Boston Celtic Music Festival: Song, Tune, Dance, and Friendship

Boston has long been a place where people from Ireland, Scotland, and Atlantic Canada traveled, sometimes settled, and often played music. These varied strands of music flourished in the Boston area. For a long time, though, despite what these Celtic strands had in common, these music scenes flourished but rarely interacted. That is until Shannon Heaton, who plays Irish music, and Laura Cortese, whose background is in the music of Scotland, were discussing this one day as they walked through Davis Square.

Maybe, they thought, they could do something about it.

“We thought, what if we had a session? a big party?” Heaton recalls. “Then, what if we had a big weekend? What if we had -- a festival?”

This year, the Boston Celtic Music Festival, BCMFest for short, marks year seventeen 16 through 19 January with workshops and concerts filling up venues around Harvard Square in Cambridge. World renown musicians and dancers from the New England area and beyond will take part.

The First Round concert kicks things off on Thursday evening at Club Passim. Fiddlers Leland Martin and Jake Brillhart along with pianist Janine Randal will present A Cape Breton Trip through Time: the quartet The Ivy Leaf brings song and tune from Ireland, England, Scotland, and America, and the Hanneke Cassel Trio, on this outing comprising Cassel, Keith Murphy, and Jenna Moynihan, will share music from Scotland, Newfoundland, and Cape Breton. There is sure to be original tune and song drawing from these Celtic traditions along with traditional material.

Once things wind down at the main concert, music keeps going with musical from across the weekend joining up in special collaborations. The Festival Club takes places on both Thursday and Friday nights.

Friday evening sees two longstanding favorites of the BCMFest annual schedule. Roots & Branches is a concert which showcases a range of styles from across Boston Celtic community, with performers including Louise Bichan and Yaniv Yacoby. The Boston Urban Ceilidh offers a chance for dancers of all experience levels or none to take the floor. Among those providing tunes for the dancers are Laura Cortese & Friends, with Hanneke Cassel as dance caller.

Saturday is time for Dayfest, a range of performances and sessions taking place at Club Passim, The Sinclair, and Harvard’s Smith Center.

Among the performers will be Sean Smith, who explores Irish, Scottish and English traditional song and tune on guitar. Rakish, who are the duo violinist Maura Shawn Scanlin and guitarist Conor Hearn will also take part. They perform Irish and Scottish music they grew up with and with, as their name suggests, their own slant.

Matt and Shannon Heaton make Irish music with their own distinct style and original tune and songwriting, too. Both are gifted singers and songwriters, with Matt playing guitar and bouzouki and Shannon playing flute and accordion. Coming down from Cape Breton, Gaelic singer Mary Jane Lamond and fiddler Wendy MacIsaac will take part in an in the round during Dayfest, as will top Irish dancer Kevin Doyle, who comes up from Rhode Island.

Dance performer, choreographer, and educator Kieran Jordan will return to the festival this year. “One of my favorite aspects of my life as a dancer is just to sit with a couple musicians around a kitchen table and map out a set list or brainstorm ideas — try out some tunes, fit some steps together, drink tea, see how it all unfolds. It’s the friendships and the shared love of music that really make the magic happen later on stage,” Jordan told the BCMFest blog. That sort of creativity, and appreciation for friendships formed and nurtured through music, are hallmarks of BCMFest that run through the performances each year.

Another BCMFest tradition, the Nightcap Finale Concert, ends the evening on Saturday. This year it takes place at The Sinclair, and will include performances from Kevin Doyle and Friends, The Treaty Trio, Laura Cortese and Friends, and Mary Jane Lamond and Wendy MacIsaac.

In another BCMFest tradition, that’s not quite the end, though. There’s almost always something going on on the Sunday of the festival weekend. This year, there’s the BCMFest Brunch at Club Passim, with music from Eamon Sefton and friends. In addition, Mary Jane Lamond will offer a workshop on Cape Breton Gaelic work songs and Wendy MacIssac will offer a workshop on putting Cape Breton tune sets together.

Tickets to individual events are available, most in the $10 to $25 rage, except the Sunday workshops, which are $40-$45. There are Irish and Scottish sessions at Harvard’s Smith Center on Saturday afternoon, which are free; reservations for a meal at the BCMFest Brunch are advisable but there’s no additional ticketing charge. For more information and ways to purchase tickets online, the BCMFest website is the place to go.

