Joanie Madden

CHERISH THE LADIES ~ A CELTIC CHRISTMAS For more than three and a half decades, Cherish the Ladies have shared timeless Irish traditions with audiences worldwide are one of the most engaging and successful ensembles in the history of Celtic music. Under the leadership of the 2021 National Heritage Award Winner, 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. In their very successful Celtic Christmas program, the Ladies have put together a fun, holiday program for the entire family that showcases their signature sound on classic carols such as “O Come All Ye Faithful”, “The First Noel” and “Silent Night” in arrangements that highlight the group’s unique Celtic instrumentation, beautiful harmonies, and spectacular step dancing. Cherish the Ladies has released four critically acclaimed holiday albums, “On Christmas Night”, “A Star in the East”, “Christmas in Ireland” and “Christmas Live from County Clare”. “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 seventeen outstanding albums, and produced an Emmy award winning public television special that aired across the United States and Ireland. 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 of 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 as they blaze forward into another decade of music making. This concert features: Joanie Madden (flute, whistles, vocals), Mary Coogan (guitar, mandolin), Mirella Murray (accordion), Nollaig Casey (fiddle), Cathie Ryan (vocals bodhrán), Bruce Foley (vocals, guitar, uillean pipes), Gabriel Donohue (piano, guitar, vocals), Noel Spillane (stepdancer), Caitlin Ward (Stepdancer), John Madden (drums) and Michael Holland (stepdancer).