PAUL KEATING
From the
Altan at the Scaritt-Bennett Center in Nashville. (Photo by Leila Grossman)
IT is a whole new world out there even for veteran musicians and bands plying their trade for decades and watching the music industry turn upside down and trying to fig- ure out what keeps audiences inter- ested in your music. Since the 1980s no one Irish band outside of the Chieftains has scaled the heights of Altan, the creation of founders Mairead ni Maonaigh and the late Frankie Kennedy, whose vision was to expand their band and to play and tour professionally.
Following Clannad’s lead, their early aims were to share the boun- tiful musical treasures of Donegal while also focusing attention on the rich Irish language tradition still very much “beo” in the Northwest- ern Gaeltacht region.
Frankie Kennedy, husband to Mairead didn’t live long enough to see the full promise of Altan, though he built a firm foundation for Ciaran Tourish, Ciaran Curran, Mark Kelly, Daithi Sproule, Dermot Byrne (who has left the band) and Martin Tour- ish to follow down through the years since Frankie’s passing in 1994.
But sometimes you really have to shake things up and set out a new course no matter how much suc- cess you have enjoyed in the past to garner the attention your talent and experience deserve these days.
So Altan set about some radical departures for themselves last year, and they joined the ever-increasing ranks of artists flocking to crowd sourcing to produce their own music products.
They mounted a successful cam- paign to raise the money for their new CD The Widening Gyre which will be launched in the U.S. this month
Edgerton Center for the Arts in Fair- field, Connecticut (203-371-7908 or www.edgertoncenter.org).
All three of these shows will feature an opening act of Ciaran O Maonaigh and Caitlin Nic Gabhann. Alison Brown, one of the finest bluegrass banjo players around joins Altan for shows at the Barns of Wolftrap (March 6) in Vienna, Virginia and on March 7 at the Annenberg Cen- ter in Philadelphia and out in the Mid- west. Liz Carroll joins them for the West Coast swing
on one of their more ambitious tours in a long time.
Altan experienced the high and lows of dealing with record compa- nies like Green Linnet back in the 1990s that ended up selling their back cat- alog to Compass Records for hard copy distribution rights and else- where for the digital rights.
Compass has done the best they could for artists in a rapidly declin-
ing CD business, but perhaps more significantly they have forged a ver- itable trans-Atlantic bridge from Nashville to Ireland and Scotland.
They have shaped a mutually ben- eficial environment where artists collaborate extensively and find new ways to explore roots music in both Appalachia and the Celtic realms that supplied those hills and hollers with melodies and stories that were passed on and reborn.
Altan relocated last summer to the Nashville studios of Compass Records owned by Alison Brown and Garry West, who co-produced the new sen- sational recording with 14 talent- laden tracks.
It is no pedestrian bluegrass/green- grass path that has been walked before by other bands seeking to capitalize on the crossover allure to create a new sound. If you have been around 35 years like Altan you would have shared stages and off- hours sparks with a wealth of kindred musical spirits from both sides of the Atlantic and the Irish Sea. And so the recording shows that depth and cre- ativity with lots of new stuff to savor and some reinventions of recogniz- able material as well interpreted by some of the best musicians you can find in roots music.
Joining Altan on the recording from this side of the pond are bluegrass royalty Alison Brown, Sam Bush, Todd Philips, Bryan Sutton, Daryl Anger Tim O’Brien, Bruce Molsky and Jerry Douglas, plus Mary Chapin Carpenter and Julee Glaub Weems. Eddie Reader Liz Carroll, Natalie Haas and Stuart Duncan add their flourishes as well to various selec- tions.
The extensive 25-gig coast to coast tour gets underway on February 22 in West Virginia appropriately enough on the Mountain Stage Radio program.
The end of February will bring Altan to the Somerville Theatre in Davis Square in Boston on Saturday the 28th, with a big New York City show slat- ed for the City Winery on Sunday, March 1 at 8 p.m. (212-608-0555 or www.citywinery.com/newyork) and Monday, March 2 at 7:30 p.m. at the

IRISH VOICE, Wed., February 18, 2015 – Tues., February 24, 2015