No, this isn’t some tawdry tiff between critics. It’s quite innocent, in fact. And it has a happy ending or, at least, hints at one. In my Oct. 12 “Ceol” column, entitled “Dearth of Irish Trad Music Criticism in Major Dailies,” I wrote about “a female critic who wrote regularly and well about Irish traditional music for a U.S. newspaper.” [...]

Founded in 1963 and currently the second-largest Catholic university in New England (Boston College is first), Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut, was the site of the Nov. 4-6 Irish Music and Dance Weekend. It was sponsored by Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann’s Northeast Regional Board and hosted by SHU’s Center for Irish Cultural Studies under the direction of Dr. Gerald Reid, [...]

As a parochial elementary-school student, I had to memorize this passage spoken by Portia in Act IV, Scene I, of Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice”: “The quality of mercy is not strain’d, / It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven / Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest: / It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.” [...]

Rarely, if ever, have I witnessed a concert as bold, varied, beautiful, funny, poignant, and profane as “Other Voices New York City,” sponsored by Imagine Ireland, the Irish-arts-in-America initiative under the aegis of Culture Ireland, whose visionary CEO is Eugene Downes. Ed Sullivan, stiff-limbed host of a very popular “really big shew” on network television back in the 1960s that [...]

A touch of synchronicity antedated the all-star “A Tribute to Harrigan & Hart” concert at Manhattan’s Symphony Space on October 13. At the same venue on September 24, violinist Tim Fain presented “Portals: A Multimedia Exploration of Longing in the Digital Age.” Allan Kozinn’s review of the performance in the September 27 New York Times began: “Musicians who grew up [...]

The two best U.S.-born fiddlers in Irish traditional music today are Liz Carroll in Chicago and Brian Conway in New York. They have much in common. Both are first-generation Irish Americans: Carroll was born in 1956 to parents from Limerick and Offaly, and Conway was born in 1961 to parents from Tyrone. Both had a musical father: Kevin Carroll played [...]

I’m fortunate to have two reliable outlets for my writing about Irish traditional music: the Irish Echo, the USA’s most widely read Irish-American newspaper, and The Wall Street Journal, the largest newspaper in North America. In December I will mark my 20th anniversary of writing for the Irish Echo, and in March I will mark my 17th anniversary of writing [...]

(CHESTNUT HILL, Mass.) — By 6:40 p.m. on Thurs., Sept. 22, I assumed the crowd would be small for “The Genius and Growing Impact of Joe Derrane” presentation from 7 to 9 p.m. inside Gasson Hall here on the main campus of Boston College. Rain, fog, a new venue, and a later start time seemed to be undercutting the turnout [...]

On a sunny, sky-blue day, Ballinakill, Galway-born multi-instrumentalist and teacher Mike Rafferty, who died at age 84 on September 13, was given a sendoff commensurate with his stature in Irish traditional music. With three co-celebrant priests, including Fr. Francis Kelly (previously known to many as fiddler Joe Kelly from Dumont, N.J.), Msgr. Charlie Coen said the September 16 funeral Mass [...]

On Tuesday, September 13, the day Mike Rafferty passed away, I received in the mail two invitations: one was for the 2011 National Heritage Fellowships ceremony in Washington, D.C., and the other was for a Sierra Club membership. Whether coincidence or kismet, the two were linked in my mind to Mike Rafferty. The NHF invitation from National Endowment for the [...]