your ticket ahead of the day you want to watch the show. Just buy it the same day. If you try to buy it the day before, it won't work. Thanks.

For info on his coming tour, see Martin's website!

Irish Artist Sebastian McLaughlin Has First Show March 5

2012-02-24T09:00:00.000-08:00

"Desolate" Painted from Life in Bilis, Co. Cavan

How It's New York: Sebastian McLaughlin is an emerging artist from Ireland who has been living in NYC for the past two years. And NYC is one of the art capitals of the world.
How It's Irish: Of course, Sebastian is Irish himself. He's also one of our bloggers, and helped us design this website.

His work draws influence from people in his life, places, human struggle, history and politics. He mainly uses acrylic paint on canvas but also ventures into oil pastel and paint.

On his webpage he writes:

Reluctant to call myself an artist due to the responsibility and the critical childhood I endured but nevertheless feel I have something to share to the world.

We think so, too.

Come along and check out his first New York show at Argo Tea House, 75 University Place
New York, on March 5th 7pm - 9pm.

He will also be apart of a group show (26 artists, of all nationalities) in the HarvestedFreshArt One-night show on Saturday March 31st, 7pm - 10pm. The show will be located at Studio 580

580 Eighth Avenue at 38th street. There will be free wine!

Born with the intention of giving the opportunity to young artists of exhibiting their work in a high-quality art space in the heart of Manhattan. HarvestedFreshArt is a multidisciplinary exhibition created to allow a quick look at the diversity of the younger and fresher art scene in NYC.

The Opening Reception will take place on Saturday, March 31 from 7- 10 PM.

And check out Sebastian's work on his website.

Keeping Hope Alive at the Craic

2012-02-24T07:40:00.002-08:00

Colm Meaney - star of ‘Parked’ - will appear at this year’s Craic

How It's New York: The Craic Festival is a film and music festival that was born in New York, and is a New York party
How It's Irish: All of the films are Irish or Irish-American, ditto the music. The Festival was conceived over a few pints! Some films, like Parked, starring Colm Meany, are prize winners in Irish Film Festivals.

A version of this article was first published in Irish Examiner USA, February 21, 2012

The Craic Festival runs from March 8- 10.

It’s the Craic Festival, not

the High Art Festival - and it’s always a party.

“Hope” and “Optimism” are words Terence Mulligan keeps returning to as he describes this year’s Craic Festival, running March 8 -10. The four day Festival includes two full-length films, an evening of shorts, indie music, a morning event of short films for kids, an evening of rock music, and then more music at the After Parties (which are sponsored by Tullamore Dew and Heineken). It’s the Craic Festival, not the High Art Festival—and it’s always a party.

The music includes some of the best of Irish indie rock—including hip-hoppers the Rubberbandits and John Gribbin. The films include two uplifting features and an evening of shorts.

Parked tells the story of Fred Daly, who lives in his car. Starring Colm Meaney (Get Him to the Greek; The Snapper; Star Trek: Next Generation and Deep Space Nine), it is the story of his friendship with his “neighbor,” a 21-year old man named Cathal. The film, which opens the Festival, was a Galway Film Fleadh winner (and also had an outing in Irish Film NewYork, curated by Niall McKay, in October).

You wouldn’t necessarily think a film about a man living out of his car suggests hope. But it does, says Terence. Hope and optimism are hot commodities not just in an Ireland rocked by an economic backlash but also here in New York, where the Festival is going on its 14^th year. Living in a car “could pretty much happen to anybody in today’s society,” says Terence. “He had a job.”

Terence describes the film as a “metaphor,” of someone who is stuck. “There’s a sense of optimism and hope in the film that I think we haven’t seen in many years,” he says. Meany is scheduled to appear on the opening of the Festival. His fans will see a different side of him, Terence says.

“If you’re used to seeing him playing a macho heavy guy, this is a 180 degree turn. There are undertones that are bleak and dark, but you see from his performance that he’s about to turn it around, and that he wants to.”

Description and video after the jump! Friday night will be an evening of short films. Ireland’s done very well with the short films recently: “Pentecost” by Peter McDonald and “The Shore” by Northern Irish Terry George are both nominated for Academy Awards. “We wanted to shake it up a little,” Terence explains. “So it’s the Best Of, and an After Party at Tribeca Cinema.” That night also launches the musical evening “Belfast Rocks,” which includes a number of performers, headlined by Duke Special (Peter Wilson), a Belfast performer described as a “vaudeville” type artist who uses a variety of intstruments, including a gramophone, onstage. Other performers that night include singer John Gribbin, RAMS Pocket Radio, and TheClatty Lads. The Clatty Lads are actually Irish-American, like Terence, but they have Belfast roots.

There’s a lot of really great music coming from Belfast right now, says Terence, as well as from the Republic. And that is also connected to the need for hope—because people are angry. “Anytime people get angry at the government, it’s going to come out creatively.”

Rubberbandits are a hip-op pair from Limerick made up of Blindboy Boat Club and Mr. Chrome. Theatrical and satirical as well as musical, the duo has performed on RTÉ, MTV, were voted “Best Irish Act” 2011 at the entertainment.ie awards. Terence booked them after seeing their 2010 video “Horse Outside,” which within 72 hours of its release was the top rated YouTube video in Ireland. “You have to see them live,” says Terence.

Dublin rockers The Minutes are also selling “big venues in Ireland,” says Terence, and going to the famous music festival South bySouthwest.

The closing night film, In Sunshine or in Shadow, is also a film about hope. It tells the story of boxing champ Barry McGuigan, who won the featherweight title match against Eusebio Pedroza in 1985.

“Ireland needed a champion in the 80s; it needed hope. Pedroza was the favorite, but Barry pulled it out and became the champion. I remember watching when he won. As an Irish-American, it was important to me. It felt like a victory for Irish people. It was fantastic.”

His Irish-American roots pushed Terence to start the Festival in the first place. He was an actor and an MC at the New York Comedy Club, and he wanted to connect with his heritage.

“I started meeting people in the East Village. I think it was fate; I happened to befriend actors, writers and artists from Ireland. The genesis of the idea came over a few pints.”

He always planned to join film and music together, but couldn’t get it done for the first few years. Now, he says, there’s a “renaissance in Irish music. There’s so many talented bands coming out right now that it’s ridiculous.”

No wonder he’s optimistic. “When people get excited, that’s the best part of the job. It’s a party.”

The films will be shown at Tribeca Cinemas; After-Parties and Music will be held there and at the Mercury Lounge. Check the Craic’s website for details. Warning: the "Horse Outside" video makes liberal use of the F-Bomb. But it's hilarious.

Kevin Holohan Remembers Reading Russell Hoban, 1925-2011

2012-02-23T11:00:00.000-08:00

@Graham Jepson

How It's New York: This memorial was written by Kevin Holohan, an Irish writer based in New York. Books Editor Michelle Woods reviewed his The Brothers' Lot and loved it. Also, Hoban was Jewish-- so this is Jirish, which is so New York (even though Hoban lived in London).
How It's Irish: This remembrance of Russell Hoban was originally published in Writing.Ie. And Holohan first came across Hoban's books in Dublin.

I grew up on the Frances books, but never looked for any other works of the author. Thanks to Kevin for bringing this to our attention! Hoban's children's books, says Kevin:

...celebrate the wholeness of childhood just as Mr. Hoban’s books for adults also capture a magical oddness that always percolates just under the surface of perceived reality, something he called the “unwordable.'

