Irish Arts Center Winter Solstice Celebration

Brenda Castles comes from a rich tradition of music in Co. Meath, having learned concertina from Rena Traynor (née Crotty) and concertina maestro, Mícheál Ó'Raghallaigh. She has several All Ireland Fleadh titles to her name both in solo and group competitions. Music has brought her around the world to destinations including Hong Kong, Mongolia, and Iceland. Brenda is currently based in Dublin city center, where she regularly performs and teaches music. She released her debut solo album, "Indeedin You Needn't Bother" in December of 2016

Brendan Dolan is the son of Irish traditional piano legend Felix Dolan, and has established his own reputation as one of the foremost pianists in Irish music. He is also an archivist with an M.A. in Irish and Irish-American Studies from New York University, where he processed the Mick Moloney Irish-American Music and Popular Culture Collection in the Archives of Irish America at Tamiment Library. Brendan's playing can be heard on Pride of New York, Live at Mona's, Billy McComiskey's Outside the Box, Brian Conway's Consider the Source, and Mick Moloney's Far From the Shamrock Shore, McNally's Row of Flats and If It Wasn't For the Irish and the Jews.  Brendan has also performed with such non-Irish musicians as classical violinist Itzhak Perlman and klezmer clarinetist-mandolinist Andy Statman. He has taught traditional music for many years at the Augusta Heritage Center in Elkins, West Virginia, and at the Catskills Irish Arts Week in East Durham, New York and teaches children in the New York City area year round. He currently teaches instrumental music at Avenues: the World School.

Jesse Gelber is a specialist in stride piano and early jazz styles. He can be found playing gigs in the New York area almost every night, at venues that range from tiny cafés to Carnegie Hall and everything in-between. He has performed with some of the city’s most respected traditional jazz bands, including Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks and Michael Arenella’s Dreamland Orchestra. In addition, Jesse performs solo and with his own vaudeville act: Gelber & Manning. Also a composer and arranger, Jesse won an ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Award for his opera, Broad Stripes and Bright Stars, which was showcased at La MaMa theater. His arrangements have been sung and played by Theodore Bikel, Hal Linden, and The Massachuttes Springfield Symphony. Jesse was musical director for the 50th Anniversary of Israel Concert in Boston's Symphony Hall and has written arrangements for A Taste of Passover and The Chanukah Special, both of which were shown on PBS. He holds a MA in jazz theory from Rutgers University and a BA in jazz performance and composition from New England Conservatory.

Liz Hanley, a native of Boston, is one of the top young musicians in the New York Irish music scene. She plays the fiddle with great energy and flair and is a fine singer whose repertoire spans multiple genres from Irish traditional and rock to hip-hop and classical. Liz graduated from New York University with a Bachelor’s of Music in classical violin performance and has toured the United States, Europe and Southeast Asia. She can be seen playing around New York in seisiúns and with the likes of Mick Moloney and Frogbelly and Symphony. Be sure to check out Hanley's debut album The Ecstasy of St. Cecilia.

Photo credit: Amanda Gentile

Jake James is a two-time All Ireland Fiddle Champion, bodhrán player, and dancer. His journey into Irish music and dance started with an obsession with a Riverdance video at the age of three which led to dance classes with World Champion Irish Dancer, Niall O'Leary. In addition to Irish dance, Jake studied ballet at Ballet Academy East (BAE), and modern, horton, tap, and West African dance at Alvin Ailey. Today, Jake likes to draw on his background in order to develop his own style by mixing Irish dance with elements of Tap, Sean Nos, and other styles. Jake started playing fiddle at seven years of age with Niall Mulligan from County Antrim. Jake also studied bodhrán with Eamon Murray of Beoga and has won the Mid-Atlantic Fleadh Cheoil on bodhrán for eight years in a row. Jake has performed and taught all over NYC and other areas of North America, Ireland, and Canada including the Great American Irish Festival, the Irish Arts Center, Symphony Space, Joanie Madden's Folk'N Irish Cruise, Gracie Mansion, and Carnegie Hall.

