| Song and Dance Pre-teen
Irish-American step-dancers, an up-and-coming Grammy winner, and the legends
that inspired them: this talented crew has the world on its feet, and
singing.
Caroline Duggan
 When Caroline
Duggan came to the U.S. from Crumlin in Co. Dublin to try out the “challenge”
of living and working in a foreign country she had no idea what to expect.
Though Duggan was initially apprehensive about taking the position of
music teacher at PS 59, a small public elementary school in an industrial
section of the Bronx, she was reassured after meeting the school’s
principal, Christine McHugh.
Immediately Caroline attracted attention from her economically challenged
African-American and Hispanic students who thought her accent was funny.
Duggan was asked so many questions about her Irish background that she
decided to show the students, ranging in age from 7-11, a few Irish dance
steps for St. Patrick’s Day. From that time on the students, most
with no Irish roots whatsoever, were hooked. Caroline started an after-school
dance program and was amazed by how fast her new students picked up the
steps.
It’s been five years since the 27-year -old Duggan first began teaching
in the Bronx and her efforts have not gone unnoticed. She has not only
managed to train 85 students to dance, play instruments and sing, but
her Irish dance program has strengthened the community as well.
“Something like this gives the kids great hope, especially in an
area like this, where the kids might not get the opportunity to go to
college or in some cases even to high school,” Duggan told The Irish
Voice.
The students began to perform in shows all over New York City. Thanks
to Duggan’s fund raising efforts, her group of students, called
“Keltic Dreams,” was able to travel to the annual Irish Connections
festival in Canton, MA to perform last summer. More recent performances
have included a holiday show in the Manhattan Mall, and Caroline even
hopes to take the group to Ireland next May. Perhaps most exciting of
all, “Keltic Dreams” is scheduled to perform on The Late Late
Show with Pat Kenny on Friday, May 25.
 Tere O’Connor
Tere O’Connor differs from most other choreographers not only in
themes and styles of his dances but also in his devotion to younger artists.
Almost a decade ago he discovered that he enjoyed teaching dance choreography
nearly as much as he enjoyed creating his own work.
O’Connor has been “making dances” since 1982 and has
created over 30 works for his company Tere O’Connor Dance. Based
in New York, the company has performed throughout the U.S. and Europe,
South America and Canada. His works have been commissioned by the Lyon
Opera Ballet and the White Oak Dance project, among others. He recently
created a solo work for Mikhail Baryshnikov entitled Indoor Man.
O’Connor is a 1993 John Simon Guggenheim Fellow and a recent recipient
of a Foundation for Contemporary Performance Art Award, a National Dance
Project Award and a DNA Project Award from Arts International.
More recently, a new work for the Lyon Opera Ballet entitled Like Two
Kevins premiered at the Lyon Biennales de la Danse in September 2006.
Tere O’Connor’s recent work Baby immerses the viewer into
a poetry of dance that explores the metaphor of time passing. He was recently
appointed Professor of Dance at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Tere has also taught modern and ballet technique and composition at New
York University’s Tish School of the Arts, Movement Research in
New York and Ohio State University. He lives in Greenwich Village, New
York.
 Irish
Dance Champions
This past year over 400 solo and team competitors traveled to Waterfront
Hall in Belfast, Nothern Ireland to compete in the World Championships
of Irish Dance. Eleven different countries were represented in the eight-day
competition. Out of the thirty-three Irish-Americans four brought home
the gold.
Trent Kowalik’s mom likes to tell people he was “dancing in
the womb” because he moved around so much. The eleven-year-old dance
champion was born with a knot in the umbilical cord that doctors said
was a result of his hyperactivity. Following in the footsteps of his idol,
Michael Flatley, Trent enrolled in Inishfree School of Irish Dance in
Massapequa, New York at the age of four and has been dancing ever since.
A winner of the All-Ireland, British National, All-Scotland and an undefeated
five-time North American champion, Trent is the youngest North American
male dancer to win the World Championships. He also enjoys ballet, tap,
jazz, acrobatics and even hip-hop.
Jason Hays, 15, from North Texas is the first dancer from the South
to ever win a first place in the World Championship. An honors student,
Jason is privately schooled in order to accommodate his travel schedule.
He is interested in theater and has played various roles in children’s
playhouses and in summer musicals. A fourth-generation Irish-American
with roots in Cork on his father’s side, Jason lives in Fort Worth,
Texas with his family.
