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Concert Preview-DeMarco, Goff & McGiver Will Perform At Meeting House This Month

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Concert Preview—

DeMarco, Goff & McGiver

Will Perform At Meeting House This Month

By Andrew Carey

Tony DeMarco might not have the sort of name typically associated with a stellar-class Irish fiddler, but he has the tunes and the skills, which is all that really matters in the world of Irish music, which gladly takes in both fans and players from Japan to Germany and beyond.Recently retired from 25 years as a commodities trader, Mr DeMarco— fiddler with several of the noteworthy Irish bands of the 1970s and 80s and a longtime mainstay of New York City’s Irish session scene and the Catskills Irish Arts Week — is back in the music business full time. His new album, The Sligo Indians, was released on the prestigious Smithsonian Folkways label in April 2008.

Along with Ivan Goff, a Dublin-born, New York-resident master of the uillean pipes (the bellows-blown Irish bagpipe) who has toured extensively as a member of the Eileen Ivers Band and with the stage productions Riverdance and Lord of the Dance, and the guitarist Ryan McGiver, Mr DeMarco will be coming to Newtown Meeting House on Saturday, January 31, at 7:30 pm, for the next concert presented by The Shamrock Traditional Irish Music Society.

Earlier this month, Mr DeMarco and friends performed for the prestigious Association of Performing Arts Presenters conference, along with such international and national stars as Altan, Battlefield Band, and the Turtle Island String Quartet. In May they will tour Ireland and Europe, beginning with a show in Gorteen, County Sligo, the birthplace of the influential fiddler Michael Coleman and a center of the Sligo style of Irish fiddling which Mr DeMarco has made his own. It is an honor for Newtown Meeting House to appear in  such a list of venues.  More importantly, it will be a treat for anyone who attends.

Born in 1955 in East Flatbush to an Italian-American father and an Irish-American mother, Tony DeMarco owes the start of his career in music, ironically, to a high school arts requirement.

“I needed a music credit in high school,” he said, “so I signed up for the orchestra and they handed me a violin. It was really a fluke.”

Soon Mr. DeMarco turned from classical music towards rock, country, and bluegrass fiddling. He began playing American old-timey music under the influence of New York’s own Wretched Refuse String Band, and then became immersed in Irish music, studying with the late legendary Paddy Reynolds and playing with such greats as Andy McGann, Martin Wynne, and the banjo player Joe Burke.

In the 1970s and early 80s, Mr DeMarco performed with bands such as The Flying Cloud and Celtic Thunder, best known for the song “When New York Was Irish,” crossing the United States and playing at most of the major folk and Irish festivals. The title tune of his Smithsonian Folkways Album, Mr DeMarco’s own composition “The Sligo Indians,” is named for an incident that happened around this time, on a visit to Ireland.

The year was 1978, and Mr DeMarco and the guitarist Caesar Pacifici were in a pub in Gorteen, County Sligo. It being the hippie era, they wore fringed leather jackets and long hair.

“We were doing a session, just playing tunes,” recalled Mr DeMarco, when a local musician stopped in. “And he ran out to get his friends, and told them ‘There’s two Indians in the pub, playing Irish music like you’ve never heard it before.’”

After taking up his day job at the New York Board of Trade, Mr DeMarco cut back his musical activities, for the most part, to playing at New York’s Irish sessions, but this has done nothing to diminish his skills or tarnish his reputation amongst Irish musicians. This will be his 20th year of leading the session on Thursday nights at Paddy Reilly’s Music Bar on 2nd Avenue in Manhattan, and he also runs the Sunday night session at the 11th Street Bar in the Village.

He is also working on producing both instructional DVDs and online instruction in Sligo-style fiddle with Soundpost Productions, and may be contacted for private lessons in New York City through his website (TonyDemarcoMusic.net).

Tickets for the January 31 concert in Newtown are $20 for adults and $5 ages 16 and under. The concerts presented by STIMS at the meeting house have traditionally been sold out, so advance reservations are strongly suggested.

Call 203-256-8453 for reservations and additional information.

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