Come experience St. Patrick’s Day in November with Arise & Go and members of Clann Na Cara Irish Dance!
Arise & Go is an exciting Celtic trio that finds its roots in the dance music of Ireland, Scotland and Atlantic Canada. Blending pipes, whistles, fiddle and guitar, the varied backgrounds of the group’s members combine to produce a sound that is both grounded in tradition and uniquely fresh and driving.
Based in Ithaca, NY, the trio is noted for its “precision and energy.” Whether in an intimate house concert or on a festival stage, the band blends traditional melodies and instruments into fresh new arrangements that are sure to excite any audience.
Winners of North America’s longest running live folk radio broadcast Best of Bound for Glory Award 2018,Arise & Go has been featured in Irish Music Magazine, Roots Music Canada, and the Irish American News and praised for its “musical complexity and colour” that is also “authentically mindful of tradition.”
In 2017, the group released its debut, self-titled EP which introduced listeners to its variety and style. 2019 sees the release of a full-length album, Meeting Place, on which members Ellie Goud (fiddle), Michael Roddy (uilleann pipes, border pipes, smallpipes, whistles) and Tim Ball (guitar, foot percussion) showcase the unique elements of different Celtic traditions that each brings to the group’s sound.
From Quispamsis, New Brunswick, Gould grew up steeped in the Atlantic Canadian musical tradition. She began playing fiddle at the age of 9 through the traditional music program at her elementary school, and was introduced to Acadian music by her neighbor Jean. Her sound is uniquely New Brunswick – a cutting blend of Scottish and Acadian rhythms and sounds.
Roddy has spent more than 20 years creating his unique combination of Scottish and Irish piping styles. After years of competitive success with the Mohawk Valley Frasers Pipe Band, Roddy turned to the world of bellows piping, making he natural leap to smallpipes and border pipes, and the bigger leap to the Irish uilleann pipes.
Ball has been a staple of the contra dance and Irish music scenes in western New York for the better part of a decade. An exceptionally versatile musician, he also performs as a fiddler throughout the Northeast with contra dance bands Tempest and Center Street, and with Ithaca’s Irish session band Traonach.
Joining the trio will be members of Clann Na Cara Irish Dance. Clann Na Cara, Gaelic for “A Family of Friends,” is an Irish dancing school founded in 2006 by Mary Kate Conrad, Katie Cunningham, Jennifer Mammoliti and Erin Mansour, all of whom danced together for years and competed at the World level. Under their instruction, the school has earned a reputation for providing quality lessons in Irish dancing through local, national and international recognition. The school is home to regional champions and both national and world-level competitors. Clann Na Cara dancers have performed on the Opera House stage before and are always a hit with Fredonia audiences!