Tamar Korn has been a full-time New York-based vocalist for a decade, playing a repertoire steeped in early twentieth century American music. From traditional New Orleans and 1920’s and 30’s jazz to western swing, early country, roots and folk, gospel and bluegrass, (and now endeavoring towards singing Yiddish music), Tamar’s love is of both of the lyrical traditions in song as well as the improvisational capacity to feel  and play musical sounds.  She thus often is noted for playing “instrumentally” with her voice. She leads her own ensembles -  A Kornucopia- sings in western swing band The Brain Cloud, and formerly the Cangelosi Cards. She often joins Baby Soda Jazz band, Gordon Au’s Grand Street Stompers, stride pianist Terry Waldo, and occasionally Mark O’Connor’s Hot Swing Trio. Tamar has traveled for music in the States and Canada, and to Scandinavia, France, Lithuania, and China.

Photo credit: Amanda Gentile 

Equally at home as both leader and sideman, Dan Levinson’s roster of musical associates includes such names as Mel Tormé, Wynton Marsalis, and Dick Hyman. Originally from Los Angeles, Dan has been based in New York since 1983, although his busy schedule often takes him across the continent and around the world. He has performed in Brazil with filmmaker Woody Allen’s band, as well as in Japan, Iceland, Latvia, and eighteen European countries. From 1990 to 2002 Dan toured with singer/ guitarist Leon Redbone. Since 1993 he has been a member of Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks, with whom he has appeared at Carnegie Hall, on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, and on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion radio program. Dan’s successful Benny Goodman tributes have been presented both on the East Coast with James Langton’s New York All-Star Big Band, NYC’s preeminent swing orchestra, and throughout Germany with Andrej Hermlin’s Swing Dance Orchestra. Dan has recorded over 150 CDs, including nine under his own name. He can be heard on the soundtracks to the films The Cat’s Meow, Ghost World, The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond, and Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator, as well as on virtually all of the newly recorded music used on the soundtrack of the Grammy Award-winning HBO television series Boardwalk Empire, which ran from 2010 to 2014.

Billy McComiskey, originally from Brooklyn, has been playing the accordion for over 50 years studying alongside many of the finest Irish Immigrant musicians of the 20th Century. He has been hailed as “the best Irish accordion player in America” and at the center of the revival of traditional music with the trail-blazing group The Irish Tradition in Washington D.C., The Catskills and his adopted home in Baltimore, Maryland where he is considered the Godfather of Irish music. An All-Ireland champion in 1986, he either taught or deeply influenced many prominent traditional Irish musicians throughout the United States and he has performed with Mick Moloney since the late 1970s in The Green Fields of America Ensemble. He also plays in the quintessential Irish-American Trad band The Pride of New York a first-generation group of tradition bearers who have played in Ireland and major festivals in America.

Photo credit: Amanda Gentile 

Mick Moloney, originally from County Limerick, Ireland, was a member of the Johnstons folk group in Ireland before coming to the US in 1973. In America, he teamed up with the much-loved fiddler Eugene O’Donnell while pursuing a Ph.D. in folklore at the University of Pennsylvania. They played together for over twenty years. He also performed during this time and recorded extensively with Robbie O’Connell and Jimmy Keane. Now a professor of Music and Irish Studies at New York University, Moloney is also a producer and performer in over sixty recordings and several documentary films, author of Far from the Shamrock Shore: The Story of Irish American History Through Song and editor of Close to the Floor: The Story of Irish Dance in America and the recipient of the National Heritage Award. He currently plays with a wide variety of musicians including The Green Fields of America, an all-star group he formed in 1978 which helped launch the careers of young artists such as Eileen Ivers and Seamus Egan, Jean Butler and Michael Flatley. In 2007, his album McNally’s Row of Flats on the Compass label was awarded the title of best Irish traditional music album of the year by the Irish Echo and also gained the Irish Livies top album of the year award. His 2009 album If It Wasn’t For the Irish and the Jews was once again awarded the title of best Irish album of the year by Irish Livies, and most recently he was awarded a 2013 Presidential Distinguished Service Award for the Irish Aboard, and a 2014 Gradam Ceoil Lifetime Achievement Award from TG4.

