By STU CLAMPITT
On Friday, June 3, the world-renowned and Grammy-nominated Irish group Celtic Woman will perform at the Old National Centre in Indianapolis. Leading up to that stop on their North American tour, The Reporter had the opportunity to talk with Tara McNeill about the tour and about recording Postcards From Ireland, their first studio album in three years.
“I’ve been with Celtic Woman six years now and this is my fifth spring tour,” McNeill told The Reporter. “I’ve traveled about five months a year in the States for years now. I have been in every state apart from Hawaii, so bring that on!”
McNeill became a member in August 2016. She is the second violinist to join the No. 1 World Music Artists and she is also the first multi-instrumentalist as she brings her harp and voice to the group.
“I had in in my head for years that this would be the ultimate dream job,” McNeill said. “The opportunity came up to play the harp in the band one year for the Destiny TV special. That was my little in. The next year the violin position came up and that’s where my heart and soul is. I auditioned along with a number of other fellow violinists, and I got the job, so here we are.”
See Tara McNeill and the rest of Celtic Woman in Indy June 3. (Photo provided)
Membership in the group has changed often and this year marks its 16th anniversary.
“We just feel incredibly grateful that the group has been going on that long,” McNeill told The Reporter. “There have been 16 women in Celtic Woman in those 16 years. Especially after two long years of being away from our Celtic Woman family, we feel grateful to be celebrating 16 years. When Celtic Woman began in 2005, it was meant to be a one-night show. Then people loved the music and connected to the Irish songs and stories and here we are all these years later. We hope that Celtic Woman will be going another 16 years.”
McNeill began playing violin when she was seven or eight years old, and said she feels like she started a little older than other world-class musicians.
“I had started piano before that and I started harp before that,” McNeill said. “I grew up with a very musical family. Even if I wasn’t actively playing, I was surrounded by music from the beginning.”
Like other violinists The Reporter has spoken to this year, McNeill sees the violin as more than just an instrument.
“It’s my third arm,” McNeill said. “It’s definitely a limb that I can’t live without anymore. The instrument itself becomes a way to communicate whenever you can’t find the words. I love it. It is another language and something so personal, yet something you feel like you have to share with the world as well. I feel incredibly lucky that I have the opportunity to have music in my life growing up and now I definitely feel very grateful to be able to share Irish music and violin music with the world.”
McNeill said she adores the music of Celtic Woman and looks forward to sharing both old favorite and new pieces with fans in Indianapolis this week.
“We have a collection of music that the fans love – favorites like ‘Danny Boy,’ ‘Amazing Grace’ and ‘You Raise Me Up,’ but then we have lots of new music from the album we recorded during lockdown called Postcards From Ireland,” McNeill said. “I’m really just enjoying being with my friends again, with these incredible musicians and singers. We’ve had two long years away from our Celtic Woman family and we are just making the most of every night that we are up on stage. We are incredibly grateful to be back doing what we love.”
Postcards From Ireland was recorded during the latter stages of the pandemic when restrictions in Ireland finally allowed it.
“We had a wonderful time recording the album and TV special in Ireland and we felt so lucky to do so,” McNeill said. “When most of the world was still shut down, we got to film in 16 locations across Ireland. And the album as well we did at a number of different studios. Of course, it was very different. We all had to go individually, and all masked with a lot of safety. We had to wait a while to record until things were safe enough, but we feel we were incredibly lucky that we were able to do that during lockdown.”
Celtic Woman’s fresh fusion of traditional Irish music and contemporary songcraft celebrates Ireland’s history while reflecting the vibrant spirit of modern Ireland. Just as their music brings together both the old and the new, so too does the composition of the group on this tour contain both the beginning and the future.
“At the moment we have a brand-new member, Muirgen O’Mahony, and she is doing just incredibly,” McNeill told The Reporter. “She has been in less than a year. Muirgen is an incredible singer. She has slotted into Celtic Woman as if she had been here from the beginning. We also have Chloë Agnew who has come back for this tour. She was there at the very beginning of it all. It is lovely to have her back for this tour. It is wonderful to join Chloë on stage because I grew up watching her and watching the Celtic Woman specials and videos on YouTube and it was her that I was watching whenever I thought, ‘this is what I want to do; this is what I want to be part of.’ It is definitely a lovely full circle moment.”
Tickets to the Postcards From Ireland Indianapolis show are available at CelticWoman.com, oldnationalcentre.com, and via the Old National Centre Box Office, 502 N. New Jersey St., or by calling (317) 231-0000.
Photos courtesy Donal Moloney