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Topics - Tracie

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1
Celtic Woman / Celtic Woman Photobook
« on: November 17, 2023, 09:48:21 AM »
The Celtic Woman website shop now has Celtic Woman Photobook - 20 Years of Memories available to pre-order. That sounds amazing and I just pre-ordered mine!

https://www.celticcollections.com/en-us/collections/celtic-woman/products/celtic-woman-photobook-20-years-of-memories-pre-order

2
Mairead Carlin / Mairéad returns to Celtic Woman!
« on: July 06, 2023, 09:46:40 PM »
I know there's already a thread going about all the changes in the group and the way in which those changes get announced, but I wanted to put a thread on Mairéad's board to discuss her return.

To state the obvious, I am absolutely thrilled that Mairéad has rejoined the group! You all know that she's my favorite singer of all time since the first night I saw her perform in June 2016 on the Destiny tour. After that night, I saw her perform multiple times in each Celtic Woman tour through Celebration. When Mairéad sings I feel it in my heart, and it's the most amazing special feeling. I love it so much.

I was really sad when Mairéad left the group, but over the past 2 1/2 years I have loved supporting her as a solo artist with all my heart. It's been so amazing to contribute to her making gorgeous music, to go see 5 of the 6 performances that she's done, and to get to become good friends with her. While I did still enjoy going to Celtic Woman concerts when she wasn't in the group, it really wasn't the same without her. When concerts returned after covid and I was attending CW shows, I never felt completely satisfied with the return of live music until I went and saw Mairéad. I sure have loved her time as a solo artist. And there's still really exciting things to look forward to from her solo career - she'll be releasing her EP and the video of her solo concert!

I am delighted that Mairéad has now returned to Celtic Woman! Gregg and I were amongst the lucky ones who got tickets for the DVD filming, so I'll get to see her first return performance. And then I'll go see many many shows on the Symphony and Spring tours. I'm super excited for this new lineup of Mairéad, Tara, Muirgen and Emma and can't wait to see them perform together! This is going to be absolutely fabulous!

3
Mairead Carlin / Mairéad's solo concert write up
« on: May 28, 2023, 02:21:49 AM »
Mairéad's solo concert was Friday night in Derry, Northern Ireland. Mairéad's voice is literally my favorite thing on earth and has been for years, so of course the moment I found out about her solo concert I was coming for it. Gregg came with me for this one and saw her perform in person for the first time in over 3 years (I never could've gone that long!) We've had a wonderful vacation in Derry. We arrived one week before the concert, spent lots of time walking around this beautiful city and also took a couple of day trips out. We went to the lovely oceanside town of Portrush and went to the beautiful beach Benone Strand, which has special significance since Mairéad wrote a song of the same name. Just before we went there, we listened to Mairéad on a radio show and they debuted Benone Strand - my goodness it's outstanding! I loved it when she sang it on stage it last year as well!

Mairéad's concert was at St. Augustine's, which is a beautiful little church on the Derry walls. They call it the 'wee church on the walls'. It was a wonderful place for a concert. It's small, intimate, the acoustics were amazing, and they filled it with candles. So beautiful! We arrived quite early with it being general admission and while waiting at the door, were able to hear soundcheck. Sounded incredible just standing outside! Then we got our favorite spot, front row center (though I did offer to switch seats with Mairéad's mum who was behind me, but she didn't want the front).

Matthew Campbell from the group Shamrock Tenors opened for Mairéad. He was really good! He has an incredible voice and did a really fun set that the audience all sang along with. I would say though that 7 songs was a bit too long for an opening act. I would've preferred his set to be maybe 5 songs so Mairéad's set could be longer. I did enjoy his performance though and he got the audience warmed up to sing along with Mairéad later!

Then it was time for the real magic to begin! Mairéad sounded absolutely amazing as always! That voice - my goodness it just goes straight to my heart. There's nothing else in the world for me like hearing her sing in person and feeling pure joy in my heart. I love it so much! Her concert was breathtaking, stunning, gorgeous, outstanding, amazing, beautiful, incredible, magical - you name a good word and it describes her concert! It always amazes me too that I go into these performances fully expecting it to be all of those things and then she still manages to blow my mind! I love it with all my heart. Her band was Ronan Scolard, Matthew Campbell, and Cormac Crummey. They had a lot of instruments between the three of them and were so great. It was just perfect! Mairéad had the concert filmed to be released online later on. I'm thrilled to get to see it again and for you all to see it as well - you're going to love it!

I can't remember the exact order of the setlist other than the first couple and last couple since I was just absorbing all the magic, so apologies that this list isn't in order whatsoever, but here are the songs Mairéad sang:

Daisy
The Water Is Wide
Oft In The Stilly Night
Sitting In The Sky (her original song)
River Run
You Take My Breath Away
Wild Mountain Thyme
Caledonia
Orphan Girl
Sleepsong
Like An Angel Passing Through My Room
Benone Strand (her original song)
Sweet Thames Flow Softly
The Lark In The Clear Air
Let The River Run
Scarlet Ribbons

Loved this concert sooooo much! Really truly phenomenal! Every song was fabulous and she put together a setlist that flowed so nicely. I'd say I could pick out two favorites of the night - Sleepsong made my jaw drop and Benone Strand made me cry.