Photographs are, respectively, Hanneke Cassel, Sean Smith, Shannon and Matt Heaton, Wendy MacIsaac, and Mary Jane Lamond, with Corrina Hewat on harp in background; photo of Sean Smith courtesy of the artist. Other photos by Kerry Dexter. Thank you for respecting copyright.

You may also wish to see
Matt & Shannon Heaton: Fine Winter’s Night
Travels in Music, which includes Hanneke Cassel’s album Trip to Walden Pond
Sounds of Cape Breton from Mary Jane Lamond and Wendy MacIsaac
Canada in Music:3 Recordings to Explore, which includes Keith Murphy’s album Land of Fish and Seals
Winter’s Gifts: Music, which includes Jenna Moynihan’s album Woven

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BCMfest: celebrating community

It all started with a conversation between two friends as they walked through Davis Square in Somerville, Massachusetts. Ten years on, the Boston Celtic Music Festival, which kicks off on 11 January, is one of the most creative and community minded festivals in New England.

“We were walking by The Burren, which is known for its great Irish music sessions,’ Shannon Heaton recalls. She and her friend Laura Cortese got to talking about how though their musics shared many traditions and values -- Heaton is an Irish flute player and Cortese a Scottish style fiddle player, both them internationally renown touring musicians -- they never ended up at the same sessions. They started to think about all the people they knew in common from Irish, Scottish, and Cape Breton traditions. “We thought, wouldn’t it be great if we could all get together and play?” Heaton recalls, “and I said that’ll never happen, we’re all so busy,” but the friends talked on. “We thought what if we throw a big party? and from that, what if we have a big weekend? then,what if we have a bunch of concerts? and then -- what if we make it a festival?” Heaton says.

“We weren’t thinking about long term outcomes back then,” she says, “ but what we did d think about, quite a lot, was the situation in Boston, and in other communities, where you have all these incredible traditional musicians, you have Irish, Scottish and Cape Breton players --, and we never meet or see each other. Yet our music, our communities, are so related we share so many values and experiences. So we had this idea, what if we could throw this big weekend party -- it could forge new connections. That was the big picture for us when we started the festival.”

It is a vision that’s worked. This year musicians from the traditions of Cape Breton, Ireland, and Scotland will share stages and projects and audiences, beginning with an opening night concert featuring compositions from three rising stars of Celtic tradition at historic Club Passim. That will be followed by what’s become a BCMfest tradition, the Boston Urban Ceilidh. “The Boston Urban Ceilidh is just so much fun. It’s probably the most participatory of all the festival’s events,” says Sean Smith, who has been a member of the festival steering committee since its second year, and played the festival as a artist. “You’ve got hundreds of people coming out to dance, not all of them necessarily experienced in Cape Breton dance or Scottish ceilidh or Irish set dance, you’ve got terrific music -- Laura Cortese and her Boston Urban Ceilidh Band have a rock and roll quality -- and Hanneke Cassel is often the caller, she has a unique way of directing people through their paces,” Smith says, laughing. There might be a parade between the concert and the ceilidh too. “Last year we had an epic parade,” Heaton recalls. “We had a piper on stilts. We went out into Harvard Square, and the busking percussionists on Harvard Square...the guys out there banging on drums, African drumming, they just joined in. It was incredible, it was impromptu, it was great.”

There will be plenty of chances for joining in through dance and song -- and maybe other parades as well -- during Dayfest events on Saturday. These will run all day at Club Passim and at First Church, and will include quiet acoustic interludes from musicians from the Celtic traditions, a sing along for kids, song circles where you can share songs or listen in, and jam sessions where you can play or listen, too and time to learn and watch dances. There will be a tribute to Fairport Convention, a concert by the guitar based group The Dead String Ensemble, a concert of Cape Breton songs and one of traditional and contemporary Scottish fiddle tunes, an hour that sees a mash up of Celtic music and surf rock, and a Cape Breton kitchen ceilidh. “There’s so much going on, I have to keep moving from place to place,” Smith says. “ Some of these performers I’ve seen before and others I’m not that familiar with, so I like to go around from stage to stage and build up all these impressions of what’s happening.”.