Marnie Smith, 13, the only American female to win first place this past
year, trained for nine years to achieve her goal. Overcoming the deportation
of a coach and a career-threatening injury, the Orange County, California
native has a lot to be proud of. At the age of five Marnie became mesmerized
by Michael Flatley’s dance moves and began Irish dance lessons.
Hailing from the small town of Dove Canyon, Marnie currently trains at
the Butler-Fearon-O’Connor School of Dance. She is an honor roll
student at Serra Catholic School in Rancho Santa Margarita, California.
Ryan McCarthy first began taking Irish dance lessons at the age of eleven
after seeing Riverdance on TV. Now at the age of 20, Ryan’s dreams
have come true. Not only is he the 2006 World Champion but this spring
Ryan will join the North American troupe of Riverdance. A dancer for the
Schade School in New York, Ryan’s other notable accomplishments
include first place at the Mid-Atlantic Regions, North American Championships
and All-Irelands. McCarthy is a junior at Hofstra University where he
is a Liberal Arts major with three focuses: Music, Geography and Economics.
Ryan lives in Uniondale, New York with his parents, Greg and Cathy. This
year Ryan will take a semester off from Hofstra and begin touring with
Riverdance in March. -Bridget English
 Seamus Egan
The founding member of Irish-American super-group Solas, Seamus Egan
is a hugely talented multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer. By
the age of fourteen he was an all-Ireland champion on no less than four
instruments – flute, whistle, banjo and mandolin. Since those halcyon
days, of which he is somewhat dismissive (“hellish – all you
felt was sheer terror”), he has added many more instruments to his
repertoire, including Uileann pipes and nylon string guitar, which he
made great use of on his third solo album, When Juniper Sleeps.
Born in Hatboro, Pennsylvania, Egan moved to Ireland with his family at
age three and, along with his sisters, learned to play whistle under the
tutelage of box-player Martin Donaghue. But a TV performance by Matt Molloy
(of The Chieftains) and James Galway (classical flautist) convinced him
that the flute was to be his chosen instrument, at least for starters.
Moving back to the States, and spending his teen years in an American
high school, Seamus kept his skills under wraps (nothing could be less
cool than Irish music pre Riverdance and Michael Flatley), but his talent
came to light with the release of Traditional Music of Ireland (1985),
his first solo CD (recorded with his sisters Siobhan and Rory.) The CD
later became the basis of the soundtrack to The Brothers McMullen, for
which Seamus also co-wrote “I Will Remember You,” a hit song
with Sarah McLachlan. A subsequent stint with the loose collective known
as The Green Fields of America, which featured a rotation of some of the
best Irish-American traditional musicians around, followed by a spell
with pals Eileen Ivers, John Doyle and Susan McKeown as the band Chanting
House, established Seamus as a preeminent performer, resulting in the
formation of Solas. Having just celebrated their tenth anniversary with
the release of a reunion concert CD and DVD (not that they actually broke
up – various players have come and gone, amicably as far as I know,
and they all got together again for the celebration). (See Irish America’s
August, 2006 issue for a full review, along with Cherish the Ladies’
20th Anniversary review). Solas has long established itself as the ultimate
in virtuoso Irish-American music, with Seamus Egan as its very core, a
fiery mix of traditional and contemporary songs and tunes. The current
lineup consists of Winifred Horan on fiddle, Mick McAuley on accordion,
Deirdre Scanlon on vocals, Eamon McElholm on guitar and Egan on everything
else. Few other bands can even come close to their skills. May Seamus
Egan cause jaws to drop for many a year to come. – Ian Worpole
 Helen Gannon
Like the Gateway Arch that opened the doors to the Western United States,
the arrival of Helen and P.J. Gannon in St. Louis in 1967 symbolized a
pioneering spirit that is vital to the Mississippi River town. Dr. Gannon’s
psychiatric studies brought him and his young wife Helen, a nurse and
midwife, to St. Louis. Those first years seemed like a lonely exile in
a community where traditional Irish music and dance were scarce, unlike
nearby Chicago. A chance Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann (CCE) concert tour
in 1971 stirred the couple’s hearts and in 1972 they helped form
one of the earliest CCE branches in North America. The rest is history.
Helen and her husband twinned the teaching of music to dance and started
a music and dance school under the St. Louis Irish Arts Comhaltas banner
in 1981. A few years later, in 1987, Helen became a registered Irish dance
teacher.