Photo credit: Amanda Gentile 

Niall O’Leary is an architect and a former All-Ireland and World Champion dancer originally from Dublin. He runs his own architectural practice in NYC, as well as the Niall O’Leary School of Irish Dance. His Irish dance teachers have included Kevin Massey, proclaimed by Michael Flatley to be the greatest Irish dancer ever, and Rory O’Connor, the first man to do Irish dancing on the radio. He is the artistic director of the New York City Irish Dance Festival presented by Irish Arts Center in May each year, and performs regularly as a solo artist, in duet with Darrah Carr, and with Mick Moloney’s Green Fields of America, as well as with his company The Niall O’Leary Irish Dance Troupe. He is in constant demand as a performer, choreographer and master instructor and conducts regular workshops and master classes around the US, Canada, Ireland, Mexico, Japan, Thailand and Vietnam. He is the founding chairman of Ull Mor CCÉ, the Manhattan branch of Comhaltas, and was president of the Irish Business Organization of NY Inc. from 2010-2011. In 2004, O’Leary was honored by Irish America magazine as one of the Top 100 Irish-Americans of the Year.

Photo credit: Amanda Gentile 

John Roberts sings the traditional folksongs of his native Britain. He developed his interest in folksongs at high school, and determined to teach himself to play guitar and took one off to Manchester University, where he soon became a singer at local clubs during the "folk revival" of the early '60s. His initial repertoire of predominantly American songs gradually gave way to more British and Irish material as he explored and absorbed his own native traditions. He sang in a duo with fellow-Brit Tony Barrand, performing at concerts and festivals throughout the USA and Canada, and with him developed and performed in Nowell Sing We Clear, which brought a fresh look at the Christmas season through traditional songs and customs, touring throughout the northeastern US for 40 years. He has been a featured and supporting singer and musician for many of the concert productions that Mick Moloney has produced under the auspices of the IAC, and has recorded with Mick, singing harmony on several of his recent recordings. His own recordings can be sampled at goldenhindmusic.com.

Photo credit: Amanda Gentile 

Athena Tergis hails from a musical family in San Francisco where she released her first album at age 16. She followed her passion for traditional music to Ireland and joined the Sharon Shannon Band. Athena was also the featured violinist in the production of Riverdance on Broadway. She spent over a year on tour with Bruce Springsteen’s sax player, Clarence Clemmons. In 2001 she joined Mick Moloney and Billy McComiskey in The Green Fields of America releasing their self-titled album on Compass records along with her solo album A Letter Home and a PBS documentary: Absolutely Irish! Athena is a regular principal soloist and composer with the Dublin Philharmonic Orchestra.

Photo credit: Amanda Gentile 

Writer and director, Macdara Vallely, was born in Craigavon, County Armagh in Northern Ireland.  He graduated with a BA HONS in Theatre Studies and Irish Language from the University of Ulster in 1994.

His latest narrative feature, Babygirl (2011), which he wrote and directed, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. It  won Best Irish Feature at the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival; the Panavision Independent Spirit Award ($60,000) at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, and was released theatrically in the USA in October 2013 and subsequently on VOD and Hulu.

His first feature, Peacefire (2008) was premiered at Karlovy Vary, and won Best First Feature at Galway Film Fleadh, it also won the Special Jury Prize at the European First Feature Festival at Angers and the Grand Jury Prize at the Annonay Film Festival.  It was broadcast nationally in Ireland.

He has also written and directed several short films, documentaries and plays including:

John Philip Holland:  Inventor of the Submarine (2017) documentary; Joseph Campbell – Vision and Sacrifice (2014) documentary; The Love Bite (2004) short film; Fíorghael (2005) short film; Voice of the Sea (2001) play presented off-Broadway; and the play Peacefire (2004) which won the Edinburgh Fringe First for Excellence in Writing and was shortlisted for the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award. 

In addition, Vallely worked for several years as a community artist in Northern Ireland, where he has used theatre and performance at a grass roots level to promote peace and mutual understanding between young people.  His work for children also includes the play, The Giant’s Garden, an adaptation of The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde, and The Irish Famine Theatre Outreach Program, based on the Great Irish Famine Curriculum, has been performed to over 15,000 children in New York City.