“This year is going to be a little bit of a celebration of all the things that we’ve done to date,” Heaton says, “so we’re going to have a lot of participatory elements --dance and music. We’ll have family events. Brendan Tonra, great fiddler in Boston, an older player and well known composer, has a new children’s book based on a tune he wrote, my husband Matt Heaton will be leading a sing along for kids, so we’ll have something for little kids, and participatory stuff for people of all ages throughout the day. We’ll have some of of our funny, fringey elements, there’ll be a tribute and usually a cover song slot -- and we will have parades!”

“The finale concert is always a big wind up,” Smith says of the concert which takes place Saturday evening at First Parish on Harvard Square. This year it will feature sections focusing the music of Cape Breton, Ireland, and Scotland, each of the three musical communities which have formed the core of BCMfest. “Each of them could serve as a concert unto itself,” Smith says.

It will make a fitting conclusion to a festival that’s all about celebrating the Celtic music communities of Boston and continuing to create connections among them. This year Shannon Heaton doesn't plan to be on stage. “I am going to be in attendance, just enjoying and watching the whole thing,” she says. “It cheers me to think that a collaborative, participatory, community minded festival like BCMfest has garnered so much support over the last ten years. I think it’s a real reflection of the type of music that I love so much, traditional music, and the values that are inherent in traditional music communities. This was meant to be a party for all of us,” she says, “and now we’re all throwing the party together.”

You may find out more about tickets and schedules for the Boston Celtic Music Festival at the BCMfest web site.
During the year, BCMfest also sponsors Celtic Music Mondays each month at Club Passim and participates in other activities. There’s information about those on the web site too. You may also want to check out the web site of Concert Window, where you may be able to see some of the events at Club Passim live.
photographs of Shannon Heaton and Maeve Gilchrist, and BCM Fest Parade by Michael Passarini, courtesy of BCMfest

You may also wish to see
Another Fine Winter's Night: Matt & Shannon Heaton
The Boston Celtic Music Festival: a look back

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Boston Celtic Music Festival on the way

January in Boston is usually a time when the weather is unpredictable, maybe cold, might snow, a time that draws people to think of staying indoors. That plays a part in why the Boston Celtic Music Festival takes place then.

Festival founders Shannon Heaton and Laura Cortese are professional musicians, so they know that touring musicians are often off the road during the depths of winter. Thinking about that, they also saw a chance to create a festival that would bring together musicians of varied Celtic backgrounds who work in and around Boston. In addition to the widely known Irish music community, there are many top players and singers with ties to Cape Breton, Scotland, and other Celtic lands.

It was an inspired idea. The festival, which takes place this year on January 7th and 8th, is going into its eighth season. Over the years, the family friendly event has focused on varied themes, from music featuring Boston to rising young players. This year, Heaton and Cortese, who still serve on the board of the artist run festival, say that events will highlight the connections between players and singers, melody and words. “In our experience, we’ve found the fiddlers, flutists, accordionists and other musicians love hearing good singers and songs – just as singers appreciate musicians who excel at showing their love of the instrumental tradition” says Cortese. “So BCMFest’s point of view is, why separate tunes and songs? Let’s get everyone together and enjoy the whole spectrum of Celtic music.”





That idea will play out over an opening concert Friday night featuring Long Time Courting, a four woman group which is known equally for fine singing and strong instrumental chops on cello, flute, guitar, and fiddle. That will take place at Club Passim in Harvard Square. Over in Watertown, the Boston Urban Ceilidh will rock the Canadian American Club with likely some of the highest energy and most fun dancing you’ve come across, fueled by music from Cortese, Hanneke Cassel, Kimberley Fraser, and others.

On Saturday, DayFest Stages at Passim and at First Parish Church will include a range of concerts and sessions. Power Ballads, Celtic Style, will be one of the events planned around a theme. Lissa Schneckenburger, Bethany Waickman, and other will be part of Lift Every Voice, the Royal Scottish Dance Company of Boston will take the Sanctuary Stage at First Parish, and Shannon Heaton will present tunes from her album The Blue Dress. At present, about twenty events will take place during DayFest . Further concerts and performers may be added as schedules unfold

The festival will conclude, as has become its tradition, with a concert in the sanctuary of First Parish Church. The members of Halali -- Laura Cortese, Lissa Schneckenburger, Flynn Cohen, and Hanneke Cassel -- will perform, along with a range of special guests yet to be announced.

