MUSIC

For the past six years, WGBH radio host Brian O’Donovan has introduced sold-out audiences of A St. Patrick’s Day Celtic Sojourn to a wide range of new and familiar Celtic singers, musicians, and dancers. The Seventh Annual St. Patrick’s Day Celtic Sojourn with Brian O’Donovan returns to the Zeiterion Theater in New Bedford on Saturday, March 17. Steeped in Celtic tradition, this year’s performers include Dublin-born Susan McKeown, Michael Brunnock, The Bee Eaters, string virtuoso Jeremy Kittel, Jefferson Hamer and Eamon O’Leary of The Murphy Beds, fiddle phenom Tina Leach, and Mark Roberts (founder of the band Touchstone). Dance entertainment will be provided by Kieran Jordan, longtime Dancer Director for O’Donovan’s Christmas Celtic Sojourn. “St. Patrick’s Day – indeed the whole month of March - is a time for many in the Irish Diaspora to celebrate roots” says O’Donovan, producer and host for the concert. “For many others, with no ethnic connection whatsoever to the country, it is a time to explore a music and dance culture that is at once sophisticated and accessible, while tracing its origins back hundreds, even thousands of years. Everyone is welcome to our party on St. Patrick’s Day!” O’Donovan is the host of the weekly radio show A Celtic Sojourn airing Saturday afternoons from 3pm-6pm on WGBH in Boston. The show regularly explores music from the Celtic countries and England. The St. Patrick’s Day Celtic Sojourn series was first launched in 2005; the concert follows the format established for the burgeoning Christmas Celtic Sojourn series of concerts which, during this past December, played to almost 10,000 people in Boston, New Bedford, Worcester, Rockport, and Portsmouth, NH. The St. Patrick’s Day Celtic Sojourn concerts reflect the easy, relaxed and diverse offerings of O’Donovan’s weekly program.