Altan Perform Irish Folk Music at Harvard

The audience’s rousing standing ovation for traditional Irish music band Altan at Sanders Theatre on March 20th marked the perfect end to a festive St. Patrick’s week in Cambridge—and showed why there’s so much love for all things Irish in America.

Playing in front of a near-capacity audience and in their penultimate gig in a month-long American tour, Altan appeared far from unenthusiastic in their performance. The group has been playing to a live audience every second night, from Georgia to New York and finally to Boston, in order to promote their new album The Blue Idol.

Their passion for their music shone throughout the night, as did their appreciation to be on stage despite their grueling tour.

Described by the Boston Globe as “the hottest group in the Celtic realm these days,” Altan serve as great ambassadors for their country and have shown unwavering commitment to bring the beauty of traditional music to contemporary audiences.

The spine-tingling voice of Mairéad Ní Mhaonaig allowed the audience to be carried off to serene places and showcased her amazing ability to capture the beauty of a place with mere words. Many of the songs are inspired by rural Ireland and its charms.

The audience seemed to thoroughly enjoy themselves. From the word go, the feet of the spectators unconsciously tapped in rhythm to the music and around the theatre heads swayed from side to side as knees bobbed up and down.

One member of the crowd, Erica A. Brown ’07, praised this evident chemistry.

“The interaction between the band and the audience heightened the enjoyment of the night,” she said. “The artistry of the performers, the theater lighting, the stage decorations and the pulse of excitement running through the crowd all combined to produce a very whole, a very organic experience.”

The group started with a traditional “Hello Boston” greeting, then wasted no time to set the tempo of the night with a fast paced jig to warm up the crowd. Playing up Ireland’s greatest export—whiskey—the next jig was purely inspired by this “water of life.” The band claimed to be singing about whiskey because of their Lenten pact of abstinence but that was quickly dispelled by fiddler Ciarn Tourishís cry of “Yeah right!”

The third song of the evening finally gave us a sample of Mhaonaig’s beautiful voice as she sang a slow love song, which slowed down the pace of the evening to a standstill. There was scarcely a noise in the crowd for the entirety of the song as the crowd was held captivated by the melodic description of a place they had never seen.

The pace was moved up a gear again for the rest of the evening with a few brief ballads in between to cool the audience down. The talent of the fiddlers combined with an accordion, a guitar and a bouzouki managed to achieve an almost inhuman speed in most of their jigs, which made this a dynamic performance.

Altan has had a long and colorful history. In 1985 Mhaonaigh and her husband Frankie Kennedy decided to leave work and become professional musicians. Their gamble paid off and nearly twenty years later Altan expanded to include Dermot Byrne, Ciarn Tourish, Ciarn Curran, and Dithi Sproule and are widely regarded as the best Celtic band to emerge from Ireland.