The Boston Celtic Music Festival lights up winter in New England. Go, if you at all can. More information about tickets, schedules, and performers may be had at the festival’s web site, bcmfest.com


you may also wish to see

The Boston Celtic Music Festival: a look back
Hanneke Cassel: For Reasons Unseen
Another Fine Winter's Night: Matt & Shannon Heaton
Music Road: Best Music, 2010

Boston Celtic Music Festival on the way

Ireland, Scotland, Cape Breton -- the Boston area has long been a place where these Celtic traditions not only flourish on their own but meet each other. All that is celebrated in the Boston Celtic Music Festival, coming up this year on January 8 and 9. Two events on the Friday kick things off, a concert at the historic Club Passim in Harvard Square, and the Boston Urban Ceilidh, a sort of Celtic dance meets mosh pit high energy fling that’s become a legendary evening of fun, held this year at Springstep in Medford Square. The ceilidh will still be going when the concert’s done, so no need to choose if you’d like to check out both. The festival continues on January 9 with day time performances and workshops at four stages located in Club Passim and at nearby First Church of Cambridge. First Church will also host the BCMFest Finale Concert on Saturday night, which will include performances by Irish singers and players the Makem and Spain Brothers and Cape Breton fiddler Kimberley Fraser.

Over its six year history, BCMFest has emphasized differing themes, ranging from music about the Boston area to Celtic dance to rising young musicians. This year, core traditions is the central idea. In keeping with that, at the Boston Urban Ceilidh one of acts will be a special one-of-its-kind ensemble that will recreate the classic Dudley Street Boston Irish Dance Hall Era from the 1930s to 1950s -- and you can also expect Scottish fiddle meets rock from Laura Cortese and friends. Both of those, in a way, are quite in keeping with the core tradtions of how Celtic music grows and changes.

During the Day Fest on Saturday, there will be plenty of opportunity to participate, with Irish and Scottish music sessions, a performer makeover session for artists seeking advice, and several singing sessions. At these sessions and at workshops and at the concerts, you will hear many fine performers including guitarist Flynn Cohen, the trio Triptych which includes fiddler Laura Risk, bodhran player Paddy League, and dancer Kieran Jordan, Adirondack style fiddle player Cedar Stanistreet, Irish singer Bridget Fitzgerald as part of the recently formed group Bento Boxty, and Cape Breton style band Tri.

BCMFest sprang from a conversation between fiddler Cortese and flute player Shannon Heaton. "During its first six years, BCMFest has reached out to the area's Celtic music community, through the festival as well as events during the year, such as the monthly Celtic Music Monday series at Club Passim and our annual music cruise in Gloucester,” Heaton says of the artist run festival. “Every year we've seen more and more musicians, singers and dancers come up with great ideas and collaborations.” Every year, too, the festival has seen growing audiences and increased appreciation for the music and traditions the artists share.

There’s more information about schedules, tickets, directions to venues, and performers at the festival's web site.

you may also wish to see
Another Fine Winter's Night: Matt & Shannon Heaton

Boston Celtic Music Festival on the way

The Boston Celtic Music Festival, 2008

Boston Celtic Music Festival on the way

There’s a power in live music, music shared in community, that creates moments ofconnection and memory that lighten lives, and sometimes changes them. The artists behind the Boston Celtic Music festival understand that, and they know too that these connections are just a likely to be made in laughter as in serious things. So, as they go into their sixth yea of presenting January concerts in venues around Harvard Square and other nearby areas, the festival will also host a series of fringe events -- but more about those in a moment.

The theme of this year’s festival, which takes place on January 9th and 10th, is Step In Time, meant to highlight the dance aspects of Irish, Scottish, and Cape Breton music as practiced by artists based in the Boston area. There will be plenty of fine singing and playing to go along as well. Many of the concerts will take place at the historic Club Passim, and the finale concert will fill the equally historic First Parish, both near Harvard Square.