While I lived in Spain I adopted the flag of convenience when it came to superstition about the 13th day of the month. If it fell on a Friday, I would adopt the Spanish custom of fearing Tuesday the 13th and if a Tuesday the 13th came along I could take refuge in the Anglophone superstition of Fridays. This past December 13th was a Tuesday and one that was indisputably ill-starred as it saw the passing of one of the most imaginative writers I have ever read.

Russell Hoban, who died in London on Tuesday December 13, 2011 at the age of eighty-six, was variously described as a “cult writer,” a “maverick writer,” a “science-fiction writer” but those phrases do not come close to doing justice to the strange breadth of his craft. Along his way he served in the US Army in World War II, worked as an illustrator, wrote advertising copy and was, strikingly, a successful writer of books for both children and adults that are sui generis.

His best known children’s books concern the eponymous Frances, a young badger who

behaves refreshingly like a real kid. She employs every possible delaying tactic when going to bed, gets jealous and nasty when her little sister has a birthday and exasperates her parents by restricting her diet to nothing but bread and jam. These are not didactic books that try to teach some received idea of model or moral behaviour. Instead they celebrate the wholeness of childhood just as Mr. Hoban’s books for adults also capture a magical oddness that always percolates just under the surface of perceived reality, something he called the “unwordable.” Even in the guise of more conventional Science Fiction like Fremder, his writing stretches the limits of genre.

Born in Pennsylvania in 1925, to Jewish immigrants from Ukraine, Russell Hoban eventually settled for good in London in 1969. If there is an urban palette for his work it is London - sometimes in real identifiable physical details and sometimes just the feel of it, beautifully and evocatively insinuated in the background or in the corners. However, his most well known work takes place in a broken blasted world of harrowing imagination where an especially gloomy Hieronymus Bosch got to do the landscaping.

Riddley Walker (1980) is set in a post-apocalyptic Britain catapulted back to primitivism by a nuclear catastrophe. Two thousand years after the disaster, society has just about dragged itself up to a loose collection of New Iron Age hunter-gatherer-scavenger communities held together by the political muscle of hardman types and the cultural glue of the official Punch and Judy show that visits each settlement. Punch and Judy shows are the agents of the powerful Ardship of Cambry and the keepers and purveyors of official history. They perform the quasi religious retelling of how the nuclear apocalypse came about: The Eusa Story. The book tells itself in a twisted and broken down English that is stunningly well thought out: the whole mess was brought about by “Eusa” splitting “Addom” and now things are run by the “Mincery” and the “Ardship of Cambry” - USA splitting the atom; Ministry; Archbishop of Canterbury. Anthony Burgess said of this work that is was “what literature was meant to be” and the critic Hugh Kenner reviewed it thus:

“Russell Hoban has put many things right, just right, in a book where at first sight all the words are wrong, and at second sight not a sentence is to be missed.”

The broken language is not at all daunting and much demystification can be done by reading it in the voice of your favourite Eastenders character until you get the hang of hearing it in your head. It is well worth the effort. But it was not how I first came across Mr. Hoban’s work.

Introducing me to Russell Hoban is the best thing that Brand Loyalty, Happenstance and the Brick n Mortar Bookshop have ever conspired to do for me. It was 1983 or thereabouts. I was in Eason’s in O’Connell Street, Dublin. I had in my hand whatever it was I went in there to get. On my way to the cash register a book caught my eye. It was published by Picador. I knew Picador. They did the tattered Best of Myles that I had discovered one rainy day in my grandmother’s house. They did The Third Policeman. They knew what they were at. The book had an odd name and a strikingly stylised cover depicting an underground train and some sheets of yellow paper on the platform. I opened it and read the first few pages:

I exist, said the mirror.

What about me? asked Kleinzeit.

Not my problem, said the mirror.

The book was Kleinzeit. I was hooked. The book created a world unto itself of

playful inventiveness that lured me into an odd liminal place where sheets of yellow paper could dictate what should be written on them and the hero gets hospitalised for tests on his hypotenuse and diapason and Hospital, it seems, has been waiting for him. Any story in which a character who is reading Thucydides is followed down the street by Hoplites who may or may not be real was just the kind of jolt I needed to revive an interest in books and reading that had just about survived the arid rigours of the Leaving Certificate.

Since that first encounter with Mr. Hoban I have revelled in everything he has written: from the pyrotechnic genius of Riddley Walker to the fascinating essays of The Moment Under the Moment and, through my own child, the Frances books and the magnificently odd short story The Marzipan Pig. Even works that do not entirely captivate me contain moments of such arresting crystalline creativity that they are worth going along for the journey.

As the author aged he did not shy away from the modern world but embraced it with the drive to understand, fascinated by looking inside the watch of existence to see where in its delicate workings the magic might reside. In Angelica's Grotto: A Novel(1999), Klein, a 72-year-old art historian, has lost that inner voice that stops us from saying inappropriate things. He becomes involved with the owners of the pornographic website that provides the book’s title and seems to have been set up just for him.

In Linger Awhile (2007), the aging Irving Goodman falls in love with a

long-dead starlet from old cowboy movies and enlists the help of an esoteric friend to resurrect her from a video tape. They succeed in bringing her back but she exists only in black and white and it just gets stranger from there. These are not the works of someone phoning it in for the latter part of his career.

Forever trying things out, taking risks, Russell Hoban seemed to write because he could not and would not stop. Writing was his flywheel and it kept him sharp, inventive and adventurous to the end; an enthusiastic and joyful embodiment of Mr. Beckett’s, “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.” The act of creation was what was important. In this way he was a writer’s writer- playful but also fearless and adventurous.

Everywhere in his writing there is humour, humanity and a strange otherness conjured by the careful selection of the cleanest, most apposite words for what hovers on the edge of being indescribable and ungraspable. For a reader his work is the rare gift of getting to see our world through a lens that makes you re-see it stripped of the patina of workaday disenchantment and rereading it is like seeking the comfort of a dear old friend. For a writer his work can be a mixed blessing: so good it seduces and contaminates; so vibrant and inventive it almost moves you to despair but then so adventurous and assured it inspires you to go out on a limb, make a mess, step off the edge without a plan and work it out on the page.

Though I never met him, Russell Hoban was the best kind of teacher. Obviously he never instructed me in how to write but he certainly made me want to do it better. His talent is a large part of why I ever started to write and why my copy of Kleinzeit, the comforting companion through so many ‘flus over the years, is falling apart. It is because of that thrilling surprise hrumpty-murff years ago that I still insist on visiting real Brick n Mortar Bookshops to see what Happenstance might push off the shelves at me. For that and for all the brilliant “unwordable” moments, thank you, Mr. Hoban. Safe travels.

author Russell Hoban answers a question about rhymes in Riddley Walker during audience q&a following interview with John Mullan, London 22 November 2010

Find out more about Kevin Holohan in The Scribbler’s Apprentice, or check out his blog http://thebrotherslot.wordpress.com/

KEVIN HOLOHAN was born in Dublin. He is a graduate of University College Dublin and a veteran of secondary school education at the hands of the Christian Brothers. His short stories have been published in Cyphers, the Sunday Tribune, and, most recently, in Whispers and Shouts. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and son and he reviews fiction for the Irish Echo (New York). The Brothers’ Lot is his first novel.

Combining the spirit of Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim with a bawdy evisceration of hypocrisy in old-school Catholic education, The Brothers' Lot is a comic satire that tells the story of the Brothers of

Godly Coercion School for Young Boys of Meagre Means, a dilapidated Dickensian institution run by an assemblage of eccentric, insane, and often nasty celibate Brothers.

Michelle Woods on The Brothers' Lot: The beauty of Holohan’s prose, with its Gothic, Castle of Otranto-ish narrative, sucks you in and makes you laugh out loud.

