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

-->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.

creative practice: Christmas eve

The night before, and the day of...music is always a good companion. Merry Christmas, Nollaig Shona, Feliz Navidad

Go raibh siochain agus gliondar na Nollag libh. Wishing you peace and joy at Christmas time.