Acts already confirmed to appear include Matt Heatonand Flynn Cohen, Annalivia, The Gloucester Hornpipe & Clog Society, Matching Orange,
Blue Moose and the Unbuttoned Zippers, Long Time Courting (which is a new band with Shannon Heaton, Liz Simmons of Annalivia, Ellery Klein formerly of Gaelic Storm, and Ari Friedman), Highland Dance Boston, Katie McNally, Folk Arts Quartet, Michael O'Leary and Friends, Fireside, The Bridgebuilders, The Free Range English Country Boogie Band, and Janine Sirignano and Sean Smith.


Several of the performers, such as Matt and Shannon Heaton and Sean Smith, have been with the festival since its start, but there are many new acts as well. "We've been pleasantly amazed by the great interest BCMFest has generated in the local folk and acoustic music scene," says BCMFest co-founder and board member Laura Cortese. "BCMFest has always been about involving the community, getting people to feel they can be part of an event that shows the incredible amount of Celtic music we have here in the Boston area. So it's encouraging to see that, in addition to performers who have supported the festival all along, there are plenty of new acts who want to participate."

Cortese and Shannon Heaton came up with the idea for the fest during an after show conversation one night, and six years later, they have a thriving event on their hands, one which draws people from across new England and beyond, and still maintains its Boston community focus.

Heaton says the fringe events will add another dimension to BCMFest. "No question, we here in Boston take traditional music very seriously, which is as it should be. So what we're saying is, 'Let's get creative and have a little fun in the process' – maybe do something a little out of left field or off the wall, like have a panel of 'experts' advise performers on how they can 'clean up their acts' or give a Celtic-style salute to Paul Simon. Above all,” Heaton says, “we want everyone to have a good time and enjoy themselves."

That’s a safe bet, whether your taste is for the serious on the hilarious -- or both -- dance or song, Scottish music or Irish. Tickets are a bargain, too, especially if you’re thinking you need to watch your spending these days.

for more information about the festival go to BCMFest.com


to get a taste of the fun that was had at earlier festivals, take a look here
Music Road: The Boston Celtic Music Festival 2008, 11 and 12 January

Celtic Connections 2009 on the way

From Cape Breton to Senegal, Quebec to Mali, Norway to North Uist, from the Sperrins in Northern Ireland to the Appalachians in West Virginia, people play and share music which has Celtic connections. Many of them will be coming to Glasgow for eighteen days beginning on 15th January to celebrate the music is a festival named after that fact, Celtic Connections.

The line up for the 16th festival has been announced. Performances include Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour, American banjo master Bela Fleck leading a collaboration of African and Celtic artists, Grammy winner Kathy Mattea, Cape Breton artists The Barra MacNeils, Ashley MacIsaac, and Jerry Holland, Le Vent du Nord and Genticorum from Quebec, the innovative Scottish trio Lau sharing a bill with those masters of fast paced irish trad, Lunasa, Sharon Shannon, Karan Casey, and Cara Dillon also heading up a strong irish continent, and of course dozens of Scotland’s best musicians, including festival artistic director Donald Shaw, Nu Nordic band Fribo, innovative harp player and singer Corrina Hewat, and top Gaelic singer Julie Fowlis. More listings will be added as schedules are confirmed.

The festival always takes note of Scotland’s national poet, Robert Burns, and this year there are several events planned as it’s the 250th anniversary of the poet’s birth, and all of Scotland is inviting the world to join in Homecoming Scotland to celebrate. At Celtic Connections, there will be a Jamaican Burns Night as well as a twelve hour Burns snong marathon, and American folk singer Odetta, the Royal Scottish Orchestra, and top Scottish singer and songwriter Eddi Reader are among those who’ll give special performances honoring Burns’ music.




There will, as usual, be a wide range of events -- more than 300 performances in fourteen venues across Glasgow -- and there will also be workshops, open stages, competitions, ceilidhs, and concerts for school children, as well as the after hours festival club, a buzzing scene for music and craic though the festival’s run.