Helen and P.J. Gannon raised four children, two of whom, Niall and Eileen,
are teaching at St. Louis Irish Arts Academy in Maplewood. The school
received recognition at Fleadh Cheoil na hEireann when their Senior Grupai
Cheoil (music group), under Niall, won a second place finish. Eileen won
a senior All-Ireland medal for the harp.
Helen, when she isn’t encouraging her grandchildren to keep up the
tradition, serves as the Comhaltas liaison to the North American Feis
Commission. She is the longtime director of CCE North America’s
St. Louis Irish Arts, was its first Western Regional Chair, Public Relations
Officer and since 2004, its first Lady Provincial Chair. She was able
to ensure that Budweiser (St. Louis is the home of Anheuser Busch) sponsored
the annual Comhaltas Concert tour from Ireland.
In November of 2006, as a testament to their devotion to Irish music
and dance in St. Louis for over 40 years, the entire Gannon family (three
generations) was invited to perform at the Kennedy Center and the Library
of Congress. –Paul Keating
 Joanie
Madden & Cherish the Ladies
As the founding member and supreme leader of that Irish-American musical
institution Cherish the Ladies, Joanie Madden, flute and whistle player
extraordinaire, is the leading light of strictly traditional Irish music.
Not that there is anything strict about Joanie; her virtuosity is tempered
by a warm, humorous persona that engages whoever she happens to be playing
with, not to mention the entire audience.
Cherish the Ladies, which recently celebrated its 20th anniversary, has
eleven albums to its credit and an alumni list that contains some of the
most talented women performers playing today, including Eileen Ivers,
Winifred Horan and another of this year’s Top 100, Cathie Ryan.
The group, whose latest CD is Woman of the House, has performed with symphony
orchestras around the world, and its Celtic Album, a collaboration with
the Boston Pops Orchestra, received a Grammy nomination.
An All-Ireland champion, Joanie has received many awards including Traditional
Musician of the Year. She is a member of the Irish-American Musicians
Hall of Fame and the Comhaltas Hall of Fame, following in the footsteps
of her dad, Joe Madden, who hails from Portumna in East Galway. Her mother,
Helen, is a traditional dancer from Milton Malbay, County Clare. Song
of the Irish Whistle, one of Joanie’s three solo albums, is considered
the most successful whistle album in history. – Ian Worpole
 Tommy Makem
Irish folk singer Tommy Makem has spent his career battling to bring
Irish culture and tradition to people all over the world. Today he is
facing a far more personal battle. The 73-year-old musician was diagnosed
with lung cancer last year. Though he has been living with the illness
for a year now, Makem remains symptom free. “Ever since I’ve
been diagnosed with lung cancer I have not been sick one day, I have not
had any pain and I’m in great form. Just before Christmas I did
a wonderful and very successful tour up in Canada, and I’m off next
Sunday on a cruise,” Makem told the Irish Voice recently. Cancer
has not slowed down the Keady, Co. Armagh native who continues to sing
and maintain his rigorous touring schedule.
Aside from the more traditional forms of treatment like chemotherapy and
radiation, Makem has explored alternative healing methods. He has attended
a healing service with a priest named Father Diorio in Worcester, Massachusetts
and has traveled to a holistic healing clinic in Illinois where he began
a diet composed mostly of fruits and vegetables with no dairy products.
Though not easy to adapt to, he hopes the diet will maintain his health
and strength.
Back in the 1960s Tommy Makem and the Clancy Brothers were wildly popular
in both Ireland and America. But Makem was no one-hit-wonder; he has spent
more than five decades keeping Irish history and culture alive through
his music. Makem’s characteristic determination and positive outlook
should serve him well in his latest challenge: against cancer.–
Bridget English
 Mark Murphy
Imagine the protégé of Sammy Davis Jr., the co-conspirator
and colleague of Bill Evans, and the man Ella Fitzgerald claimed as her
“equal.” This fantasy of jazz is Mark Murphy.
The six-time Grammy nominee and creator of 42 world-renowned albums hails
from Fulton, New York and moved to New York City in 1954. Unlike so many
young musicians, Murphy didn’t come to New York looking for a “big
break.” He had already had one the year before, when he was discovered
by Sammy Davis Jr. while jamming with his brother Doc Murphy’s jazz
ensemble. Three years later, he released his first record.
