A Celtic Christmas

Influential Irish folk musician Seamus Egan welcomes Vermonters into the holiday season with this intimate, acoustic, one-night (but two performances!) only performance at The BARN OPERA House in Brandon, VT. Featuring Seamus Egan Project and special guest artist Moira Smiley (VOCO, tune-yards, Solas).

(From Seamus Egan Project's website) It’s hard to think of an artist in traditional Irish music more influential than Seamus Egan. From his beginnings as a teen prodigy, to his groundbreaking solo work with Shanachie Records, to his founding of Irish-American powerhouse band Solas, to his current work as one of the leading composers and interpreters of the tradition, Egan has inspired multiple generations of musicians and helped define the sound of Irish music today. As a multi-instrumentalist, he’s put his mark on the sound of the Irish flute, tenor banjo, guitar, mandolin, tin whistle, and low whistle, among others. As a composer, he was behind the soundtrack for the award-winning film The Brothers McMullen, co-wrote Sarah McLachlan’s breakout hit, “Weep Not for the Memories,” and has scored numerous documentaries and indie films since. As a bandleader, Solas has been the pre-eminent Irish-American band of their generation for the past 20 years, continuously renewing Irish music with fresh ideas, including a collaboration with Rhiannon Giddens on their 2015 album. As a performer, few others can make so many instruments or such wickedly complex ornaments seem so effortless. Music comes as naturally to Seamus Egan as breath, but his mastery of the tradition is only one facet of his plans to move the music forward.  

In 2018, Seamus Egan began touring as a solo performer, bringing along friends and musical guests, and making music as Seamus Egan Projectthat points towards the origins of Solas in the 1990s. Originally a band of friends who gathered to enjoy the late night craic of the Irish sessions in Philadelphia and New York, Solas was able to meld the breakneck speed and fun of these late night jams with a more sensitive feel for complex arrangements and composition that came from Egan’s love of other music genres like jazz, classical, bluegrass or rock. Revisiting this period in his music, focusing on the three solo albums he cut before Solas, Egan’s looking back to that initial burst of creativity that followed the breathtaking four All-Ireland Championships he won on four different instruments by the young age of 14 and his turns as a star soloist in his later teens with Mick Moloney’s The Green Fields of America.  

Growing up under the wing of powerful elder musicians, Egan’s always paid homage to his roots, but he’s thought of these roots less as a heritage and more as a universal language to be shared. Just as classical or jazz cuts across all ethnicities and unites communities around the world, Egan saw Irish music the same way, and the ensuing decades only served to support this idea. Today, musicians play Irish music all over the world, and part of this comes from the constant evolution the tradition has seen in the past century. Certainly this idea of musical evolution has kept Egan centered through the twenty years he’s spent as founding member of Solas, but the first real inkling of this came from his groundbreaking 1996 album, When Juniper Sleeps. Here, Egan began to explore the further reaches of the Irish tradition, blazing his way at spectacular speed through Irish reels, but also bringing in rich compositions and arrangements, and crafting soundscapes to enrich the melodies. This album dropped nearly the same year as Solas’ debut, self-titled album, so it’s no surprise that Egan would reach back to this time period to create new music for new generations. 

Joining the Seamus Egan Project on tour in 2021…….. 

Jenna Moynihan is a young Scottish fiddler and experimentalist who knows that tradition is meant to be a starting point for great inspiration, not a wall. Jenna is from Lakewood, New York and is a graduate of Berklee College of Music. While studying, she was selected to receive the Fletcher Bright Award & and The American Roots Music Award - two honors given annually to one outstanding string player. She performs in a duo with Scottish harpist, Mairi Chaimbeul and has performed with The Milk Carton Kids, Laura Cortese & The Dance Cards Darol Anger & The Furies, Old Blind Dogs, Hamish Napier, Bruce Molsky, Phil Cunningham, and as a soloist at Symphony Hall with the Boston Pops. In addition to a busy touring schedule, Jenna teaches at music camps & courses throughout the year. www.jennamoynihan.com

Kyle Sanna has been active as a composer, producer, guitarist, and improviser in New York City since 2000. His compositions have been performed at the Bach House in Eisenach, Germany, the Royal Opera House in Muscat, Oman, Sydney’s ABC studios, New York’s Carnegie Hall, and points between. He has given guitar workshops at the Montana State Women’s Prison, at an orphanage in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and at numerous universities and festivals from Alaska to Cuba. 

As a guitarist Kyle primarily performs improvised music and traditional Irish music. He has shared the stage or studio with many of today’s virtuosos, including multiple Grammy Award-winning artists Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, and Chris Thile, as well as with some of the greatest living interpreters of the Irish tradition including Kevin Burke, Martin Hayes, and Seamus Egan, and with many members of New York’s improvised music scene. kylesanna.com

Owen Marshall Vogue magazine calls musician Owen Marshall “A guitar/mandolin/banjo player rivaled in character only by the occasional three-pronged carrot” (Vogue 2009). With the music traditions of Quebec and Nova Scotia just over the border from his home in Vermont and the strong Irish musical scene of Boston to the south, Owen was immersed in the various textures and sounds of the Celtic music from an early age. In addition to touring with acts such as The Press Gang, Copley Street, Haas, Marshall, Walsh, and dance band Riptide, Owen is in demand at music camps throughout New England and the U.S., where he shares his approach to accompanying traditional music. www.owenmarshallmusic.com