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Contents
Feb 25 - Flook
Mar 31 - Aoife Clancy
July 16 - Cathie Ryan
Download the Sunspot Flyer for Flook
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Other Area Musical Events
The Sunday night WINTER CONCERT SERIES at the Old Brogue in Great Falls continues on Feb. 12 with bouzouki player Beth Patterson from New Orleans.
THE INSTITUTE FOR MUSICAL TRADITIONS presents weekly concerts in Rockville, Maryland. Their upcoming show on Monday, Feb. 13 features Crooked Still, with two performers who have also been at the Lyceum: Aoife O'Donovan (Sometimes Why) and Corey DiMario (Lissa Schneckenburger Trio). Check out their full schedule at IMT's web site.
The Lyceum will host a free presention by Empowered Women International with a reading by Meera Wolfe, author of Sutras, Reading the Threads of a Life, and a sitar recital by Alif Laila on Thursday, Feb. 23, at 7:45 pm. Details at the EMI web site.
PHILIPPE VARLET (fiddle) and ROB GREENWAY (flute, guitar) host two sessions a week with some of the best players of traditional Irish music in the DC area at Ri-Ra Irish pub in Bethesda. Wednesdays 7-11 pm and Sundays 3-7 pm. For more information, call Philippe at 301 873-3850.
Irish duo PIPELINE (Dermot Hyde on uilleann pipes, whistles, vocals and small pipes and Tom Hake on bouzouki, guitar and harp) will be performing at the Smithsonian on March 16.
THE PRISM, in Charlottesville, will be hosting some incredible shows this season, including Bohola and Crooked Still. See their full schedule at the Prism web site.
PATRICK O'FLAHERTY plays authentic Irish music each week at Pat Troy's Irish Pub in Old Town Alexandria. Check out Patrick's full schedule at Patrick's web site.
The Steam Powered Preservation Society
Check out SPPS's music preservation work, download a few tunes and consider a donation to help keep their work going.
The SPPS
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Flook Wins Best Folk Group Award
Flook was named Best Folk Group this past Monday at the prestigious BBC Folk Music Awards. Past winners have included Altan, Cherish the Ladies and Danu. Come to their Lyceum show on February 25 to see why Flook is one of the most respected groups in folk music today.
Tickets for all Sunspot concerts are on sale at the Sunspot web site.
Flook
 With Morwenna Lasko & Jay Pun
The Lyceum
201 S. Washington St., Alexandria, VA
Saturday, February 25. 8 pm
In the pantheon of Irish/English folk groups they don't come much more revered than Flook. - Irish Post
Awarded "Best Folk Group" in 2006 BBC Music Awards.
 Flook has been touring for 10 years, but are not as well know in the U.S. as they are in Ireland and internationally. With the dynamic dual flute leads of Sarah Allen and Brian Finnegan, John Joe Kelly's incredible bodhran playing and the intricate guitar work of Ed Boyd, they present a supprising and intriguing sound. It's different from the usual fiddle-guitar-flute group, and continues to enthrall old and new listeners. They are releasing their third studio album for this tour.
 Flook's current incarnation–Sarah Allen on flutes and accordion, Brian Finnegan on flutes and whistles, John Joe Kelly on bodhran and mandolin and Ed Boyd on guitar and bouzouki–has been together for five years. The group actually began much earlier, with Sarah and Brian joined by Michael McGoldrick in the highly regarded Three Nations Flutes. Ed was drafted in early on. When Michael went on to other projects, the band replaced him with bodhran maestro John Joe. The result is musically astonishing.
 Brian Finnegan has won four All-Ireland Championships on flute and tin whistle and John Joe Kelly has taken an amazing eight All-Ireland wins on bodhran (six) and drums (two). Londoner Sarah Allen toured the world for five years with the immensely popular The Barely Works. And since moving from his native Bath to Manchester and discovering Irish music, Ed Boyd has been renowned as a guitar accompanist of great taste and subtlety.
Visit Flook's web site at www.flook.co.uk.
 Morwenna Lasko and Jay Pun defy the boundaries of acoustic music. With Morwenna's lush melodic solos and rhythmic chopping and Jay's percussive finger-style funk guitar lines, their music surpasses eclectic.
Visit Morwenna and Jay's web site at www.mojamusic.net
Tickets $20 advance/$22 at the door (children under 14 with adult half price).
Tickets on sale now at the Sunspot web site.
