On St. Patrick’s Day, an Irish performance featuring champion step–dancer Samantha Harvey, 2013’s Traditional Singer of the Year Séamus Begley, and Irish band Téada will come to Annenberg.
Téada plays traditional Irish music, and has been praised by The Irish Times for “keeping the traditional flag flying at full mast.” The name Téada is pronounced tay–da and means “strings.” The group formed in 2001 through a performance on the Irish television series Flosc and went on to headline music festivals throughout the world, including the Penang World Music Festival in Malaysia, Harare International Festival of the Arts in Zimbabwe, and Rainforest World Music Festival in Borneo. They toured Japan and Taiwan for seven weeks in 2014, performing for 40,000 people, and have toured the United States since 2001. This will be their first performance at Annenberg.
Téada has released five albums; the most recent is 2013’s In Spite of the Storm. The band's projects include a performance piece on the poems of W.B. Yeats, a poet from Sligo, Ireland, where Téada is based, a documentary film on traditional musicians of Sligo, and a collaboration with African–American string band The Ebony Hillbillies. Of Téada’s music, bandleader and fiddler Oisin Mac Diarmada has said “we try to capture some of the rawness and individuality of the solo tradition, within the dynamic of a full band.”
The lineup for the St. Patrick’s Day performance at Annenberg includes Begley, who will perform songs and play the accordion, flutist Damien Stenson, uilleann piper (Irish pipes) Sean Gavin, guitarist Sean McElwain, and bodhrán (Irish drum) player Tristan Rosentock. Step–dancer Samantha Harvey will both dance and play the piano. Penn’s Tír na nÓg Irish Dance will be performing before the show, and Annenberg’s lobby bar will feature a special selection of Irish beer before the show and during intermission.
The performance will take place at 8 p.m. on St. Patrick’s Day (Saturday, March 17), with Penn’s Tír na nÓg performing in the lobby at 7:15. Tickets are available at annenbergcenter.org.
