Meeting House Played Host To Traditional Irish Music

By Jeff White

Newtown Meeting House played host to two of Ireland’s best musicians on July 13 for an intimate acoustic concert.

Mary Bergin, widely recognized as the world’s premier tin whistle player, and harpist Antoinette McKenna played two hour-long sets of both traditional and original Irish music to a full house last Thursday evening.

The two sisters kept the pace varied, alternating between uptempo jigs and reels to soft, sonorous ballads and laments. Although Ms Bergin and Ms McKenna played without percussion, the audience made up for that with much toe-tapping against the white wood of the meeting house’s pew boxes.

Coming in to last week’s concerts, Ms Bergin and Ms McKenna were certainly no strangers to the stage, or to touring, having both garnered considerable acclaim the world over for their respective instruments.

As a soloist, Ms Bergin has been writing and performing her own music since the 1970s, as well as fronting the 1990s Irish music band Dordan.

Ms McKenna likewise began her music career in the 1970s, at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre, and since then has toured the world as a solo harpist, and with her sister and husband, a renowned uilleann piper. Although the harp is not typically thought of as an up-tempo instrument, Ms McKenna combines the skills of a traditional harpist with quick enough fingers to accompany the fast din of her sister’s tin whistle.

Although many of their faster numbers were simply instrumentals, Ms McKenna lent her considerable voice to the ballads and laments.

For Ms McKenna and Ms Bergin, the meeting house was the first stop on a brief East Coast tour. The two sisters headed to New York City for several performances after Newtown.

The concert was organized and sponsored by Shamrock Traditional Irish Music Society, a Connecticut-based group, which organizes traditional concerts in addition to playing music of its own at outdoor festivals throughout the state.