now playing: Eileen Ivers: An Nollaig

Telling stories and sharing the warmth of the season: that’s a holiday tradition across many lands and cultures. It’s also a time for both celebrating and missing friends and places far away. Eileen Ivers learned this growing up in New York with parents from the west of Ireland, and it’s that lively connection and celebration, along with an undercurrent of reflection, that she shares on the music of An Nollaig, her holiday album.


Ivers is a fiddle player, founding member of Cherish the Ladies and principal fiddle player with Riverdance among her credits. On An Nollaig there’s no doubt that she’s leader of a lively ensemble including members of her regular road band as well as guests recruited for the occasion. They kick things off with a high speed take on Hark the Herald Angels Sing and wind through reels, carols, Bach, a bit of Charlie Brown Christmas, a lovely song with Susan McKeown on vocals called One Night in Bethlehem and sung in both English and Irish, and close things out with a gathering together of all these things and uplifting of the spirit of them on O Holy Night.

More about Cherish the ladies