Lightly falling snowflakes to heavy snow, winter winds to sparkling clear still night skies: New England winter weather can be varied and challenging -- and beautiful. All the more reason that it is a time and place for gathering in, for celebrating with family and friends, for stories, for good cheer, for dance, for music.

Christmas Celtic Sojourn

The Christmas Celtic Sojourn stage shows began as an extension of just such gatherings. Brian O’Donovan, who hosts the Celtic music themed radio program Celtic Sojourn on Boston’s station WGBH, had often thought of his radio program and the way he presented the range of Celtic music and its connections as an extension of an informal music session, a bit like  “gathering people in my house, with the broadcast signal extending the walls of my living room,” he says. He noticed that this was especially true at the winter holiday season, and began to think of bringing the radio show full circle, so to speak, and making a live show where performers and listeners could gather in person.

Christmas Celtic Sojourn is heading in to its twelfth season this December, with a run of dates in Boston and appearances as well in Rockport, New Bedford, and Worcester. Audience members may come from even farther away: people travel from across New England and the midwest to take in the holiday themed music, dance, and stories, and visitors have been known to come from as far away as Alaska, Florida, and Texas, making Christmas Celtic Sojourn the center of a New England winter visit.

What draws them in? O’Donovan, long resident in the Boston area, is originally from Clonakilty in County Cork, in Ireland. He knows how to blend and mix elements of holiday music and celebration from the Celtic lands and their far flung emigrant families, and how to choose theaters to present the shows which enhance this sense of intimacy. “I enjoy seeing people going with the arc of our program, because it kind of mirrors my own growing up and even my own traditions after I moved to this country, gathering friends and family at this time of year and just having a good old fashioned hooley,” he says.

Returning to join in the celebration this year will be Seamus Egan, Winifred Horan, Johnny Connolly, Eamon McElholm, and Chico Huff, who make up the band Solas, a top flight group considered long considered to be a major force in the music of Irish America. The Foghorn Stringband will be joining the Sojourn for the first time, paying special attention to the strands which weave together Celtic music and the music of Appalachia. Pauline Scanlon and Eilis Kennedy, singers from west Kerry in Ireland, each have solo careers, and their work together as  the duo Lumiere is bringing them even wider recognition and praise. Their haunting harmonies are sure to add to the seasonal atmosphere. The Christmas Celtic Horn Trio will make a return appearance, and founding member of the legendary Bothy Band, fiddle player Kevin Burke, will share his music too.

Dance is music, and music is dance: that’s true at any time of year, of course, and the connection lends itself especially to the winter holidays and Celtic music  -- and to the vibrant and joy filled work of Cara Butler and and Nathan Pilatzke of The Step Crew, who bring Irish and Ottawa Valley step dancing style into the mix. The young dancers of the Harney Academy of irish Dance in Walpole will return with their crowd pleasing dances and holiday costumes, and no doubt Brian O’Donovan will have a few holiday stories to tell as well.

Performances of A Christmas Celtic Sojourn with Brian O’Donovan are produced by WGBH, greater Boston’s leading public broadcaster. Shows this year will run from 12 through 21 December. Ticketing and schedule information may be found at http://www.wgbh.org/celtic

Boston Celtic Music Festival

The Boston Celtic Music festival, which takes place this year from 9 through 11 January, began from a similar sense of connections across Celtic communities. Laura Cortese and Shannon Heaton were walking through Davis Square in Somerville one day, and as they passed The Burren, long a site for Irish music in the Boston area, Heaton recalls musing to her friend “You know, I’m an Irish flute player and you’re a Scottish fiddle player, and yet we never play at the same sessions or do anything together musically, though our music is so similar.” That passing comment kicked off a flood of ideas between the two friends about how to get musicians from different Celtic musical communities together, beginning with the idea of having a big a big party, changing into the idea of a concert (“I said, that’ll never happen, because we’re all so busy!” Heaton says), then into the idea of a festival and now, heading into its twelfth year, BCMFest has become a highly anticipated winter event in New England Celtic communities and beyond.

It is a compact festival -- this year all events take place around Harvard Square in Cambridge -- and a family-friendly one. Events will kick off on Friday evening with the Roots & Branches Concert at Club Passim featuring three acts who show the diversity of acts in of the Boston Celtic music scene: the trio of Laurel Martin, Mark Roberts and Kieran Jordan, Flynn Cohen & The Deadstring Ensemble, and fiddler Jenna Moynihan. After that concert, and likely by means of a parade, events will move around the corner on Harvard Square to the nearby venue of The Atrium, where bands representing Cape Breton, Irish, and Scottish strands of Celtic tradition will be on hand to invite all comers to dance at the Boston Urban Ceilidh. Dances will be called and instructed in an atmosphere which invites all to take part. Closing the ceilidh, festival founder Cortese will lead the Boston Urban Ceilidh Band in Scottish tunes.

On Saturday, Dayfest will see morning events featuring music for parents and children, and as the day continues, workshops, presentations, and participatory events, such as instruction in Scottish style step dancing and Irish and Scottish music styles. BCMFest is often a time for special collaborations, and several of those will be happening as part of Dayfest events. After the Morning, which will feature newly composed and traditional songs for each month of the year for voice and traditional string quartet and be presented by Shannon Heaton with Laura Cortese & The Dance Cards, Songs of Staying and Straying, which will examine tales of love – both true and false, Hold Me Closer, Tiny Instrument, with full-size musicians playing half-size instruments, The No Bow Zone, focusing on Celtic music without the fiddles but with guitars, mandolins, banjos, bouzouki, and maybe even ukuleles, and the interestingly titled Ain’t No Whistle High Enough are among the events on the schedule for this year.

BCMFest Nightcap, which will take place at the sanctuary stage of historic First Parish Church, finds the four women of Long Time Courting -- Shannon Heaton, Liz Simmons, Val Thompson, and Katie McNally -- presenting and hosting a lively and dynamic program focusing on Women in Trad. The women of LTC will function as house band, too, as they collaborate with guest musicians, dancers, and storytellers to share stories of women through the ages with songs and tales of love and heartbreak, heroines and villains, daughters and mothers, supernatural beings and poets. It is bound to be an evening to remember.

This year, BCMFest extends into Sunday, with afternoon music workshops and master classes of the BCMFest Academy on offer. The schedule for
this was not yet set at this writing, but details as they emerge, as well as ticketing and a full list of confirmed performers for the festival, may be found at the Boston Celtic Music festival's website http://www.clubpassim.org/BCMFest .

BCM Fest Urban Ceilidh, Cape Breton portion

Kerry Dexter is the Music Editor at Wandering Educators. You may reach Kerry at music at wanderingeducators dot com

Find more of Kerry's work in Journey to Scotland, National Geographic Traveler, Ireland and the Americas, Perceptive Travel, and other places online and in print, as well as at her site Music Road.

Christmas Celtic Sojourn photos used with permission, courtesy and copyright Vic Dvorak

Boston Celtic Music Festival photos used with permission, courtesy and copyright BCMFest/Sean Smith