Play the Piano Accordion? Invitation to Record! Deadline May 31, launch at All Ireland Fleadh in Cavan

2012-02-23T09:21:00.000-08:00

How It's New York: We have terrific accordion players in the area, some living here, some visiting: Mirella Murray from Cherish the Ladies among them!
How It's Irish: Martin Donohoe, who brought this to my attention, lives in Cavan, and the recording will be launched at the All Ireland Fleadh in Cavan. Martin also has a radio show that you can listen to on the web: "The Wind that Blows" Radio Show every Saturday Night 6pm to 8pm IRISH TIME
...Text live on air 087 1200900

Invitation To Record For New Traditional Irish Music Piano Accordion CD
Solo and accompanied performances of Traditional Piano Accordion music
accepted. Non profit making CD to include performances from seasonedtraditional music performers.

We want smell of the bog rather than pure competition music that will depict individual styles and personal/ regional influences.

Each artist will be responsible for theproduction of their own recording and must submit finished recordingfor audition and CD production to F M Recording Studios, Railway Road,Belturbet, Co. Cavan ASAP. Closing date for recordings will be May 31,2012.

Volume 1 will be launched at All Ireland Fleadh 2012 in Cavan.
All artistes must be over 25 years of age. Each recorded artiste will
receive 20 free CD's . This recording will be property of and released
under auspices of Cavan Fleadh 2012 committee.

Copyright rules must be observed and composer's permission sought.
Sendthis info to anyone you think should be recorded. The pressure is on
and I need to be working on recordings. Thanks a million.

Philip Clarke Cavan 2012
plmclarke@gmail.com

Ashley Davis Brings "Celtic Winter" to Joe's Pub this Week

2012-02-19T11:30:00.000-08:00

How It's New York: Ashley Davis can often be seen at events around New York, including "Pen, Paper and Palate" and the Irish American Writers and Artists' Salon. She's performing at Joe's Pub this week.
How It's Irish: Ashley's new CD Songs of the Celtic Winter, and it includes Irish poetry, with Irish instrumentation.

Catch Songs of the Celtic Winter before winter ends: Thursday, Feb. 23 at Joe's Pub!

Ashley Davis began writing and collecting for Songs of the Celtic Winter two years ago when she wrapped up her sophomore effort, Down by the Sea in Ireland. She had the idea that she wanted to write and collect music from the Celtic regions for the four seasons of the year starting with winter. The result is Songs of the Celtic Winter, a hauntingly beautiful collection of songs that range from medieval 9th century old Irish poetry set to music, to Robert Burns’ “Auld Lang Syne."

Davis recorded this album in New York, Lawrence, KS, and San Francisco and now will perform numbers from the CD at Joe’s Pub (New York, NY) on February 23, 2012 at 7:30 pm.

The album is laden with harp, mandola and a range of acoustic instruments and vocal layers that creates and Davis’ signature sound.

"I took the aspects that I liked from my first album which was more middle eastern leaning at times, and then aspects from my 2nd album which was entirely recorded in Ireland and thus Irish leaning and melded those aspects together to create a sound that I believe will be forever more my signature sound. I truly found myself as an artist and settled down into this album and feel at home within this music,"

Davis has been profiled on The Today Show, named one of the Irish Echo newspaper’s “Top 40 Irish Under 40,” performed original music on film soundtracks and has lectured at U.S. colleges and universities.

Expanding the definition of traditional Irish music, Ashley has attracted fans and admirers among the larger musical community. Influential American composer Philip Glass said, “Ashley Davis is a young woman with a beautiful voice and as much musicality as anyone could wish for…she writes and sings with a confidence way beyond her years.”

Davis has toured in Lord of the Dance as the vocal soloist, has worked with Paddy Maloney of The Chieftains and has toured with Moya Brennan of Clannad, while developing her own solo and recording career, selling out shows internationally and in her adopted hometown of New York City and now Lawrence, KS.

Joe's Pub is part of The Public Theater, located at 425 Lafayette Street between East 4th and Astor Place in New York City's East Village. For more information and to order tickets, please go to www.joespub.com.

Music Review: Cherish the Ladies - Like a Fine Wine

2012-02-18T00:14:00.001-08:00

How It's New York: Three out of five of the performers live in the New York area. Joanie Madden said it is her home, she could never leave it! (listen to her on the 2/12 podcast, and read our interview here!).
How It's Irish: Named for a trad tune, Cherish the Ladies was put together by Mick Moloney to be the first all-women's trad band. They played tunes from their most recent release,Country Crossroads, for the first time in NYC!

New blogger, Musician Suze Sylvester reviews Cherish the Ladies at City Winery, 2/12

Altan will be at City Winery on March 8! Not to be missed!

The music was so irresistible, we tapped, clapped, sang, danced in our seats, “didilly, didilly, doo”-ed, and laughed ourselves into a fun-filled Emerald Dream.

I hate going out on Sunday nights. After a weekend filled with chores, classes, and socializing, and facing the impending workday Monday (Why wasn’t THIS weekend Presidents’ Day weekend?!), the idea of getting dressed up and running around Manhattan on just about the coldest, windiest night of winter would have been about the last thing I’d normally want to do. But then, we Irish music fans are a strange, hearty and, possibly, slightly masochistic lot (when the need arises) who would travel any distance to hear a good Irish band.

So this past Sunday, I went to see and hear one of the greats: Cherish the Ladies, celebrating their 25^th year of singing and playing their hearts out. I’d waited a long time – I’ve even taken bodhrán lessons from Siobhan Egan, one of their alumni – to hear what all the excitement was about this group that was originally an experiment to see what an Irish band composed of women could do with traditional Irish male territory. So there I was, at The City Winery, being seated a million miles from the stage, wistfully asking the hostess how I was going to review the performance if I couldn’t see it. (Oh, I’m a golden-tongued devil...)

And I got my wish. Not exactly front-row, but not in the back of the large bi-leveled, elegant wine bar restaurant, either. The place was packed with eating and drinking folk – a special wine was bottled for the occasion - who exploded into applause when “Cherish”, as the group is affectionately called, walked onstage. And that’s the last time anyone “walked” anywhere.

The music was so irresistible, we tapped, clapped, sang, danced in our seats, “didilly, didilly, doo”-ed, and laughed ourselves into a fun-filled Emerald Dream. Joanie Madden’s powerful voice and matchless flute and tin whistle playing was joined by Mary Coogan on guitar, Mirella Murray on accordion, Gráinne Murphy on fiddle, Kathleen Boyle on piano and harmonies, and vocalist Deirdre Connolly – who also plays a mean bodhrán and tin whistle. Even though most of these women live in New York, they all had strong Celtic roots, and all of them had musical families - and it showed.

Some of the music was traditional (a jig from the 1600s by harpist Turlough O’Carolan, Co. Meath), some was authentically well-composed by Joanie herself (Is there anything that woman can’t do?!), and some was contemporary by well-known Irish composers (Séamus Begley’s “The American Wake” – inspired by what they gave emigrants before they left Ireland because their family and friends would never see them again; “We Dreamed Our Dreams” by Dick Farley, the policeman in Co. Meath who composed “Innis Free” for the classic Irish movie with John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara, The Quiet Man-- see our write up of the MOMA film series based around it!). Even New York Irishman Stephen [Collins] Foster’s “Hard Times Come Again No More” got an airing – and an enthusiastic, invited chorus of audience members. To all this wonder they added four step dancers who even enticed Deirdre and a “timorously startled” Joanie into joining them: Kera Green, Joe Dwyer, Melody Regan, and Chris tatch (from Bristol, England and Riverdance). And then there was Siobhan Egan, whose amazing mastery of the bodhrán (for one brief number!) made an entire band out of a wee patch of goatskin.