Aoife Clancy
The Lyceum
201 S. Washington St., Alexandria, VA
Friday, March 31. 8 pm
 Aoife Clancy (pronounced "Eefa") brings a refreshing new voice to folk music, one that ranges from traditional Irish songs to ballads and contemporary folk. Aoife comes from the small town of Carrick-on-Suir, in Co Tipperary, Ireland, where her musical career began at an early age. Her father Bobby Clancy of the legendary Clancy Brothers, placed a guitar in her hands at age ten, and by age fourteen was playing with her father in nearby pubs.
In 1995 Aoife was asked to join the acclaimed group "Cherish the Ladies", which is one of the most sought-after Irish-American groups in history. For five years Aoife toured extensively doing no less than two hundred shows a year throughout the United States and Europe. She has been a featured soloist with orchestras such as the Boston Pops and Cincinnati Pops and, while performing with Cherish the Ladies, collaborated with the Boston Pops on their Grammy nominated Celtic album.
With seven recordings under her belt, Aoife has clearly established herself as one of the Divas of Irish and contemporary Folk Music. She has recorded three solo projects "Its about Time," "Soldiers and Dreams" and "Silvery Moon." Aoife always presents traditional favorites along with renditions of contemporary songs.
Mike Jackson (Canberra Times) remarked, "she has a breadth of styles that make her concerts fascinating. Her singing would melt packed ice with it's warmth and richness." Al Riess (Dirty Linen magazine) wrote: "Solders and Dreams has a contemporary-meets-traditional-music feel and Clancy's smooth, expressive singing works both ways--ensuring a successful merger of the two approaches and an enjoyable listening pleasure".
Visit Aoife's web site at www.aoifeclancy.com.
Tickets $25 advance/$27 at the door (children under 14 with adult half price).
Tickets on sale now at the Sunspot web site.
Cathie Ryan
The Lyceum
201 S. Washington St., Alexandria, VA
Sunday, July 16. 8 pm
 Irish-American singer Cathie Ryan returns to the Lyceum for a summer concert.
With her crystalline vocals and insightful songwriting, Cathie is an original and distinctive voice in Celtic music. Since her acclaimed seven year tenure as lead singer of Cherish the Ladies, the Detroit born Ryan has established herself as one of Celtic Music's most popular and enduring singer-songwriters. The Boston Globe recently wrote, "Cathie Ryan is a thrilling traditional vocalist whose honey-pure soprano is equally at home on probing original ballads about a woman's place in the modern world."
Cathie has released 4 critically acclaimed CDs on Shanachie Records: "Cathie Ryan," "The Music of What Happens," "Somewhere Along the Road," and her latest, "The Farthest Wave." She is featured on more than forty compilations of Celtic Music.
Cathie is a captivating and deeply affecting performer. "There is nothing like a live show, being with an audience, sharing the music. That is the best part of being a singer and writing songs," she says. She has built a loyal following throughout Europe and North America by touring steadily and singing "songs of the heart." The Irish Echo observed, "Cathie Ryan certainly knows how to communicate with her audience. And what she communicates through song are the enduring values of home, family, memory, and spirit..."
In 2003 Cathie was included in the famous Irish music collection, "A Woman's Heart – A Decade On," placing her amongst Irish music's finest female vocalists and songwriters. It was the first time Americans were featured in the series and she shared the honor with Allison Krauss, Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris. In recent years, her original songs have been recorded by such distinguished Irish vocalists as Frances Black and Mary Black, among others. She was voted one of the Top 100 Irish Americans by Irish America Magazine, Chicago's Irish American News honored her as Irish Female Vocalist of the Decade, and the LA Times recently named her, "One of the leading voices in Celtic music."
Visit Cathie's web site at www.cathieryan.com.
Tickets $26 advance/$28 at the door (children under 14 with adult half price).
Tickets on sale now at the Sunspot web site.
Help Promote Sunspot's Concerts
We critically need to enlarge our audience to keep the concert series going. If the shows do not at least break even, then at the very least we will not be able to bring in the same level of national and international performers, and might have to stop the shows altogether.
You can help us promote Sunspot concerts. Print out and post the Sunspot flyer on the bulletin board at your office, school, apartment building or church, or give it to your friends. Leave a few copies at your local book or record store or post it with their other concert or community announcements (please ask permission first). You could even put up a copy on the bulletin board at your neighborhood grocery store, or anywhere else that you see public notices posted.
Click the link below to open the flyer in Adobe Reader, then save it to your PC's hard drive. You can also right click on the link and then click on the "Save Target As" choice in the pop-up menu.
The flyer is 8 1/2 by 11 inches (letter size) and prints equally well in color or black & white. To open and print the flyer, you'll need a copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader
If you distribute the flyer, please leave a comment on our website or send an email to let us know you have joined our street team, and be sure to say hello at the next show.
Thanks for you help!
Click here to download Sunspot's Flyer for Flook.
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