By Earle Hitchner
The Irish Echo’s top 10 traditional albums of 1997 included the self-released “L_nasa” at No. 6. At the time, the all-instrumental quintet, building a strong reputation in Ireland, were virtually unknown in America. By the time their second recording, “Otherworld,” came out, in 1999, on Green Linnet, L_nasa were well established in America. “The Merry Sisters of Fate” (Green Linnet, 2001), their third album, merely confirmed for all that this was the most accomplished and inventive all-instrumental band in Ireland today.
Still, fans nagged the group about making their album debut from 1997 more widely available than the imports they were selling out of cardboard boxes on tour. Little more than a week ago, the band finally acted on those requests, releasing “L_nasa” on Compass Records in Nashville, Tenn. ([615] 320-7672). It contains 10 of the original 11 tracks from 1997, replaces a studio version with a live version of “Colonel Frazier,” and adds another live cut, “Jacky Molard’s/The Hunter’s Purse.”
With all three of their CDs now available stateside, the band of Se_n Smyth on fiddle and whistle, Trevor Hutchinson on bass, Donogh Hennessy on guitar and whistle, Cillian Vallely on uilleann pipes and whistle, and 2001 Irish Echo Traditional Musician of the Year Kevin Crawford on flute and whistle are touring America through St. Patrick’s Day. Their concerts feature some new material that they hope to include on a fourth album to be recorded during a mid-tour hiatus at a studio just outside San Francisco.
L_nasa’s remaining U.S. tour dates are Feb. 23, Caltech’s Beckman Auditorium, Pasadena, Calif.; March 2, Park View World Music Series, Racine, Wis.; March 3, Cedar Cultural Center, Minneapolis; March 6, Fitzgerald’s, Chicago; March 7, the Ark, Ann Arbor, Mich.; March 8, Victoria Theater, Dayton, Ohio; March 9, Coronado Theater, Rockford, Ill.; March 12, EMU’s Lehman Auditorium, Harrison, Va.; March 13,
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; March 14, National Geographic Society, Washington, D.C.; and March 15, Claremont Opera House, Claremont, N.H.
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Their final tour stops will be in the East: Saturday, March 16, 8 p.m., Tarrytown Music Hall, 13 Main St., Tarrytown, Westchester County, N.Y. ([914] 631-3390, [914] 248-8823), and March 17, 7 p.m., Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, 153 Main St., Burlington, Vt. ([802] 863-5966, [802] 652-4503). The St. Patrick’s Day concert at the Flynn Center will actually be a double bill: L_nasa and the Cathie Ryan Band.
Reynolds, Moffit
Are Hall of Famers
This past Saturday night at the Irish-American Center in Mineola, N.Y., Paddy Reynolds, a fiddler originally from Ballinamuck, Co. Longford, who’s lived in New York City since 1958, and Philadelphia radio host and accordion/flute player Tommy Moffit, who comes from Loughglynn, Co. Roscommon, were inducted into the Hall of Fame of Comhaltas Ceolt=irf +ireann’s Mid-Atlantic Region.
During the 1960s and ’70s, Reynolds formed a famed fiddle duo with Harlem-born Andy McGann, and the two recorded an album in 1976 for Shanachie that featured the guitar backing of Paul Brady. From the late 1950s to the early ’60s, the two fiddlers were also part of the celebrated New York CTilf Band, perhaps the greatest traditional dance band ever to emerge from America. Reynolds has been an inspiration and mentor to fiddler Tony DeMarco and other, younger players and was featured in a moving interview segment of “From Shore to Shore,” Patrick Mullins’s acclaimed 1993 documentary on Irish traditional music in New York City.
In Philadelphia, Tommy Moffit broadcast his first radio show on Irish music in 1969. Today he hosts “The Tommy Moffit Irish Show” on Sundays from noon to 1 p.m. on Philadelphia’s WTMR-AM, 800. A founding member of the Philadelphia CTilf Group and an emcee at its annual fall festival, Moffit has given musical advice to such local players as button accordionist John McGroary and guitarist Paul Moore, who formed Blarney Stone, a folk-trad group, in the 1980s and are part of the trad-rock band Blackthorn today.
Congratulations to Reynolds and Moffit on this singular honor.
Kilbride back with
Battlefield Band
While living in the U.S. for much of the 1990s, Castledermot, Co. Kildare-born singer, songwriter, guitar, and cittern player Pat Kilbride founded Kips Bay, a progressive trad-rock band who recorded two albums, and also issued two solo recordings of his own.