Joanie’s pied piper-ing wasn’t confined to the music: she joked with audience, dancers, and bandmates alike. She told everyone that she wasn’t responsible for any wine glasses or teeth when the dancers came onto the small stage. And here she teased about just comin’ from Boston near Gillette Stadium - a reference about being near the New England Patriots - which prompted someone to gift her with a Giant's scarf! And there she laughed about the shouts arising from the darkened

restaurant no matter what part of the greater New York area she mentioned. Joanie then related the story about their recent first Caribbean cruise (read Paul Keating on the “Folk ‘n’ Irish” cruise), accompanied by 600 other Irish folk!

She spun such yarns as how she came to write “The Boat to Bofin”, by getting sick on the ferry on their way to an Irish isle that had 150 residents, 17 pubs, and no police. And why, when she was hosting the slightly notorious ladies man Séamus Begley at her home when they were both appearing at the Masters in Collaboration program at the Irish Arts Center, her mother appeared at the house to grill Begley - and then inquired whether Joanie still had the baseball bat her father had given her.

She explained that she’d written a song while watching the 200 kids crossing her backyard – the same backyard a young Joanie and her friends had naughtily traversed – one day to get to the hills of Fairlawn in the Bronx to go sledding. And divulged the secret that it was her Irish uncle Mike working the spade in Irish soil in unwitting union with the nearby waves of the sea that she translated into her evocative song “The Waves and the Spade”. The dedications of songs to family and friends by band members were endless – and endlessly interesting, always being paired with such entertaining stories that one wonders why the [ancient] practice of Irish storytelling isn’t as equally treasured here as the music.

Now I’ll tell you what the trick was, the slight of hand that made us all think we were friends, dancing on a hill at somebody’s backyard party. It was a large bunch of merriment, a twinkle in an Irish eye, a spark shot from a dancer’s shoe, a whole lot of practice, and centuries of the most beautiful, magical music a small country can conjure from the depths of their hearts. But we really knew that already. And it’s what we came for: to have our lives woven together by intricate melodies and tales for a few brief hours, while we remembered we were human beings who had joys and sorrows, laughter and tears, romances and weddings, separations and deaths. Just imagine: in this big, impersonal City, with the winter winds howling outside, time stopped and, afterwards, no one went home a stranger.

SongLives Brings Songs to Our Lives: Beginning Feb. 17

2012-02-17T09:02:00.000-08:00

How It's New York: Not only does it take place at our home away from home, Irish Arts Center, which is so New York in its cultural fusions and happenings, the new SongLives program will include Irish singer-songwriters who are based in the city, as well as visiting. New York has made an impact on Irish songwriting-- see Luka Bloom, for example! (who I think is working on his next, and we can't wait!) And of course Susan McKeown herself, whose brainchild this is, is an East Village Lady.

How It's Irish: All of the singer-songwriters are Irish, and the idea behind the series of programs (there will be 3) is to bring some of the Grafton Street feeling here. The Irish are known for their poetry and for their music, and songwriting brings those strands together.

You can hear Susan talk more about this, and snips from all the musicians, on the Feb. 12 podcast!

A version of this article first appeared in Irish Examiner USA, Feb. 14.

We have video of Susan and Declan below, but you can catch video of ALL of the SongLives artists who will be performing through May: including Brendan O'Shea, Michael Brunnock, Mark Geary and Ann Scott-- at the Irish Arts Center's SongLives page!

From Grafton Street To NYC

Had Susan McKeown not abandoned her operatic studies at the College of Music to busk on Grafton Street, SongLives, a new musical series beginning Friday at the Irish Arts Center , showcasing Irish singer-songwriters, might never have happened.
You might know about the tradition of musical performance on Grafton Street from the movie and musical Once. That was a very real thing, Susan says.

She remembers seeing Glen Hansard, who plays a busker in the story (and wrote the music for it), there when she was a girl, singing Mike Scott and Waterboys songs.
As a teenager she also met Kila, the Hothouse Flowers, and many others who have remained her friends.
When the College asked her to skip her final year of school and take opera seriously, "it was clear what my choice was."
She wanted to sing songs of the people, and although she loves opera, there is an elitism to it.

"I was getting such an education on Grafton Street, being exposed to all kinds of music. Singers and songs from other cultures, in addition to trad and folk."

So she finished high school, went to college, and when she wasn't studying, would busk with others, and make enough for a fine meal.
Since then, she's gone on to win a Grammy award with the Klezmatics, and has recoreded and performed with Pete Seeger, Natalie Merchant, Billy Bragg, Andy Irvine, Linda Thompson, Johnny Cunningham and many others.

Still, when Irish singer-songwriters come over, she doesn't always hear about it.
SongLives is an attempt to rectify that, and bring some of these contemporary artists to a wider audience.

It's a welcome reminder that the Irish songwriting tradition includes contemporary poetry and contemporary sounds. On Friday, Feburary 17, Susan and Declan O'Rourke are on the bill.
O'Rourke's song "Galileo" has been covered by Josh Groban, among others.
Susan will perform songs from her upcoming album Belong, the third in a series of very personal albums, that she describes as "my blood and guts."

She calls the songs, written over the last decade, her babies. But now she's ready to let them go.
They're dealing with belonging, death, religion, Ireland, "all the stuff that makes life really interesting."
Some of the experiences that inspired them are the death of her father, her late mother, the birth of her daughter, the end of her marriage, the passing of her friend, the great Scottish fiddler Johnny Cunningham.

"There were a lot of events that caused me to go into that place from where songs come. I try to understand by writing poetry."

Often the words come first, but sometimes the music comes first too.

"It's a mixture of an event that happens that's something beyond me, that I want to reach and understand and be prepared for, even though it's already happened, and also, it feels as if something comes from beyond. I read about a lot of poets talking about, you feel it's a gift, handed to you, you're just the vessel through which it comes. It beats working for a living."

Some of the new songs are in the raw style of earlier albums Bones and Prophecy, others have a more roots, twangy feel.

She became a citizen in the past ten years, and laughs that this is her "American album." There's even a song called "Our Texas."

There are too many songs for it, though, so she plans to launch a pledge campaign to help her choose which songs should make the final cut of ten. Check her website for updates!

On March 23, SongLives will feature Brendan O'Shea, a singer-songwriter who runs the Scratcher Sessions (209 E. 5th St.) on Sunday nights, and Michael Brunnock, who both live and work in New York. Michael will release his new album The Orchard that night; his voice is also featured in Sean Penn's new film This Must Be the Place.

On May 11, Mark Geary, who has performed with Joe Strummer and Elvis Costello will perform, and release his new album, Songs About Love, Songs About Leaving, with Ann Scott, who has been twice nominated for Meteor Ireland Music Awards.

Susan laughs that she thinks it will be "her first time performing above 14th Street."
But we think it won't be her last.

As its name suggests, SongLives promises to add more songs to our lives.

SongLives takes place at Irish Arts Center, 553 W. 51st St, 8 PM, Feb. 17, Mar. 23, May 11. Irishartscenter.org or 866-811-4111.

No Jericho: Susan McKeown from Media Factory on Vimeo.

Listen to the Willow's Whisper: Irish and Native American Poets

2012-02-16T11:49:00.000-08:00

How It's New York: New York is a place of fusions! Every nationality is represented here. And, the event takes place at Glucksman Ireland House, in Washington Square.
How It's Irish: The Willow's Whisper: A Transatlantic Compilation of Poetry from Ireland and Native America is the brainchild of Jill O'Mahony, lecturer at Waterford Institute of Technology, and brings together poets who write in Irish, and Native American poets.
This article was first published in Irish Examiner USA, Feb. 14, 2012.

