Major Concert Announcement!

“Anybody who listens can’t help but find them contagious.”--Billboard Magazine

It is with great excitement that I announce that Lúnasa will be returning to East Rochester High School on Friday, September 17, 2010! Lúnasa is quite simply the top band in Irish music, and have been for more than a decade. They are also the reason I am an Irish musician. Without this band, there would be no Celtic Music Society, no me as an Irish flute player, and probably no me as a music teacher.

They have been declared "the best Irish traditional instrumental band on the planet" by The Irish Echo, and the UK's famous Mojo music magazine calls them "The New Gods of Irish Music". Mojo's writer states that "Lúnasa’s musicianship is awesome… I’d sell my soul to be able to play like that."

This event is the Friday after the Rochester Irish Festival; Celtic will play at 7:30, and Lunasa will take the stage at 8:00. More info will be coming soon on ticket prices, availability, etc.

Lúnasa’s website is at http://www.lunasa.ie/.

New Videos!

Two great new videos are up on our YouTube channel, Both Sides the Tweed and The Drunken Piper, two of our favorites and best, recorded March 19 at 171 Cedar in Corning and mixed at ERHS. I hope you enjoy them! More tracks and videos will come out, and the completed concert tracks will make a live album to be released either June or September.

New Live Recordings!

Our series of concerts this month were all huge successes, but none more so than our show last Friday (3/19) at 171 Cedar Arts Center in Corning. Thank to Susan O'Leary for the invitation, and special thanks to John Manfredi for doing such great work running sound for us! John was in contact with me several times a day in the week leading up to the show to make sure we had everything just right... he then put our sound through an Alesis 8-track ADAT machine, which I have since uploaded into ProTools for digital editing and mixing. The result is that in a few short months, we will be releasing a live album from this show. I can proudly say that these live performances are as good or better than anything we did in the studio with multiple takes to record The Devils of Dublin.

Did I mention that earlier that week Jayne played at Princeton with The Chieftains?

New pics from the 171 show are on our homepage at http://www.celticmusicsociety.org/, as is a mostly-mixed (that means not-quite-final) track of The Drunken Piper set.

p.s. We've been invited back to the Rochester Irish Festival in September, and in the next few weeks we're expecting to make a major concert announcement.

Great Upcoming Events!

We are pleased to announce our March performance schedule!

March 6: Irish Music Dinner Event and fundraiser for Ontario Arts Council @ All Things Art in Canandaigua. Dinner at 7:00; our performance time TBA.

March 16: Annual St. Patrick's Day Alumni Dinner @ St. John Fisher College

March 17: The annual Kaleidoscope Concert, featuring all East Rochester instrumental musicians and ensembles in grades 7-12. The past four years have seen themes, including Mozart; Music of the Civil War; Music of Africa; and Latin Music. This year's theme: An Irish Evening, featuring music of Ireland and other Celtic regions.

March 19: Celtic Music Society Live in Concert at 171 Cedar Arts, Corning, NY. We are very excited about this event... each of the past few years 171 Cedar Arts has hosted a big-name Irish band for a St. Patrick's Day concert, and now it's our turn! Join us for for more than 2 hours of great music and fun! We will be recording a live album at this event.

Recording Begins!

We have begun work on our next album in the ERHS recording studio. We are aiming for a (hopefully, we'll see about realistic) release date of St. Patrick's Day 2010.

Celtic is now on iTunes!

Our two albums, The Devils of Dublin (2008) and Color Blind (2003) are now available on iTunes in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Japan, and throughout the European Union. Both albums are also available in other digital music outlets, including Rhapsody, eMusic, Napster, and Amazon mp3. Our blog and the gowmanmusic.com website now feature widgets that play streams from The Devils of Dublin and allow listeners to jump directly to iTunes.

Celtic News!

We've just finished our big March rush with seven performances in just over a week! Nothing against any of the other gigs which we absolutely enjoyed, but everyone especially loved the evening performance at Victor Intermediate School. There's something about having a crowd in the hundreds and being asked for your autograph afterward...

Tomorrow we begin a new era with our program as we start a second group, gearing up for next year, while the current group continues. This is far from "Celtic Junior" as we had a few years ago... rather, we are preparing to hit the ground running next year and I believe that the two groups--Celtic Senior and Celtic-of-the-Future (insert SciFi sound effect)--will be evenly matched by the end of this school year...

Special thanks to The Irish Musicians Association of Rochester, who wanted to do something special for the kids in appreciation of our partnership in bringing Teada here in December; we all went to the Cheesecake Factory for a well-deserved feast to celebrate the end of March!

Our YouTube and MySpace pages are up and running, and we now have recordings of newly introduced music on the website for students to practice with and learn from.