Cherish the Ladies “Christmas in Ireland”

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Due to Covid-19 and the Ladies inability to tour their annual Christmas show in America, Cherish the Ladies find themselves in Ireland for Christmas for the first time and bandleader Joanie Madden assembled the group in beautiful Spanish Point in County Clare along the Atlantic coastline to record a special socially distanced Christmas program featuring a 12-piece ensemble of incredibly talented musicians, singers and dancers.

Cherish the Ladies

One of the most engaging and successful ensembles in the history of Irish music, Cherish the Ladies has shared timeless Irish traditions with audiences worldwide for thirty-five years. In this special Celtic Christmas program, the Ladies put their signature mark on classic carols such as “Angels we Have Heard on High,” “Joy to the World,” “Hark the Herald Angel Sing” and “Silent Night,” in arrangements that highlight the group’s unique Celtic instrumentation, beautiful harmonies and spectacular step dancing.

The show streaming to you in High Definition features the outstanding musicianship of Joanie Madden (flute, whistle, harmony vocals), Mary Coogan (guitar), Mirella Murray (accordion), Kathleen Boyle (piano, harmony vocals), Nollaig Casey (fiddle), Waterboys and Lunása’s Trevor Hutchingson (Upright Bass), The Stunning and Riverdance’s Jimmy Higgins (percussion) along with the gorgeous vocals of Kate Purcell, Don Stiffe, Bruce Foley and Seámus O’Flatharta (harp, vocals, step dancing). Five-time World Champion step dancer David Geaney rounds out the troupe.

Hailed by the New York Times as “passionate, tender and rambunctious,” Cherish the Ladies has released three critically acclaimed holiday albums, On Christmas Night, A Star in the East and Christmas in Ireland.

“It is simply impossible to imagine an audience that wouldn’t enjoy what they do”, says the Boston Globe speaking of Cherish the Ladies, the long-running, Grammy-nominated, Irish American supergroup that was formed in New York City in 1985 to celebrate the rise of extraordinary women in what had been a male-dominated Irish music scene. They have since toured the world, played the White House and the Olympics and recorded sixteen outstanding albums including An Irish Homecoming, a live recording of their Emmy-winning public television special that aired across the United States and Ireland.

Under the leadership of the dynamic and irrepressible flute and whistle champion Joanie Madden, these ladies present a spectacular blend of virtuoso instrumental talents, beautiful vocals, captivating arrangements and stunning step dancing. Their continued success as one of the top Celtic groups in the world is due to the ensemble’s ability to take the best of Irish traditional music and dance and offer an immensely entertaining package.

The New York Times calls their music “passionate, tender and rambunctious,” and the Washington Post praises their “astonishing array of virtuosity.” The band has won recognition as the BBC’s Best Musical Group of the Year and was named the Top North American Celtic Group by both the Irish Music Awards and NPR’s Thistle and Shamrock—not to mention having a street named after them on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx: Joanie Madden and Cherish the Ladies. Over the course of thirty years, the Ladies have performed at thousands of concerts and collaborated with such notable musicians as the Boston Pops, the Clancy Brothers, the Chieftains, Vince Gill, Nanci Griffith, Pete Seeger, Don Henley, Arlo Guthrie and Maura O’Connell. They have also been the featured soloists in over three hundred performances with various symphony orchestras.

They are in constant demand all over the world as their reputation and the admiration from both fans and critics alike continue to grow. Their name may come from a traditional Irish jig, but after three and a half decades, they have proven that the jig is not up and they are blazing forward into another decade of music making.