You can also hear Jill, Travis Hedge Coke and Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh on the Feb. 12 week's podcast, too.

Post-Colonial Cultures Share a Common Language, Writing "Betwixt and Between"

The Willow's Whisper

Jill O'Mahony, editor of new volume The Willow's Whisper

In Ireland, during Cowboys and Indians, children fought to play the Indian, syas Jill O'Mahony, editor of new volume,The Willow's Whisper: A Transatlantic Compilation of Poetry from Ireland and Native America, a collection of poetry by Irish and Indigenous American poets that launches at Glucksman Ireland House on February 16th.

Only, Jill has trouble saying the word "Indian," because it's a contested word today.

Yet Travis Hedge Coke, one of the poets in the volume, who is of Huron, Choctaw, Cherokee, Creek, and even some Irish descent, prefers that word, or Cherokee.

He also explains that some in his younger generation from IA even used the term "NDN" for a while to reclaim it.

The word "Indian" has been in common use for so long, and it sums everybody up.

"If we were doing it right, we'd probably say something about Nations."

Other terms like "Amerind" annoy him.

"There is no Amerind people, you can't point to them. At least when you say Indian, everybody in the room knows who you're talking about," except, of course, for the country of India.

Whatever the word, that Irish boys would rather play Tonto than the Lone Ranger reveals, as she says, the Irish affiliation for the underdog.

More than that, the Irish share with Native Americans the experience of having their own cultures dominated by an Other.

The academic term in use is Post-Colonialism. It's writing "betwixt and between," O'Mahony says, using one language to write about another.

The Irish poets in the book are all native speakers of Irish, but for the Indigenous American writers the question of language is complicated.

Not all of the languages have been maintained. Some poets, like Travis Hedge Coke, write in English.

"It's the language most of us speak," Travis says. Odi Gonzales writes in Quechua and Spanish.

The Willow's Whisper includes 35 different voices, and explores the cultural situation of the poets, including their insight into living in contemporary society and being part of a traditional way of life.

"There's a lot of relations between Ireland and Indigenous Nations," Travis says.

"I had never seen anybody put an emphasis on similarities in culture the way this collection does."

From North Carolina originally, he now lives and teaches in Nebraska.

Ailbhe Ní Ghearbuigh writes in Irish, and then has the poem translated by Gabriel Rosenstock.

She taught Irish for a year in at Lehman College in New York, and wrote a poem about the language as a convalescent, at the Public Library.

"She is fragile," she says.

Fluent in both languages, she says her creative work doesn't come to her in English.

"Everything sounds clichéd that I try to write in English. Irish comes from a different place, a less intellectual place."

For Jill O'Mahony, some of what makes the Irish as a people particularly lyrical stems from the Irish language, even for those who don't speak Irish.

"How are you getting on," she says, asks for more of a story than just "how are you," and the typical answer, "ah, sure, I'm not too bad," is the opening to a story, not just the answer to a question.

A lecturer at the Waterford Institute of Technology, the idea for the volume grew out of a time when she was somewhat stumped for a dissertation topic, and reading poetry to pass the time.

She came across a Cree poem, and was struck by how Native American emphasis on imagery and on nature reminded her of Irish poetry.

People may think poetry is difficult, but it doesn't have to be, she says.

When people just relax and believe they will understand it, they find something to appreciate in it.

Poetry, she says, is "necessary. A poem is what you make of it. What you get out of a poem is its truth."

The Willow's Whisper launches at Glucksman Ireland House, 1 Washington Mews, Feburary 16th at 7 pm. RSVP to 212-998-3950 or Ireland.house@nyu.edu.

Up Went Nelson: Honor Molloy Recalls Nelson's Pillar

2012-02-16T08:50:00.000-08:00

Honor Molloy kissing Nelson at the Dublin City Library and Archive

How It's NY: Honor Molloy will launch her book Smarty Girl: Dublin Savage
at the Nyack Public Library from 1 - 3 p.m. on Saturday, February 25th 2012.
How it's Irish: She will tell Irish Stories to kick-off the St. Patrick's Day season.

And one of them involves her father John Molloy, and a well known Dublin artifact!

When I meet Irish people of a certain age--50 years or older--I often ask them, "did you ever go up Nelson's Pillar?"

Then I sit back and wait for a fascinating story.

"Stale air," one says. "I remember. Inside was dark. Smelled like a bagpipe."

"There was a string of bulbs twisting up the black spiral stairs that climbed the length of the column."

"I went like a rabbit up them steps," a woman said at a coffee shop in the Dublin Airport.

"Stood at the railings. Don't go near the railing, Mammy said, cause they hadn't yet built the fence."

"I came up to a cage in the sky," my parents' best man told me. "Couldn't see Nelson up above but put your eyes to the fence, you could see to the sea and the wide world beyond."

Nelson's Pillar, a famous Dublin landmark and a tribute to the eponymous British naval hero, towered over O'Connell Street for 158 years.

Early one Tuesday morning in 1966, the IRA--it is believed--laced the Pillar with dynamite and blew it up. Cleary's clock stopped at 1:31 a.m. Portland stone, Wicklow granite, and bomb mist filled the streets.

I've heard that a gang of actors and musicians were hanging out in Groome's Hotel across the road from the Pillar.

My father--John Molloy, a well-known comedian of the era--just happened to be among those leaning on the bar rail that night.

Everyone was waiting for the explosion. They all knew it was going to happen. One young boy was shaken awake by his father who stood him in his bedroom window-well so he could watch Lord Nelson fall.

At 1:31 a.m., Nelson did.

My father dug Nelson's sword out of the rubble and brought it home. He'd been a Royal Navy man in the Second World War, and felt justified in taking it as a souvenir. He was photographed with it--great publicity for his show at the Gate Theatre--and it lived on our fireplace mantle for years.

He also claimed that he'd packed Nelson's head in the boot of a taxi, but that the Corporation wanted the head and took it away from him.

My father was a fabulist, which is a polite way of saying that the truth never stopped him from telling a good story.

Nowadays I'm suspicious about his version of that night, or at least certain parts of it. Nelson's head, for instance.

The Dublin City Library and Archive had to reinforce the floor to accommodate the weight of Nelson's pate. How could one lethally skinny actor load the back of a cab with a ton-and-a-half of Portland stone?

The Pillar's been gone for ages now. The Dublin of which the Pillar was such a part is gone, too. Only stories and memories remain. I've got my own version of that night which you can watch on the YouTube below.

I'll be reading several stories from my book (Smarty Girl - Dublin Savage GemmaMedia / Simon & Schuster Audio 2012)
at
Nyack Public Library, 59 South Broadway

Nyack, NY 10960 on Saturday February 25th from 1 - 3pm.

And if you've been up the Pillar, swing by the library and tell me about it. I do love a good story. A good story, as any Irish woman knows, is worth it's weight in Portland Stone.

Watch "Up Went Nelson" by The Go Lucky Four on Youtube...

Honor Molloy is a Dublin-born storyteller who lives in Brooklyn.

A New York Comedy/Variety Show: Sundays at Seven!

2012-02-15T16:13:00.000-08:00

How It’s New York: Sundays at Seven features New York-based comedians and musicians.
How It’s Irish: The show is held at the venerable Irish Arts Center, one of the leading non-profit organizations in New York for over 30 years, and is co-produced by Irish actress Fiona Walsh.

