The Chieftains, Nashville Symphony: at Schermerhorn Symphony Center (Nashville, TN) Sat. February 23, 2013

The Chieftains, Nashville Symphony

Classical

Nashville Scene Critic's Pick …

The ultimate St. Patrick’s Day aperitif gets served early as Emerald Isle trad-pop giants the Chieftains pull into the Schermerhorn for a three-day stint with the Nashville Symphony. They’re still led by the aptly twinkle-eyed pipes player Paddy Moloney after 50 years and almost as many albums, and recent set lists have ricocheted from the Irish folk ballad “Carrickfergus” to “Cotton-Eye Joe” to Dylan’s “When the Ship Comes In,” which they cut on last year’s crossover-conscious Voice of Ages with The Decemberists. That album’s roster also includes the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Bon Iver and the Civil Wars, but backed by the symphony and led by resident conductor Albert-George Schram, The Chieftains are likely to plumb the deep Celtic catalog for its melodic wealth and folkloric charm. Special guests include the Tennessee Scots Pipe Band, the Nashville Irish Step Dancers and the Nashville School of the Arts Madrigal Singers.

—TED DROZDOWSKI

Schermerhorn Symphony Center

Sat. 2/23/13
Show: 8:00 PM
$44.00 - $129.00
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The Chieftains

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Dublin

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Six time Grammy winners, The Chieftains are now recognized for bringing traditional Irish music to the world's attention. They have uncovered the wealth of traditional Irish music that has accumulated over the centuries, making the music their own with a style that is as exhilarating as it is definitive.

The Chieftains were formed in 1962 by Paddy Moloney, from the ranks of the top folk musicians in Ireland. Paddy brought together musicians such as fiddler Martin Fay, flautist Michael Tubridy, tin whistle virtuoso Seán Potts, and bodhrán player David Fallon. They recorded a supposedly one-off instrumental album but five years later were reunited with some additions - fiddler Seán Keane, and Peader Mercier replacing Fallon. Harpist Derek Bell came on board in 1973. It wasn't until 1975 that The Chieftains began playing together full time and they marked the event with a historic performance at Royal Albert Hall in London. The following few years saw the departure of Mercier, and the addition of bodhrán player and vocalist Kevin Conneff. Another lineup change in '78/79 would see the departure of Potts and Tubridy and the addition of a new flautist, Matt Molloy.

Although their early following was purely a folk audience, the range and variation of their music very quickly captured a much broader public, making them the best known Irish band in the world today.

Never afraid to shock purists and push boundaries, in their nearly 50 years together The Chieftains have amassed a dizzyingly varied resume. They have been involved in such historic events as a tour of China (being the first Western group to perform on the Great Wall), Roger Waters' "The Wall" performance in Berlin in 1990, became the first group to give a concert in the Capitol Building in Washington, DC (at the invitation of former Speaker, Thomas "Tip" O' Neill), and in October of 2001, Paddy performed at a Ground Zero memorial service in New York for the victims of September 11th. They have performed with many symphony and folk orchestras worldwide, and have broken many musical boundaries by collaborating and performing with some of the biggest names in rock, pop and traditional music in Ireland and around the world.

On top of their six Grammy awards, they have been honoured in their own country by being officially named Ireland’s Musical Ambassadors, performed during the Pope's visit to Ireland in 1979 in front of a 135,000,000 strong audience, and were the subject of a Late Late Show tribute in 1987, their 25th anniversary. In 2010, Paddy’s whistle and Matt’s flute travelled to outer space with a NASA astronaut, and this past year in 2011, they performed for HRH Queen Elizabeth II during her historical visit to Ireland.

In 2010, The Chieftains released a collaboration with guitarist/producer Ry Cooder entitled “San Patricio” on the Concord Music Group label. The album was named after The San Patricio Battalion, a group of Irish immigrant conscripts who deserted the US Army in 1846 to fight on the Mexican side of the Mexican-American War. This release proved a remarkable collaboration, with many of the most distinguished Mexican and Mexican-American musicians including Lila Downs, Los Tigres Del Norte, Los Cenzontles, and Carlos Nunez, as well as narration by Liam Neeson and a piece featuring Linda Ronstadt. A commercial and critical success, the album sold over 60,000 copies in North America and charted number 37 in the Billboard 200, the highest charting of all 58 of The Chieftains albums. Extraordinarily, “San Patricio” was the subject of a St. Patrick’s Day 2010 New York Times Editorial, which celebrated the unlikely juxtaposition between the Irish and the Mexicans: “The rest is joy, thoroughly Mexican yet utterly Irish, carried aloft by tin whistles, skin drums, pipes, harps, guitars, and stomping feet. It’s a mix you’ve never heard, but eerily familiar…We are all people who have lost our land in one sad way and found another. Whether we lament and celebrate in a pub or cantina, whether our tricolour flag has a cactus on it or not, we are closer to one another than we remember.”