Scottish Power is in its third year as major sponsor of the festival. For more information on schedules and performers, and to book tickets, check out the the festival’s web site

The festival traditionally begin with a torch light procession led by pipers up Buchanan Street to the Royal Glasgow Concert Hall to open the festival, and concludes with a concert called Transatlantic Sessions, where musicians from across the world join in celebration of the music.


There other festivals you might want to know about:

*The Boston Celtic Music Festival, on 9 and 10 January, which features the best talent from across new England’s Celtic communities. Past performers have inclded Aoife lalncy, Matt and Shannon Hetaon, Robbie O’Connell, and Hanneke Cassel. more on that at the festival’s web site and at there's a look back at a past festival here: The Boston Celtic Music Festival,

*The Savannah Music Festival, which brings classical, jazz, country, and world music to venues across one of the American South's most beautiful cities from mid March to early April. They will announce their line up for 2009 on 21 November at The Savannah Music Festival web site

*MerleFest, which takes place at the end of April in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountain in Wilkesboro, North Carolina. Old time, folk, country, bluegrass, and all sorts of good picking, singing, and fellowship across many stage and many genres. They’ll announce their 2009 lineup here

and

A handy listing of many folk, roots, world and sometimes other genres of music festivals from the music magazine Dirty Linen is here.

Celtic Connections begins

Every year, the Celtic Connections Festival launches with a torchlight procession through Glasgow city centre.This happens this evening, 16th January. It’s start of three weeks of more than three hundred events across the range of Celtic cultures with collaborations, new voices, and looks back at classics, ballads and ceilidhs, and more than one thousand artists from more than twenty contries sharing their music with audiences who also come from across the globe.




Tonight, the Scottish Power Pipe Band and Strathclyde Fire and Rescue Pipe Band lead a mass of blazing torches from George Square to the Concert Hall steps, as Glasgow lights up for the first day of the festival.

Celebrations commence inside the Hall, as torch-bearers are invited to the Lord Provost's Drinks Reception, and the festival is pronounced officially open!

It all begins at 5pm Glasgow time


followed by

Celtic Connections Opening Concert "Common Ground"

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Main Auditorium



Celtic Connections 2008 will launch with “Common Ground”, with a host of musicians who have become synonymous with the festival over the years uniting on-stage to celebrate the festival’s 15th birthday.

Fiddler John McCusker will assume the role of Common Ground’s Musical Director, and will be joined on-stage by an all-star line-up of artists for whom Glasgow in January has become a home from home. Featuring Karine Polwart, Kris Drever, Kate Rusby, Sharon Shannon, Luka Bloom, Damien Dempsey, Michael McGoldrick, Karan Casey, Dezi Donnelly, John Joe Kelly, Mike Scott from The Waterboys, Julie Fowlis, Aidan O'Rourke, Iain MacDonald, Lauren MacColl, Jim Murray, James Mackintosh, Ewen Vernal, Kane, Welch and Kaplin and Chris Thile.

Minister for Culture Linda Fabiani who will attend the opening concert said:

"I am greatly looking forward to the 15th Celtic Connections festival. Celtic Connections has placed Scotland at the heart of international interest in Celtic music and heritage. It’s great to see artists from many countries joining our local talent to bring Celtic music lovers together and to give audiences world-class performances they will never forget."

Common Ground is a distillation of the spirit of collaboration and camaraderie that Celtic Connections is renowned for, with McCusker describing it as “a huge big glorious session.”

The festival will run in venues across Glagsow through 3 February, with artists inlcuding Altan, Danu, Liam Clancy, Cherish the Ladies, Mindy Smith, Paul Brady, Eddi Reader, Tim O'Brien, Emily Smith, Chris Stout, Cara Dillon, Fribo, Alison Brown, and others.

-->Your support for Music Road is welcome and needed. If you are able to chip in, here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this. Thank you.

The Boston Celtic Music Festival, 11 and 12 January

The Boston Celtic Music Festival is coming up on the 11th and 12th of January, with venues around Harvard Square and a Friday night ceilidh in Medford. Performers this year will include Matt and Shannon Heaton, Kieran Jordan, Emerald Rae, Laura Cortese, and Flynn Cohen. It's a gathering which intended to showcase, celebrate, and share Irish, Scots, and Cape Breton traditions through the work of musicisian based in the Boston area. There's more about all of this at the festival's website, where you may find ticket information (hint: it's a real bargain), a schedule of performers, and notes about the places the concerts will be held.