The next Sundays at Seven are March 11, April 15, May 13, June 10 -- at 7, of course. At the Irish Arts Center, 553 W. 51st Street.

John Kearns listens in on women "wasting the thin time," sunny and rainy songs from Lindsay Wilson, and Rena Zager, who told this incontrovertible truth: New York is the only place where it is socially acceptable to be an old weirdo. There were Irish jokes from Fiona Walsh, whose mother clips bad news from Irish newspapers and mails them to her, and Jewish jokes from Brad Zimmerman. What could be more New York?

Sundays at Seven is a comedy showcase that has been held at the Irish Arts Center on the second Sunday of every month for more than ten years. I ventured out for the February 12th edition of the series as the snow was swirling and the temperatures were dropping. And, I found the show well worth the trip. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening of comedy and music with high-quality material and performances throughout.

Fiona Walsh began the proceedings by welcoming everyone and introducing her co-producer, Ann Design.

Ann complained that women are never happy with the way they look. She saw a picture of herself from a year ago, when she looked thinner. She remembered not appreciating how good she looked at the time and feared that she “wasted the thin time” that she had had.

She described an encounter with a nude woman in a gym locker room who carried on a conversation with Ann but never covered herself. Ann decided that what this woman needed was “a robe – and some shame and self-loathing.”

Singer-songwriter Lindsay Wilson took to the stage next. She explained that in her sets she likes to include a little sunshine, a little rain, and a little truth. Her sunny song was a tune with a lovely melody about a lover and a friend. Her rainy song, “Should’ve Ran,” was inspired by her former roommate’s relationship with a man she perhaps should not have gotten involved with. Her truth song, “Boulevard” talked about a walk she and her friend had taken around her neighborhood, an older woman who “looked like a smile waiting to happen,” and all of the stores and restaurants of their memories, which were now closed.

After this beautiful and touching musical performance, the rest of the show was dedicated to comedy.

Rena Zager opened with a funny bit about a one-woman show she had put on about her life. The play was loved by everyone except her mother who put on a rebuttal show entitled, She Doesn’t Know What She’s Talking About. She predicted that mother and daughter would continue to mount shows at each another.

Rena complained that though she is sick of New York City, she is doomed to stay here, since she is not married and has no kids. New York, she said, “is the only place where it is socially acceptable to be an old weirdo.” She is even accentuating her weirdness by getting her first cat, which she fears is a “gateway cat.”

Tim Homayoon talked about how he was shy as a kid and got yelled at for it. There were no support groups for shy kids, he pointed out. He is jealous that gay people have a parade but shy people do not. The shy people could shout, “We’re shy! We’re proud! Oh, no, we’re being looked at!”

Tim concluded with some amusing tales of his work adventures – getting fired for being a racist Big Bird, a bad Easter Bunny, and a nursing home stripper who made ethnic jokes.

Fiona Walsh talked about meeting a cheery Irish-American woman who told her she is Irish, too. Fiona found this to be impossible because the girl had obviously not been brought up to eat potatoes with every meal and had not seen at least two apparitions of the Virgin Mary. Besides, the girl just seemed too happy in Fiona’s opinion. She considers Irish people to be typically miserable. As an example, she told about how her mother clips out all of the bad news from the Irish newspapers and mails them across the Atlantic to her daughter without any note or personal message whatsoever. Her mother also sends her text messages that combine death notices with weather reports.

Patty Rosborough did a routine about pubic hair and the various styles people prefer. She is considering getting highlights down there so that she can be “like J. Lo down low.”

She finds sex gets better after 50. The only problem she has is finding a partner. “Thank God for the homeless!” she said. “Give them a hot meal and they have no problem putting out.”
Perhaps the highlight of Patty’s act was a hilarious routine about a woman’s voice from a GPS system giving sex directions instead of driving directions. “Proceed 18 inches south … Wrong entry point … Recalculating … ”

Headliner Brad Zimmerman described his upcoming show My Son, the Waiter: A Jewish Tragedy. He said that during his years working as a waiter to support his acting career, he never wanted to work at a fine dining establishment. He only knew “two things about wine: one, we have it and, two, we don’t have it.” When customers asked him the difference between the Cabernet and the Cotes du Rhone, he answered, “A dollar.”

His mother often points out how successful his old friends are and he wondered what his mother must say to her friends about him. “If all goes well …, I think Brad is going to be able to buy … a bookcase.”

He also told a series of jokes including a “Jewish fairy tale.” A Jewish man asks a Jewish woman to marry him. She says, “No.” And he lived happily every after.

Sundays at Seven was a great night of raucous comedy and lovely music. It was definitely worth heading out on a cold Sunday night and I look forward to checking out future shows!

10 Irish Love Songs (but Irish STILL unromantic...)

2012-02-14T08:58:00.000-08:00

How It's New York: Tommy Burns is a musician in NJ and hosts of "Glor na h'Eireann", an Irish Radio show broadcasting from Rutgers University 88.7 FM on Sundays at 6pm.

How It's Irish: Boy Gets Girl, Boy Loses Girl, Boy Writes Song! BUT. Those songs ARE pretty great.

Meanwhile, on the "The Irish are Unromantic" front, Irish Central has posted a list, with videos, of the top 10 Irish anti-Valentine's Day songs (while snarking about Americans "giving each other overpriced cards"). Sounds like Sour Grapes, Irish People! I'll give you a Valentine, Bryan Fitgerald.

I admit some of Fitzgerald's commentary is funny, like this one on "Leave" by The Swell Season:

This song may have been directed from Hansard his to his Swell Season bandmate Marketa Irglova who took heed to the song and not only broke up with Glen but has stopped performing with him as well.

On the other hand, surely the Corrs' "I Never Loved You Anyway" is not sad but hilarious and grrrl power. No tissues need apply.

Irish Central also reports that Irish men are likelier to be gold diggers than romantics, according to a new Valentine's Day poll (the shock! remember, boy loves girl, boy loses girl (or renounces girl!), boy writes sad song about it).

HOWEVER, In better news, we asked Tom Burns, a supporter and player of Irish music with A Band of Rogues and Burns and Cashman and one of the hosts of "Glor na h'Eireann", an Irish Radio show,

to share his 10 favorite Irish love songs with us. He did-- and it's a terrific mix of trad and pop (AND YES! One of them is "As I Roved Out," about the man who "marries the lassie with the land!" Honest, I didn't put Tommy up to it. Take note of songs of dead or permanently unavailable loves).

TOMMY WRITES:

The Irish are known to sing of their love of their country, their hometown and sometimes their whiskey, but there are many great Irish songs about the women they love. With so many to consider, ten is never enough, but here are a few that would make their way into my "Best of Irish Love Songs" compilation:

1. Maggie / Norah – The 1968 "Norah" version by Johnny McEvoy is the one I grew up listening to, but it was originally written by Canadian George Washington Johnson as "When You and I Were Young, Maggie". The De Dannan version with Maura O'Connell is a fine version.

(Editor's note: this is from a concert in 1997).

2. The Dutchman - This classic Liam Clancy song tells the story of an older couple and the love of a woman, "Margaret', for her husband in the twilight of his life as his health and his mind begin to wane.

3. As I Roved Out – Sometimes, we don't end up with our 'true love'. In this song, made famous by Andy Irvine of Planxty, the man marries another and rues his decision. Said Andy of this song: "it dates back to the days of the famine, when any bit of property

at all was enough to tempt a man to jilt his true love in favor of the 'lassie with the land.

\
(Editor's Note: Yeah, sure, blame it on the famine. So do we blame the gold digging on the recession?)

