"If you want to be universal, sing the song of your own village."
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky
"We (Irish) have made our art of simple things."
-- William Butler Yeats
Every Christmas for the past 11 years, Tomáseen Foley's "A Celtic Christmas" has been performed across the country, bringing to packed concert halls his authentic remembrance of a way of life that is now gone. The native Irishman, who now lives in the Rogue Valley, has faithfully recreated a typical night before Christmas on a small farm in the remote parish of Teampall an Ghleanntáin in west Ireland in the 1940s. Foley was born there and grew up spending many Christmases like the one he portrays on stage.
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Each year Foley manages to round up a cast of stellar traditional Celtic arts performers. New to the show is vocalist/musician Éilís Kennedy. Born and raised in Gaelic-speaking West Kerry, Kennedy grew up in a family steeped in the Gaelic traditions of music, singing, dancing and poetry. Her first album, "Time To Sail," featuring songs in English and Gaelic, won Female Vocal Album of the Year in 2002. The Chicago News says, "It's a long time since we've been so stunned by a voice so perfect."
Back with the show for the third successive year is Kathleen Keane. Her fiddle and tin whistle music was featured in the films "The Titanic," "Backdraft," "The Road to Perdition" and "The Cinderella Man." She studied Irish step dancing under Michael Flatley ("Riverdance" and "Lord of the Dance") and went on to become a champion Irish dancer.
Returning to the show for the second year is world champion Irish step dancer Philip Brady. Brady began dancing at the age of 10 in Dublin and has been Overseas World Champion five times, North American Champion three times and has won the Canadian Irish Dance Championship for 10 consecutive years. He has toured extensively with "Lord of the Dance."
The show's music director and guitarist William Coulter won a Grammy in 2005 for a track he contributed to called "Pink Guitar," a solo guitar compilation of Henry Mancini tunes. He has been performing and recording traditional Celtic and American folk music for 25 years and is a guitar lecturer at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Also new to this year's show is uilleann piper Brian Bigley. From the age of 8, Bigley studied the traditional uilleann pipes with Achill Island (County Mayo) piper Michael Kilbane, with whom he also studied flute, whistle and low whistle. He has toured extensively throughout North America, Europe and the UK. He is also a world champion Irish step dancer and competed in the World Championships in Glasgow in 2002 and in Killarney in 2003.
In creating "A Celtic Christmas," Foley wanted to "take Christmas at its word." To do that meant attempting to create on stage, however fitfully, however faintly, some semblance of what Christmas meant to him as a child. "Our eyes, and those of our parents or grandparents, were innocent of the phosphorescent flicker of television screens, movie screens, computer screens," Foley recalled. "We scarcely knew they existed. It was easy then to take Christmas at its word."
Foley grew up in a time and in a place that attached tremendous importance to the cycle of the seasons and to celebrating them — often quite theatrically. Chief among the holy days and nights was the feast of Christmas. "We were told that, by decorating the house with strands of ivy, there was a great chance that at midnight on Christmas Eve angels would visit, bless the house and its occupants, and dance jigs and reels on every ivy leaf," Foley said. "And, also on that night, Mary and Joseph would pass through the parish — pass by our very door — on their way to Bethlehem. So that, for us, Teampall an Ghleanntáin became the shining axle around which the wheel of Christmas revolved."
Each year Foley's "A Celtic Christmas" plays from Thanksgiving until Christmas. His show "A Saint Patrick Celebration" tours from late February through mid-March. Two other shows, "Irish Times," and his one-man "Lines from My Grandmother's Forehead," tour throughout the remainder of the year.
The Oregon Cabaret Theater has developed a musical from his story called "Parcel From America." Foley has released two CDs: "Parcel From America," and a live recording, "The Priest and the Acrobat." "A Celtic Christmas" is sponsored by Jefferson Public Radio.
Tickets are $8 to $23 for the matinee and $14 to $29 for the evening performance.
Call 779-3000 or see www.craterian.org.
if you go What: "A Celtic Christmas" When: 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 22 Where: Craterian Ginger Rogers Theater, 23 S. Central Ave., Medford Tickets: $8 to $23 for the matinee and $14 to $29 for the evening performance Call: 779-3000 or see www.craterian.org