Meanwhile, here's a taste of what things are like at BCM fest, through a look back at the events of 2005. Photos above are of Hanneke Cassel and Shannon Heaton, below, Hanneke Cassel, Flynn Cohen, and Matt Heaton. Matt and Flynn will team up for a really unusual gig at this year's festival...



 Hot Celtic music heats up Boston winter days and nights at BCM Fest
 
"Totally snowing!" one musician exclaimed, laughing, as she held her harp under one arm and lifted her free hand to cup snowflakes while stepping out of the Winter Hill Bank Building near Davis Square in Somerville. She was right. Winter weather had come to decorate the streets of Somerville and Cambridge for the Boston Celtic Music Festival, not an unexpected event when you plan concerts for early January in Massachusetts. Though it caused a few schedule changes among the players and some snow covered dashes along the streets for performers and listeners alike, spirits were high as packed crowds enjoyed music from and by many of Boston's finest Celtic-based players. FolkWax readers will know the music of singer Aoife Clancy, flute/guitar duo Matthew and Shannon Heaton, and fiddler Hanneke Cassel; pianist Jacqueline Schwab, whose work is heard to memorable effect on many of Ken Burns' projects, esteemed singer and songwriter and former member of the Clancy Brothers, Robbie O'Connell. Traditional uilleann piper Phil Ferguson, the many fiddlers who make up the ever-changing cast of Childsplay, renown Cape Breton fiddler Joe Cormier, and Americana/Celtic fusion banjo player and guitarist Eric Merrill were also among the more than one hundred artists who shared their music during the two days of the festival.
 
 
The Hanneke Cassel Band (Cassel on fiddle, Christopher Lewis on guitar, and Rushad Eggleston on cello) started things off with a combination of impeccable, passionate playing and off the wall humor that immediately connected with the sold out crowd at Club Passim just off Harvard Square. They invited their listeners on a lively journey through a handful of Cassel's original tunes and a fine selection of traditional material, including the crowd pleasing "Strathspeys o' Death," a medley of "Running Around the Tree" and "Colonel Thornton," and a slip jig, with Eggleston helpfully demonstrating the finer points which define slip jigs by dancing and then falling down to introduce the tune. It's a measure of the musicianship and stage presence of the trio that they were able to carry off this, as well as a good bit of other joking, keeping things in good fun without being silly -- or at least, not too silly for the circumstances. Cassel switched things up a bit with a lovely, lyrical slow piece called "Jasmine Flower," which she explained she'd learned on a recent trip to China, "and I think it must be the Chinese equivalent 'Danny Boy,' because everywhere I play it where there's anyone with any Chinese connection they get very emotional." The three closed out their well-received set with "a blast of reels," including one which Cassel had composed for another festival event which was just getting started, the Boston Urban Ceilidh.
 





 
 That high energy event, which fiddler and festival organizer Laura Cortese described -- accurately-- as "contra dance meets mosh pit," was cranking up over at the Canadian American Club's dance hall in Watertown. While the callers were getting dancers to try out new steps (when things slowed down enough for them to be heard, that is) at the dance hall, singers from across the range of Celtic tradition were keeping things equally lively back at Club Passim. Michael O'Leary invoked both the season and reflections on the passing of time with "January Man" and Caera Aislingeach did a rewrite of the familiar "Shule Aroon" with the twist that the lovers actually get together in the story. Renown Irish songster Bridget Fitzgerald taught the crowd some choruses to the songs she was singing in Irish, and Kyte MacKillop and his student Jennifer offered a variety of songs in English and Gaelic from Cape Breton. As music circled round and round again, the singers joined in duos and trios and got many of the crowd singing along in a fine take on the traditional song swap. The singing session was followed by another excursion into traditional, original, and rambunctious music from Noel Scott on accordion, Chris McGrath on fiddle, and Ted Davis on guitar.
 