The trappings of fame have not altered The Chieftains' love of, and loyalty to, their roots - they are as comfortable playing spontaneous Irish sessions as they are headlining a concert at Carnegie Hall. After all these years of making some of the most beautiful music in the world, The Chieftains' music remains as fresh and relevant as when they first began.

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The Chieftains - The Long Black Veil (from Entertainment Weekly)

This shouldn't work ? an album featuring the likes of Sting, Mick Jagger, and SineadO'Connor as guests of the reigning kings of traditional Irish music. However, the old and new are balanced in intriguing ways. Mark Knopfler's heartfelt "The Lily of the West" is tasteful, while Tom Jones' rococo "Tennessee Waltz" provides the schlock. Luckily, the Chieftains' authoritative presence ensures that the rockers check their egos at the door, and the songs emerge as the real stars on The Long Black Ve......

The Chieftains - The Essential Chieftains (from Global Rhythm)

As part of its recent hits compilation series, RCA has released this two-disc set devoted to the Chieftains. "Essential" is a big claim when collecting a band that has released over 40 albums in 40 years, and has multiple hits collections already available. With 35 tracks spanning their entire career, they do an admirable job of collecting many key songs, but the wide scope that makes this collection unique is also its weakness. Disc one covers their early traditional work, while disc two showca......

The Chieftains - The Long Black Veil (from Rolling Stone)

The Chieftains, inadvertent prophets of the world-music boom for more than 30 years, have traveled the globe, emphasizing the compatibility of traditional Irish music with local sounds from Nashville to Beijing. Fittingly, this sonic circumnavigation ends up with the world beating a path to the Chieftains on The Long Black Veil, an album of traditional music performed with the help of some of the biggest names in the business.Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones, Sting, Sinéad O'Connor, Mark Knop......

The Chieftains - The Chieftains 5 (from Rolling Stone)

Once in a while there is an album that really holds together, like this one. The cover even gives a good idea of the music. Like the Irish instruments on the cover, like the austere landscape on the inside spread, the music here is a little barbaric, a little worn and used and bracingly clean and attractive.There are no Irish ballads; in fact, the only lyrics are "dye-de-dye-de-dye" on "Kerry Slides." It's by way of a demonstration of the riches of traditional Irish instrumental music, even incl......

The Chieftains - San Patricio (from bbc)

In equal measure a curio, a lament, a history lesson and a hoedown, San Patricio is one of those albums that happily transcends its parts. If you only buy one Irish-Mexican album this year, in fact, The Chieftains and Ry Cooder should do you nicely. The Californian guitarist and the Irish folk heavyweights are seasoned collaborators as well as inveterate globetrotters. It was while they were recording together in Havana in the 1990s that the Irishmen introduced Cooder to the musicians who would ......

The Chieftains - An Irish Evening: Live At The Grand Opera House, Belfast (from Rolling Stone)

The Chieftains have lived out a paradox over their nearly thirty-year history. Though the group was originally formed to keep alive a centuries-old musical heritage, its members continually find new ways to prove how much Irish music has in common with other traditions. This assimilating power is very much in evidence on An Irish Evening, which documents a live show from Belfast with cameo vocal appearances by Nanci Griffith and Roger Daltrey.The record captures the irresistible spirit of a Chie......

The Chieftains - San Patricio (from The Guardian)

Mixing Celtic pipes and whistles with Mexican accordions and guitars proves a fusion too far, even for the Chieftains' intrepid Paddy Moloney. San Patricio is his tribute to the American brigade, mostly Irish, who swapped sides in the 1846-48 US-Mexico war, and who were later executed as deserters. It's a sad piece of history, but the cantina folk here, by the likes of Lila Downs, has little bearing on it. Moloney's own pieces are sentimental, leaving only Ry Cooder's splendid "The Sands of Mexi......

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