Irish Arts Center Winter Solstice Celebration

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

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.

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. 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, 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 also 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 Abroad, 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, took 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 and toured 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 albums. His own recordings can be sampled at goldenhindmusic.com.

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