- Lisa Lambe, Máiréad Nesbitt, Susan McFadden and Chloë Agnew of Celtic Woman visited the 86th Floor Observatory at the Empire State Building on their recent trip to New York City.
The Celtic Tiger may be dead, but Celtic Woman roars on. The group’s latest album, appropriately enough named “Believe,” shot to the top of the world music charts—a position occupied by six Celtic Woman albums in a row.
Lisa Lambe, the second most recent addition to the phenomenon begun almost by accident, spoke to us from Celtic Woman’s whistle-stop tour. They play the last of 60 U.S. cities later this month, tour Europe for five months and then possibly return here at Christmastime.
“We’re back to Ireland for a week, before heading off,” Lambe said, speaking in a week in which Celtic Woman packed Radio City Music Hall’s 6,000-seat auditorium and received an award as ambassadors for Ireland from the grand marshal of New York’s St. Patrick’s Day parade, Francis X. Comerford.
“For me to join when the show is at such a peak of success is amazing,” Lambe said. She first worked with some of the originators of Celtic Woman several years ago on the Abbey Theatre’s production of “The Shaughraun,” but her main focus then was on acting, she said.
When an opportunity to join Celtic Woman came over a year ago, she was ready. Lambe knew David Downes, Celtic Woman’s Emmy-award winning producer, and virtuoso fiddler Máiréad Nesbitt, who had been with the group since its inception. Chloë Agnew is now the only one of the original four still with the group. The latest addition is Susan McFadden, who joined in February.
Celtic Woman’s four front women are joined by three backing female vocalists and a band of males, jokingly referred to during the Radio City concert as “our token men.” Dressed in black, against the resplendent women, the male singers and musicians faded to the background. This despite solos by Riverdance-worthy Craig Ashhurst, bagpiper Anthony Byrne who enhanced “Amazing Grace” and Ray Fean, a bodhran player of impressive speed.
Everything about Celtic Woman is quintessentially Irish and female: from the ethereal choreography and lighting to the floaty gowns and long locks, together with the songs evoking pining across the sea or, at least, the distance between two hearts.
Even the ringleted redhead depicted on the cover of the new CD is an artist’s rendition meant to epitomize the Celtic woman, though it’s not Lambe herself, the sole redhead of the group.
The concept group was something of “an experiment,” she agreed. Back in 2004, “everybody got together for one night,” she said referring to the original line-up.
Just as Riverdance took off after a live televised show, so did Celtic Woman. Agnew, the youngest member, who was just 15 at the time, has now been eight years largely on tour. She finished school on the road.
Celtic Woman is riding the wave of popularity being enjoyed by what might be called fusion traditional Irish music, following in the wake of Enya, Riverdance and so on. Indeed Downes, who had the idea for Celtic Woman, is a former musical director of Riverdance.
But, in a world of wannabes, what explains Celtic Woman’s continued place at the top? “It’s like a beautiful cake, there are so many layers: the music, the lighting, the set, the costumes…” All are striking, but Celtic Woman is hard to encapsulate and Lambe trailed off.
Yes, they sang “Danny Boy” at Radio City, an old song that many Irish-born people regard as a received notion of Irishness. However, they also evoked the creative genius of Cirque du Soleil by reinterpreting a “diddley-i” song—just vocalizations, not words—as an argument between young women. The two singers walked down separate aisles of the theater and blasted “da da-DEE-dedanana…” etc., at each other across folded arms.
For further contrast, “A Spacemen Came Traveling,” Chris De Burgh’s 1970s hit, got an entirely new, female energy—or the water element in Daoist philosophy—as the women in their long, silky dresses swayed and waved their outstretched arms to the music.
“I’ve come from a theater background and I try to bring that side, physical theater, in view,” Lambe said. In this, one of her solos, she said, “I was finding if not a trancelike quality, something evocative and mystical.”
That quality also infuses Lambe’s other solo, “Dúlamán” (meaning “channeled wrack,” a type of seaweed). Inspired lighting creates the watery context for this Irish-language song set by the sea, with waves of green light and channels of purple sent out into the auditorium.
As counterbalance, Nesbitt fiddles unto frenzy and Agnew often seems ready to burst off the stage with feeling. Audience members familiar with Twink (AKA Adele King), one of Ireland’s best known comedic entertainers, will easily see the resemblance with her daughter, the show-stealing Agnew.
A nearly unanimous standing ovation in Radio City suggested that Celtic Woman hit the mark across the emotional spectrum, with 22 varied numbers.
In different concert venues many audience members wear the tour tee-shirts, emblazoned with “Believe,” Lambe observed. “It’s lovely to be surrounded by that word every night.” Although she noted: “There’s no song called ‘Believe’ on the album.”
Asked why the album is called “Believe” and if it has anything to do with the global crisis, Lambe said, “it probably factored in, though I don’t know. In troubled times, people want moments of reflection and we want to convey inspiration and hope. Thousands of years ago, our ancestors built places like Newgrange that still stand as symbols of faith.”