4. Have I Told You Lately that I Love You – Made famous by Van Morrison, I believe its popularity lies in the eternal truth that we can never say " I love you" often enough to the ones we love. This was my wedding song 18 years ago and I still never tire of hearing it.

(Editor's Note: AW, now that's romantic, Tommy).

5. Ar Eirinn Ni Neosfainn Ce Hi (For Ireland, I'll not tell her name) – There are many songs about a secret love. In this one the singer places his secret love over his patriotism.

(Editor's Note: This version is from Dervish, performing a live session broadcast over the internet. Cherish the Ladies also perform it on their recent album Country Crossroads, with Deirdre Connolly singing sweetly-- you can hear a little bit on our recent podcast. At City Winery, Joanie Madden told us it was about a man whose brother married his intended.)

6. She Moved Through the Fair – An Irish folk song of unknown origin, Its haunting tone counters the optimistic message that "it will not be long love, till our wedding day".

(Editor's Note: That's because she's a GHOST! Irish love for dead people is very romantic! This is the lovely Cara Dillon singing).

7. Rainy Night in Soho – Shane McGowan wasn't known for his romantic lyrics, but this one is a Pogues classic. "You're the measure of my dreams" he says.

8. Buile Mo Chroi - "The Beat of My Heart" - a passionate love song written by Louis de Paor who is 50% of the Gaelic Hit Factory with John Spillane of County Cork. Karan Casey turns in a great performance of this song on the BBC Highland Sessions supported by (her husband) Niall Vallelly and Dermot Byrne.

(Editor's Note: It's happy! That's because it's from CORK! Where love songs have Happy Endings!)

9. Young Ned of the Hill (Éamonn an Chnoic) - A touching love song of a young rapparee with little to offer his love but pillowing her head "where the light fairies tread". Celtic Crossroads provides a great live version performed in Galway.

(Editor's Note: Aw, it's the talk! Who can resist?

"I'm thinking it's myself will be wheezing that time with lying down under the Heavens when the night is cold but you've a fine bit of talk, stranger, and it's with yourself I'll go." --Nora, "In the Shadow of the Glen," J.M. Synge.

10. I Cant Help (Falling in love with you) – I know, not particularly Irish. But when Lick the Tin arranges it with a tin whistle and a few polkas…you've got an Irish love song !

So there you have it-- Happy Valentine's Day (particularly if you're dead, jilted, married to your lover's relative) from all of us at New York Irish Arts!

Have a chocolate.

Paul Keating on Cruising with Cherish!

2012-02-13T13:43:00.000-08:00

How It's New York: Paul Keating, author of this piece, runs Catskills Irish Arts Week, and about music for the Irish Voice. If it's Irish music in NY (and really, much of the world), Paul knows about it.

Photo: Frank Rudiger

How It's Irish: Joanie Madden organized a Celtic Cruise (see our interview with Joanie before the cruise, in which we prayed nothing would happen to the boat)-- and brought an amazing array of performers with her, including New York stalwarts Gabriel Donohue and Donie Carroll, as well as Maura O'Connell, Mary Black, Scot Phil Cunningham, and many more!

Paul went on the cruise and as Joanie says on the podcast, led some set dancing; he reports back and we can all live vicariously through him! He describes Joanie taking Cherish the Ladies and her "boy band", the Pride of New York, on the High Seas. There was a death on board; sadly Tim Piggott passed, but as Paul says,

The sadness of such an untimely death was quickly matched with the solace that comes from a peaceful passing in one’s sleep surrounded by people on board who shared his last happy days. Which of us wouldn’t pray for such a fate?

I caught Cherish last night at City Winery; Joanie and the girls were in rare form, clearly the cruise did them good! A review from new blogger Suze Sylvester will be up soon!

This article was originally published in Irish Central, February 10.

Many thanks to Niall O'Dowd for allowing us to share this with you!

Cruising with Joanie Madden on the high seas

Norwegian Pearl, Western Caribbean -- Over the 30 years or so that I have enjoyed the music of Joanie Madden and shared many an adventure with her, I have seen her conquer many a challenge while providing entertainment that is second to none around the world.

On dry land she is a force to be reckoned with, but on the bounding waves she proved last week to be a terrific impresario of the ocean as well on her maiden voyage of her cleverly billed “Folk ‘n Irish Cruise: The Big Session on the High Seas” aboard a stellar cruise ship out of Miami called the Norwegian Pearl.

In a well-matched joint venture with Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL) and Tully Travel, Madden brought along many of her most-talented friends in the traditional music sphere for an incomparable week of music, song, relaxation, island hopping and ocean cruising.

Orchestrating seven days of star-studded Irish programming provided great choice and variety that attracted 575 passengers and over 50 Irish entertainers who thoroughly enjoyed being at sea with one another.

In NCL parlance, freestyle cruising (a feature aboard their 11-ship fleet worldwide) means greater flexibility in meal times and choice of cuisine that suited a wide-range of guests that included many families among the 2,400 plus passengers on board.

They were serviced in magnificent fashion by a crew of 1,075 NCL employees whose mission was to make everyone as comfortable and pleased as possible.

They achieved a high standard according to many cruise veterans that I talked to. I would have no experience myself since this was the very first ocean cruise that I have traveled on.

Joanie Madden (Photo: Frank Rudiger)

Madden and her Cherish the Ladies’ colleague Mirella Murray had a “shakedown cruise” of their own some weeks prior to help plot and plan how the NCL Pearl ship would be used to its maximum by the performers and the Irish audience who came aboard to share the experience January 29-February 5 starting in Miami.

Leading the entertainment bill were Madden’s own 27-year-old troupe Cherish the Ladies and her boy band the Pride of New York who provided great trad music for listening and dancing all week long on various stages and even poolside during the week.

Visiting from abroad were the Black family featuring Mary and Frances Black, Shay Black and Roisin O’Reilly (Mary’s talented daughter). They were accompanied by Bill Shanley and from Scotland, Phil Cunningham.

Ennis songstress Maura O’Connell (living in Nashville since the 1980s) who often appears as a special guest with Cherish added some great songs and craic, as did the great Galway warbler Don Stiffe.

Not only did the marvelous cast of singers enthrall people in the daily stage shows, but they also fueled the mighty singing sessions every night in the ship’s central late night hub, Bar City, conveniently placed in amidships next to the casino.

Impromptu music sessions filled one side of bar alternating with the multi-faceted Irish piano man Gabriel Donahue overseeing the mix of professional singers like the Blacks, Stiffe and the Cork balladeer Donie Carroll, who got many of the late sessions off to a roaring start -- and finish.

Deirdre and Matty Connolly and Hughie Boyle provided some great singing as well all week, and most especially when in the company of an extraordinary group of cruisers from the Canadian Maritimes.

A lively contingent from Newfoundland, the very Irish isle in Canada’s North Atlantic, were part of the traveling guests, and seemingly they sang their way through the entire canon of sea shanties and Irish ballads most nights breaking up just before the first breakfast buffet would be served.

Madden is not only a great performer but a great listener and aficionado of great Irish singers and musicians who also perform lively music outside trad lines.

To satisfy this sailing faction, the up tempo and solid music from the New York area stalwarts Celtic Cross and Pittsburgh’s Guaranteed Irish had people dancing, clapping and singing along wherever they appeared, and helped round out the entertainment offerings with aplomb.

A key component to any Madden inspired entertainment package is solid stepdancing, as those who have witnessed the Cherish the Ladies shows over their 27 years know.

Aboard the Pearl and visiting from Donegal was Eileen Golden (sister of dance master Donny Golden) who was one of the original step dancers with the Cherish ensemble. She danced with Donny and Cara Butler, who is a Golden protégé as well.