He moved to London a few years ago, and now the only Irishman ever to have joined Scotland’s Battlefield Band, with whom he recorded “At the Front” in 1978, has become — 23 years later — the newest member of the group. Also featuring Alan Reid, Mike Katz, and Alasdair White, the Battlefield Band are now working on a new studio release, and Kilbride has completed a new solo album as well, tentatively entitled “Nightingale Lane.” These two recordings will be issued on Temple, a label based in Midlothian, Scotland, and distributed stateside by Rounder in Cambridge, Mass. A late spring tour of America by the Battlefield Band, featuring Kilbride, is being finalized.
3 more bands on tour
The Celtic Fiddle Festival, comprising Kevin Burke, Johnny Cunningham, and Christian Lem’tre, with Patrick Street and House Band guitarist Ged Foley as accompanist, are now touring America. Though the album they made last year, “Rendezvous” (Green Linnet), was not their best, the quartet are always enjoyable on stage.
Upcoming concerts by them include Cedar Cultural Center, Minneapolis, on Feb. 23; Old Town School of Folk Music, Chicago, on Feb. 24; and Barns at Wolf Trap, Vienna, Va., on Feb. 27. They’ll also be coming to Manhattan on Friday, March 1, at 8 p.m. for a World Music Institute-sponsored concert at Haft Auditorium, Fashion Institute of Technology, 227 W. 27th St., NYC ([212] 545-7536). Another Celtic Fiddle Festival concert will be at Harvard University’s Sanders Theater, Cambridge, Mass., on March 3.
This Tuesday, the outstanding Irish traditional band Altan will release “The Blue Idol,” their ninth album overall and fourth for Narada World, a Virgin Records imprint. On March 3, Altan will also begin a two-month tour of America to promote this new recording.
Tour stops include Somerville Theater, Somerville, Mass., on March 8 and 10; F.M. Kirby Center for the Performing Arts, Wilkes-Barre, Pa., on March 12; Belding Theater, Hartford, Conn., on March 15; Zellerbach Theater, Annenberg Center, U. of Pa., Philadelphia, on March 16; Community Theater, Morristown, N.J., on March 19; Barns at Wolf Trap, Vienna, Va., on March 20 and 21; Old Town School of Music, Chicago, on April 20. On the night of St. Patrick’s Day, Altan will be playing two shows in midtown Manhattan at B.B. King’s Blues Club, 237 W. 42nd St. ([212] 997-4144).
Solas will be touring for three weeks in March to help promote their new Shanachie recording, “The Edge of Silence.” Besides songs by Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, Jesse Colin Young, and Nick Drake, the album features two written by Antje Duvekot, a little-known singer-songwriter from Germany who now lives in Philadelphia. Solas’s rendition of Duvekot’s “The Poisonjester’s Mask” is extraordinary, with a knife-cutting lead vocal by Deirdre Scanlan and a wicked electric-guitar coda by Seamus Egan.
The quintet will be at the Towne Crier Cafe, 130 Rte. 22, Pawling, southern Dutchess Co., N.Y., at 8 p.m. on March 3 ([845] 855-0174); Barns of Wolf Trap, Vienna, Va., on March 6 and 7; Sanders Theater, Cambridge, Mass., on March 15; Village Underground, 130 W. 3rd St., Greenwich Village, NYC, on March 19 ([212] 777-7745); Theater of the Living Arts, Philadelphia, on March 20; and Martyr’s, Chicago, on March 22.
Never pass up Neverland
Move over, Mary Martin. Draw near, Disney. There’s a terrific stage adaptation in town of James M. Barrie’s classic novel about Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up, and it has a limited engagement through Feb. 24 at Manhattan’s New Victory Theater, where it previously ran in 1997.
“Peter & Wendy,” with delightful music scored by the Celtic Fiddle Festival’s Johnny Cunningham, is a brilliantly conceived and executed Mabou Mines theatrical presentation of this endearing, enduring tale about carefree innocence and bittersweet maturity. I’ve seen it twice — in 1997 at the New Victory Theater and a couple of years ago in Dublin — and it will make both children and adults smile (and, yes, sniffle).
Karen Kandel’s performance is pivotal and powerful, and the Celtic-inspired music played live by Cunningham, piano accordionist Alan Kelly, uilleann piper Ivan Goff, and others beautifully supports the on-stage action. So grab your kids and go. It’s advertised for ages 12 and up, but I’ve seen some younger children enjoying it just as much.
Remaining performances are Wednesday through Friday at 7 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 7 p.m., and this Sunday, the last date of the run, at 3 p.m. The New Victory Theater is at 209 W. 42nd St. (just west of Broadway), NYC. Tickets: (212) 239-6200.