FARMINGTON — Old South Church Concert Series welcomes the award winning, worldly acclaimed duo of Chris Newman (guitarist) and Máire Ní Chathasaigh (Celtic harp) to Farmington for the first time on Saturday, Oct. 26, at 7 p.m. Doors will open at 6:30 p.m. General admission tickets will be $25. Seniors (65+) and students (12 y/o +) $20. Tickets can be purchased online at www.farmingtonucc.org/events, or reserved by calling 207-491-5919. Tickets will be available at the door as space allows.
Since its début on Cambridge Folk Festival’s main stage in 1987, the world-renowned partnership of Chris Newman, “one of the UK’s finest and most influential acoustic guitarists” (fROOTS) with Máire Ní Chathasaigh, “the doyenne of Irish harpers” (Scotland on Sunday) has presented its unique musical vision in 24 countries on five continents to venues ranging from the tiniest of village halls to palaces in Kyoto and Istanbul, London’s Barbican, Cologne’s Philharmonie, and town halls from Sydney to Seattle. Chris and Maire have recorded nine CD’s and given TV and radio performances on five continents. Expect a breathtaking blend of traditional Irish music, hot jazz, bluegrass and baroque, spiced with striking new compositions.
Chris has toured and recorded with many luminaries of the folk and jazz worlds, among them Boys of the Lough, Aly Bain and Stéphane Grappelli, Breaking Bach, and is an award-winning composer and record producer, receiving a silver disc for producing “The Oldest Swinger in Town”, a Top 10 hit for comedian Fred Wedlock. Chris’s new solo album of his arrangements for steel-strung flat picked guitar of sonatas and partitas written by JS Bach for solo instruments was released in July 2021. Chris is “one of the UK’s greatest musicians” (BBC Radio 2) and “one of the top guitarists of his ilk in the world” (The Living Tradition). “Dazzling” (Acoustic Guitar USA). “His playing boggles my mind” (Flatpicking Guitar magazine USA).
Máire Ní Chathasaigh (pronounced Moira Nee Ha-ha-sig), steeped in the traditions of her native Co. Cork, is the 2001 recipient of Irish music’s most prestigious award, Traditional Musician of the Year (Gradam Cheoil TG4 – Ceoltóir na Bliana) national recognition of her pioneering work and a multiple All-Ireland winner. As a teenager in the 1970s she invented profoundly influential techniques for performance of “traditional Irish” style of harping that quickly became the norm amongst both her contemporaries and the younger generation of Irish players, thereby spearheading the re-introduction of the harp into the mainstream of the living tradition. Máire is an absolute legend” (The Irish Echo USA). She is considered “the great innovator of modern Irish harping, a player of outstanding technique and imagination” (The Rough Guide to Irish Music) and one of Ireland’s most important and influential traditional musicians. She was described by the late Derek Bell as “the most interesting and original player of the Irish harp today.” “Her work restores the harp to its true voice” (The Irish Times).
Their performances are a breathtaking blend of traditional Irish music, hot jazz, bluegrass and baroque, spiced with striking new compositions, pieces from Chris’ groundbreaking new solo album ‘Breaking Bach’ (“Dazzling … utterly breathtaking … a triumph” (Folk Wales). “A magnificent tour-de-force” (The Living Tradition) – and what The West Australian calls his “delightfully subversive wit.”
For more information visit their website www.maireandchris.com.
If there is no sponsorship for the professional sound and lights provided by Andy LeBlanc a collection will be taken at the beginning of the second half of the concert.
The Old South Church Essentials Closet is in need of donations of toilet tissue as well as men’s and women’s deodorants.