Matching them step for step were the two exceptional Ottawa Valley dancers Jon Pilatzke (Cara’s husband and Chieftains’ dance mate) and Dan Stacey, who toured with Cherish for a few years.

Impossible to overlook over the week dancing at every opportunity was the Quilty sparkplug Martin Galvin, whose stylish Clare set dancing, jiving and waltzing caught the eye of all onboard and who celebrated a birthday as well.

No entertainment roster would be complete without a good comedian, and Madden was able to call upon a longtime favorite in Sligoman Dermot Henry.

Dermot Henry

His act is indescribable, and no verbatim rendering could ever convey the brilliance of his nonsensical musings delivered in his inimitable deadpan style. His genius comes through his comedy and his songwriting which brings tears of laughter and sentimentality within moments of one another as his act unfolds.

Veteran performer and elegant MC Noel Kingston captured Henry’s zaniness when he quipped,
“Dermot was just one step away from a strait jacket” after one of his hysterical sets.

Given the number of Irish entertainment cruises out there and the high standards set by many of them, including those of Gertrude Byrne, whose 25th cruise is about to take off, it is evident that this is an entertainment niche that is highly popular.

Even though cruising is a good value for money form of tourism, figuring out how to offer the most or specialized entertainment packages is key. This plays to the savvy and personable Madden’s strengths, because not only is her rolodex of performers deep with seasoned entertainers, but they come with a loyalty and respect for her as an artist who brings out the best qualities of the performers who share a stage with her.

The ability to mingle with the audience afterwards shoulder to shoulder or armchair to armchair in a cozy after-hours session is paramount and one of the key components making this first ocean-going venture such a phenomenal success.

After all, we were a captive audience for seven days, sharing dining tables and decks and the ample facilities onboard, so the camaraderie was evident at all times and reciprocated by artist and audience willingly as the Irish do so well.

The tone was established very early primarily with the Black family, who made a point of inviting folks to sing along with them in their sets. Even though they are notable singers each in their own right, they emphasize the joy of singing together to keep the tradition alive and passing their heritage on just as their mother and father did with them as they grew up in Dublin.

A couple of days before the cruise would end in Miami, Madden called out to a bearded and balding grey-haired chap to give us a song from his bar-stool perch across the room. The Limerick native delivered a Jimmy McCarthy song, “The Contender,” with such feeling and volume that he silenced the noisy bar area instantly.

Among those listening just a few feet away from the unknown singer was one of Ireland’s leading balladeers, Paddy Reilly, who complimented your man as a “chanter from the old school.”

Taking the compliment on board, your man would tell Madden at her cocktail party in the Spinnaker Lounge that he was enjoying his best week ever aboard the Norwegian Pearl thanks to all the wonderful singers and musicians who shared so many happy moments with him.

On Saturday morning, the Limerick man Tom Piggott drew his last breath as his heart gave out.

It stunned one and all as the news went round that last day, especially Madden, who had to see to the final details along with the cruise line as well as the last night’s entertainment schedule.

Monsignor Charlie Coen administered last rites and a remembrance at the community Mass later that day as a special collection was taken up to assist a comrade at sea.

The sadness of such an untimely death was quickly matched with the solace that comes from a peaceful passing in one’s sleep surrounded by people on board who shared his last happy days. Which of us wouldn’t pray for such a fate?

Piggott’s proclamation that this was his best week ever was echoed six hundred fold by the maiden voyagers of the Madden Folk ‘n Irish Cruise and its many brilliant sessions on the high seas by the time we pulled into the Port of Miami Sunday morning.

And the better news is that it will happen again next year, so stay tuned for details in the months ahead as Madden crafts another seaboard adventure with such good company.

Here, catch Joanie Madden and her band Cherish the Ladies perform a Celtic Medley:

Here, watch Dermot Henry and his performance at Pearl River High School:

First Mothers: The Women Who Raised America's Presidents, 2/15

2012-02-13T13:09:00.000-08:00

How It's New York: The actors are all NY veterans, and playwright L.E. McCullough is a regular at St. James Gate Session in Maplewood (my local!). He's written books and collections of tunes, and I had the pleasure of boasting "Oh I know Larry" when someone my Alaskan Celtic Music Cruise was taking a tune from his book,The Complete Irish Tinwhistle Tunebook (Oak Classic Pennywhistles)
.
How It's Irish: 22 of America's 44 Presidents have at least a smidgen of Irish ancestry, starting with Andrew Jackson, whose parents emigrated from County Antrim two years before his birth in South Carolina, up to Barack Obama, the pride of Moneygall, County Offaly. But not only that. What Irish man isn't hung up on his mama? Mother Machree, indeed.

“First Mothers” Pays Visit to New Jersey Feb. 15!

Free Admission, 7:30 p.m. at Livingston Public Library, 10 Robert Harp Drive Livingston, NJ.

A new play presented by Pages of History details powerful maternal impact on future Presidents. With Presidents' Day next week, it's a good time to think about how the presidents came to be who they are! What did they absorb with their mothers' milk?

The stories of 14 of these remarkable women are told in First Mothers: The Women Who Raised America’s Presidents produced by Pages of History, Inc. and directed by Deb Guston.

“These women not only gave birth to eventual Presidents but in so doing helped shape the destiny of the United States as we know it today,” says McCullough. “You start digging into the early lives of the Presidents, and it becomes quickly apparent that the essential ethical character and philosophical outlook of each were strongly molded by his mother.”

Among the First Mothers profiled are Elizabeth Jackson, who risked her life arranging a prisoner exchange to free her 13-year old son, Andrew, sick with smallpox in a British Revolutionary War jail.

“These were women of action, no matter how remote they were from the centers of power or how humble or restricted their personal circumstances,” says McCullough. “They all had deep religious conviction and an unshakeable belief that an individual’s moral strength would create a better world.”

First Mothers: The Women Who Raised America’s Presidents stars veteran New York actresses Wynne Anders, Lisa Bansavage, Laura Bosley and Vivian Meisner.

With 22 published books of original plays and monologues and more than 180 plays in print, L.E. McCullough is among the nation’s most prolific and widely-distributed historical dramatists.

His Plays of America from American Folklore has been named to Glencoe/McGraw-Hill’s Recommended Children’s Reading List, along with literary classics such as Great Expectations, To Kill a Mockingbird, A Separate Peace, Lord of the Flies, Our Town and A Midsummer Night's Dream.

McCullough’s historical playwriting commissions include works on WW II journalist Ernie Pyle, 1920s jazz bandleader Charlie Davis (Indiana Historical Society), pharmaceutical magnate Col. Eli Lilly (Ninteenth Star Productions), Ben Franklin (Historic Philadelphia, Inc.), U.S. Constitution (National Constitution Center), Galileo (First Run Productions) and Battle of Trenton (Magnet Theatre). His stage play on legendary African-American pianist Leroy Carr, Blues for Miss Buttercup, won the Urban Stages Emerging Playwrights Award for its New York City debut.

His most recent New York production was as book writer for Orphan Train, a searing look at America’s “surplus children” that premiered at the New York Musical Theatre Fest and was directed by Patricia Birch.

“One of the things I like best about writing historical drama is the opportunity to portray major themes and events through the prism of individual stories,” says McCullough. “These women were ordinary American mothers who never stopped believing that faith and hard work can change the world in extraordinary ways, starting with the family. That’s always a story worth telling.”

Where: Livingston Public Library, 10 Robert Harp Drive, Livingston, NJ 07039
7:30 pm; Admission is free.
call (973) 992-4600 for information