The snowy skies over Boston had taken a break for the evening's ceilidh and concert, but as musicians and audiences gathered around Davis Square in Somerville next morning, the snow returned to blanket sidewalks and steps to the Winter Hill Bank Building, a part of which belonged to a local VFW post, was turned into a Celtic music club as well as festival ticket sales headquarters for the day. Scottish and Cape Breton dancing performances opened the day, for those who still had energy left from the ceilidh the previous night.  Many members of the ever changing cast of players who make up the fiddle group Childsplay took the stage next at the VFW, to be followed by combinations of traditional flute and fiddle, then pipes and electronica, traditional Irish fiddle, and not so traditional Celtic fiddle Rock.
 
Down the street, two other venues hosted BCMFest events as well. At Johnny Tingle's Off Broadway, a cabaret style theater became an Anglo Irish jam session in the hands of Eric Merrill and the Western Star, then a fiddle and dance hot spot with the music of Laura Cortese followed by Highland Dance Boston. Shannon Heaton offered original and traditional tunes on her flute with Ten Speed Trad, and fiddlers from Irish, Cape Breton, and Scottish backgrounds got together in the round later in the day. At The Burren, a lively Irish pub a few doors down, the front room hosted a continuing flow of acoustic jam sessions, while the back room was the spot for festival goers to enjoy music from a range of main acts. Fiddle player and singer Lissa Schenkenburger, accompanied by Matt Heaton on guitar, offered songs and tunes both Celtic and Appalachian from her upcoming CD release. Galway native guitarist and raconteur Fabian Joyce shared his dry wit along with music, while Scottish style fiddler Lindsay Turner drew a packed crowd. The guitar/fiddle duo Five Mile Chase, who is based in Minnesota, stepped in when weather problems interfered with scheduling and proved an unexpected delight both in musicianship and good humor. Well known solo singer and former Cherish the Ladies member Aoife Clancy closed things out at the Burren with a mix of contemporary and traditional songs, among them the Appalachian ballad "Across the Blue Mountains" and a song of contemporary Ireland written by Robbie O'Connell, "There is Hope."

 
O'Connell himself was one of the players who performed-when festival action resumed later in the evening-for  a finale concert at First Parish at Harvard Square. The historic church building rang with fiddle, pipes, piano, guitar, voice, and dance steps as nine musicians and two dancers celebrated "music written by Boston area composers, about Boston, based on Celtic themes," said emcee Marilyn Rae Byer. Fiddler Ellery Klein, who had suggested the idea for that theme, played a set of tunes by Matt Heaton, Shannon Heaton, Barbara McGowan, and others, after welcoming the audience to "A weekend of wonderful weather and even better tunes!" Cape Breton dancer Christine Morrison and Irish style dancer Kieran Jordan added their energetic and creative interpretations, as they'd do several times through the concert. Robbie O'Connell sang a song he wrote after a visit to the Blasket Islands, and Laura Risk played a medley of three pieces, including one, "Laura et Marc," which Hanneke Cassel had written for Risk and her husband. Mairin Ui Cheide offered a song in Irish, in sean nos style. She prefaced it by telling that it was a song of two mothers, who each had sons at war on different sides of a conflict, and then revealed that her own son was serving a second tour of duty in Iraq. Pianist Jacqueline Schwab, who'd added innovative accompaniment to others' works, took the spotlight to offer passionate renditions of tunes by Peter Barnes and Larry Unger. Accordionist Susie Petrov, who directed the concert, highland piper Phil Ferguson, who opened the proceedings, Cape Breton fiddler Brendan Carey Block, and uilleann piper Patrick Murray were among the others who added their talents through the evening and to the finale with all joining in a selection of songs and reels to close the celebration of the second annual Boston Celtic Music Festival.
 
 
It's a festival run for and by the musicians, about the sharing and connecting of musical styles of the Celtic lands. A conversation between Cortese and Heaton sparked the idea of a gathering which would included artists from Boston and from the Celtic traditions of Scotland, Ireland, and Cape Breton, which flourish in the city but often in parallel rather than connected music scenes. This second year built on the first, seeing increased attendance, more public notice, and more artists participating. There's a compilation CD available containing tracks from the recordings of many of the artists mentioned above, and more information about other ways to support and participate in the next Boston Celtic Music festival may be found at www.bcmfest.com.
 

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