The 1956 release of Murphy’s debut album Meet Mark Murphy was only
the beginning of one of the most successful recording careers in jazz
vocals. Over forty years later, Mark Murphy is still touring the world
year round, and released a moving collection of ballads, Once to Every
Heart, in 2005. He has received six Grammy nominations, has won Downbeat
magazine’s distinction of “Best Male Jazz Vocalist of the
Year” four times, and worked with some of the most distinguished
jazz musicians in the industry: artists such as Clark Terry, Dick Hyman,
Roger Kellaway, Frank Morgan, and Richie Cole.
One of Murphy’s greatest achievements and contributions to the
jazz world is the lyrics he composes for instrumental pieces. Murphy has
put words to the instrumental works of such legendary jazz musicians as
Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Charlie Parker, McCoy Tyner, Pat Metheny,
Charles Mingus, and Herbie Hancock.
Throughout his fifty-four-year career Murphy, whose family roots are
from Munster, has experimented with jazz, and in recent years has become
deeply involved in the genre of acid jazz, which combines soul music,
funk, jazz, disco, and sometimes rap. Acid jazz is recognized in the international
musical community, and Murphy’s successful collaboration with producers
from England, Germany, and Japan has underscored Murphy’s international
acclaim. – Maeve Molloy
 Kelley
O’Connor
Grammy-award winning mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor certainly does
not look like a man, but Osvaldo Golijov rewrote his opera Ainadamar so
that she could perform the part of Federico García Lorca, a Spanish
poet and dramatist killed in 1936 before the start of the Spanish Civil
War.
“He [Golijov] met me and saw how much I looked like Lorca. I don’t
know if that’s a compliment or not, but he decided to have me play
him.”
It was a huge challenge, but one that O’Connor embraced with gusto.
The gamble paid off, with the critcally-acclaimed Ainadamar receiving
rave reviews and winning a Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording on February
10.
O’Connor was there to accept the award. “Jessica Rivera, who
is also on the recording, and I were the only ones at the awards so we
had to go up and thank everyone and say a few words,” O’Connor,
who lives in Clovis, California, told Irish America.
Years after her kindergarten teachers told her parents she had a voice,
O’Connor went on to graduate with a degree and a master’s
in music from USC and UCLA respectively.
Busy times are ahead for O’Connor, whose father’s family
traces its heritage to Cahirciveen, County Kerry. This spring she will
cover the role of Teodata in Handel’s Flavio with the New York City
Opera. In July she will reprise the role of Lorca and tour London, Adelaide,
Australia, Boston and Chicago. She is booked to appear in Carnegie Hall
in Peter Lieberson’s Neruda Songs, in May 2008, and plans are afoot
for a recital in Carnegie Hall, in January 2008. – Declan O’Kelly
 Cathie Ryan
Cathie Ryan was born in Detroit, Michigan to parents from Kerry and Tipperary.
They instilled a deep love of Irish traditional song in their youngest
daughter, bringing her to the Gaelic League regularly for Irish music
sessions. During summers in Ireland, she would listen every evening to
her grandmother, a fiddler and singer in her own right. “She would
sit down by the fire and start playing. I loved watching her play because
it transformed her. Even though she sat there with gray hair she was a
girl when she played and sang.”
Cathie also counts sean nós singer Joe Heaney as an influence on
her singing. “Joe took me deeper into the sean nós, but also
encouraged me to bring out the American musical influences within me.”
Consequently, she is now known as much for her contemporary original songs
as her interpretation of the traditional ballads, and her crystalline
soprano voice is equally at home with the old and the new.
After touring for seven years as an original member of Cherish the Ladies,
Ryan’s solo career took off with her album Cathie Ryan, a careful
mix of original and traditional songs. A similar mix would define all
her subsequent solo work – The Music of What Happens, Somewhere
Along The Road, and her most recent and critically acclaimed release The
Farthest Wave. She is the first Irish-American to be featured on the renowned
A Woman’s Heart collection, placing her amongst Ireland’s
finest female vocalists and songwriters. Cathie recently moved to the
Cooley Peninsula in County Louth where she hopes to cut back on her touring
schedule and write more songs. She says, “The Farthest Wave is about
longing, about losing your sense of security and love and what comes from
within once that happens. Irish myth informs a lot of my work. In the
old sagas those exiled from the tribe were sent out on the sea alone in
a coracle with only a knife and some water. If they made it to new land
they were said to be capable of great deeds. I love that idea.”
Cathie has already accomplished great deeds by singing the best of Irish
and Irish-American music in concert halls, folk clubs, festivals, and
with orchestras throughout North America and Europe.
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