A Celtic Sojourn: Brian and Lindsay O'Donovan prepare for a raucous, musical time

Saint Patrick's Day is special at GBH because of a nearly two decade tradition: A Celtic Sojourn Live, which kicks off Wednesday evening in Rockport with shows running through Sunday, including a virtual one on Friday. Brian O'Donovan, host of the Celtic Sojourn, and his wife Lindsay O'Donovan joined GBH’s Morning Edition hosts Paris Alston and Jeremy Siegel to talk about the performances. This transcript has been lightly edited.

Lindsay O'Donovan: Good morning, Paris and Jeremy. It's great to be here.

Brian O'Donovan: Absolutely. Likewise. It's really fun to be here, and I'm looking forward so much to getting this kicked off. It's the month of Saint Patrick's Day, we call it the high holidays of Irishness.

Paris Alston: Tell us more about that, Brian, because you've been doing a Celtic Sojourn for nearly two decades. You've been doing it here on GBH since 1985, you were telling me earlier. But talk a little bit more about the significance of this holiday here in this region, and why it's so special for the two of you.

Brian O'Donovan: Well, it's a cultural holiday for us. We put together the best in traditional singing, dancing and musicians. And we decided to do this years ago and make it, really, a similar event to Christmas Celtic. It is very different, of course, and as I said, it's a joyous celebration. It has fiddling like we hear, and we have some of the best singers and some of the best dancers around. And there seems to be a lot of interest in our dancers, and indeed in the music that we bring each and every year. We're so glad we started this back in 2004, I believe it was. And we are going to some of the nicest theaters in New England, including at The Shalin Liu, one of our favorite theaters to play at up in Rockport, just north of Gloucester.

Lindsay O'Donovan: And we'll be having our first Saint Patrick's Day show this year at a beautiful new venue up in Groton, the Groton Performing Arts Center.

Brian O'Donovan: It's really stunning, actually. If you haven't been there, you should check it out. It's really an amazing venue that has been developed newly in Groton.

Lindsay O'Donovan: And then, of course, back at a beautiful Sanders Theater [in Cambridge] for our two shows on Saturday and our final show up on the North Shore in the beautiful renovated Cabot Theater in Beverly.

Brian O'Donovan: And it's hard not to mention that we were so impacted, all events were so impacted, by the pandemic, that there's a certain joy and a specific joy now, and increased joy to bringing music and stage and to gathering with like-minded people that regularly say live music is where it's at. And we've discovered in putting on a Christmas Celtic Sojurn this year that it really is true. People are desperate to get out of their houses. They want to be in the company of other people and really, really enjoying the music that we put together.

Jeremy Siegel: So a Celtic sojourn is a huge production. I mean, you have musicians from all around the world there. You have dancers. I don't know what the Celtic term would be for like, rocking the house down. I was there at the Celtic Sojourn for Saint Patrick's Day last year and it really is raucous at times. You both just came from rehearsals here at GBH before talking to Paris and me. What is putting the whole production together like? What are rehearsals for this like?

Brian O'Donovan: Well, they're really wonderful. The spirit is up there, the energy is up there. As musicians who haven't met each other for a long time — in many cases, a number of years — are getting together like a session in Irish traditional music and really discovering the joy of each other's music again, backing each other up.

Lindsay O'Donovan: It's really great. Particularly with our group, there are so many varied instrumentalists that it does actually evolve into just everyone playing together and collaborating and singing and somebody saying, Hey, why don't you take that verse and I'll take this verse? And everyone kind of pulling together and interfacing with the audience and each other. So it's a very, very collaborative event, and very evocative of the way traditional Irish music is in the world. It's something that people kind of do together. They come together and they play and they sing and they tell stories and do a dance, and that type of thing.

Brian O'Donovan: The joy of live music really spreading through the audience in good old Irish style — that's what Irish traditional music is like, and that's what we're celebrating here on Saint Patrick's Month, we call it.

Alston: I know one facet of a Christmas Celtic Sojourn is that it's a family affair for you. It's not just you, but your daughters are involved, as well as the other artists you work with. But it sounds like you're creating that family atmosphere this time around, even though it's not going to be all four of you.

Lindsay O'Donovan: Yes, definitely. We really feel like we've become like family members to a lot of the musicians that we work with and kind of joke about it. But it's been great. We've gotten to know our dance director, Ashley Smith Wallace, over the last couple of years. She has a little baby the same age as our grandson. It's just been fun working with all of these musicians and putting this together.

Brian O'Donovan: Well, we have created a range from older musicians who have established their careers and established themselves as some of the best in the world — Kevin Burke is like that, he is a fiddler and he has been around the world many, many times displaying his incredible talent on the fiddle, he writes tunes as well — all the ways to the younger musicians who we celebrate here, younger musicians in the Boston area. We have the Katie McNally Trio; Julia Kennedy, who is an award winning singer from Ireland, is with us. She has flown to be especially with us. And she is going to add a very, very, very special flavor.

Lindsay O'Donovan: She also plays flute.

Brian O'Donovan: Yes, a lot of these instrumentalists also sing, for example. They are multi-instrumentalists and often have many, many different talents. And that is something that impresses the audience. We also love to get the audiences to sing along. People love a good old sing-along.

Alston: We should have practiced so we could have sang along with you this morning. Next time we'll put that in.

Brian O'Donovan: There's still time, Paris.

Lindsay O'Donovan: We'll send you a song sheet, Paris.

Alston: Please do. We'll make sure that we practice together.