Brennan’s Holiday Treat

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Irish Voice Entertainment

Brennan’s Holiday Treat

December 20, 2007

OH, the weather outside might have been frightful but the sounds were so delightful inside Connolly’s Klub 45 as Moya Brennan enraptured the crowd with a mixture of songs from Signature and An Irish Christmas, her last two CDs.

Times Square might have been only steps away, but Moya’s peaceful vibe inside Klub 45 jettisoned the glitzy commerce into another galaxy.

Her recordings as a solo artist and with Clannad are known for the manufactured atmospherics created in the studio. Brennan chose to wrap herself and her music in a simple acoustic tapestry on this night.

Moya and her Celtic harp were accompanied by fellow harpist Cormac De Barra, Fionan De Barra (guitar, bodhran), Sam Jackson (keyboards) and Sinead Madden (fiddle, backing vocals).

Her signature style is a blending of ethereal harmonies, and she was able to successfully recreate that in a live setting with Madden. “People often ask me if we’re related, but we’re not,” she says with a laugh in between sets.

“My new CD, Signature, is like a musical snapshot of times in my life, some happy, some sad,” she said as she introduced songs from her newest album.

She played the gorgeous “Tapestry” from the CD, proving without a shadow of a doubt that Brennan is doing some of her best work right now.

“Oh, my God,” mouthed Celtic chanteuse Ashley Davis, a New York-based musician who sat next to me and cites Brennan as one of her biggest influences. “That voice is just amazing.”

She mesmerized the crowd, which included Colum McCann, Larry Kirwan and our own Paul Keating, with her emotional, understated delivery, and conjured up plenty of holiday cheer with her reading of classics like “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” “The Wexford Carol,” “Deck the Halls,” and the spine tingling “Carol of the Bells.”

It’s not too late to download An Irish Christmas from iTunes to make sure your holidays are evergreen with gorgeous Celtic sounds.

Brennan gave many gifts to long time fans in her setlist, She did some obscure tracks from her Clannad days, including a suite from the soundtrack work they did on Robin Hood, the BBC show.

Sam Jackson’s keyboards provided a diverse soundscape that ranged from flutes to ghostly touches on tracks like “Newgrange,” “Harry’s Game” and “I Will Find You.”

With the Celtic Woman Christmas special airing round the clock on TV lately, it’s easy to forget who the true queen of Celtic music is. Brennan and Clannad single-handedly invented the genre that lesser mortals play in, as this unforgettable concert proved.

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