Mairéad was also so generous with the amount of personal time she spent with us. We had such a great time talking with her a lot over the past few days. Love being friends with her! At the end of the night after all going for drinks after the concert, Mairéad's mum asked me if she'll see me again. Yes, yes she will, 100% . Mairéad can keep telling me dates and locations where she'll be performing and I will keep going! Love this so much!

4
Tara posted a big announcement today - she and Alex will perform a concert and record an album as a duo!

Tara's instagram announcement is here: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cry_Z7esFu4/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

The concert will be on Long Island in Stony Brook, NY at the Staller Center for the Arts. The concert posting and tickets are here: https://stallercenter.showare.com/eventperformances.asp?evt=340

The concert description sounds absolutely fabulous! "Prepare to be taken on a musical journey through Irish tunes, classical gems, their own compositions, and covers of beloved Disney favorites." Love it! Gregg and I will be going to the concert and are super excited! And a duo album coming too - so awesome!

5
Mairead Carlin / Opry le Daniel filming
« on: April 16, 2023, 12:16:54 AM »
The first week of April I took a vacation to the United Kingdom to see Mairéad perform in Opry le Daniel and I had such an amazing time!  I spent four nights in Derry and three nights in London.  Derry is a beautiful city, very fun to walk around and explore, and I have really enjoyed my time spent there each time I'm there.  It's inevitable that I'll keep traveling back to Derry since that's where Mairéad is from - I already have my next trip there booked for her solo concert next month!  Since my flight for this trip was going through London and I hadn't been there in 18 years, I also spent two days in London and had a lot of fun sight-seeing there.

Attending the Opry le Daniel filming was so much fun and Mairéad performed so beautifully!  Opry le Daniel is TV concert series hosted by Irish singer Daniel O'Donnell and showcasing Irish artists.  They filmed six episodes in three nights at the Millennium Forum, with the episode Mairéad is in filmed on night two.  These episodes will be aired in Ireland/UK in November & December and will be available to watch online in the US.  If you want to watch it spoiler-free, then stop reading now!

The Millennium Forum was set up with all the seats on the floor removed, so the floor was filled with tables for the families of the performers.  It was really cool looking and so different from the Celtic Woman concert I saw there last summer where it was a standard theatre set up.  The stage was also a really cool set up with four tiers - the band was on the top three tiers and the singers were on the bottom tier.  I was sitting in the balcony, front row center.  At the very beginning of the night they filmed all the crowd shots.  It'll be so fun to see if I end up on TV! 

I saw two episodes filmed that night and each episode featured three artists plus the host.  Each artist sang three songs and the host sang songs at the beginning and in between each performer.  Then at the end they sang group songs with everybody who was in the episode.  The episode Mairéad is in was Celtic Country and was meant to be filmed first, but they switched the order and it was second.  That was fabulous because the artists in the first episode sang two group songs, but in the second episode they sang four group songs since it was the end of the night and they just kept going!  More time with Mairéad on stage! 

Mairéad was the second to last performer of the night.  She wore a gorgeous sparkly green dress.  Her first song was her original called Sitting in the Sky.  So so beautiful and she puts so much emotion into it.  She introduced the song explaining that she had written it for her Dad after he passed away.  I really love that song, she's an amazing writer!  If you've been following along on her stage it concerts, she sang that song on stage it last April.  Her second song was a really lovely rendition of The Water is Wide.  Her third song was an absolutely stunning Danny Boy.  She hit this insanely awesome high note at the end of the song (you all know the one!) and the crowd erupted into thunderous applause!  It was so amazing to be part of!  Daniel came out and joked that he would need to be wearing about 10 g-strings to be able to hit a note like that - LOL!  And then....there had been a technical difficulty with filming and they needed Mairéad to sing Danny Boy again!  Heck yes, I love hearing her sing as much as possible!  Same thunderous applause at the end of the song - I may be biased, but it sure sounded to me like the loudest and most enthusiastic applause of the entire night!  What a fabulous performance of all four songs that she sang!

At the end of the night, they had Daniel plus all the artists from that episode on stage together singing group songs.  That was Mairéad, Tommy Fleming, and The Tumbling Paddies.  The group song that they had planned in advance was Leaving of Liverpool.  Really fun song and I knew that one from The Gothard Sisters.  Then they went into unplanned songs - it seems like this is something Daniel does because the first episode filmed also had a planned song and an unplanned one.  The first unplanned one of Mairéad's group was The Wild Rover.  It was really fun to watch because they just had anybody on stage jumping in and singing whatever they knew of the song, they were dancing around, plus the audience was singing along as well.  And then they just kept going!  They sang Hard Times Come Again No More (at least I think that's what it was called) and then they still kept going and sang Galway Girl.  They were all having so much fun on stage and the crowd was having a blast! I'm curious to see how many of these group songs end up in the episode when it airs.  We'll find out later this year!

The filming ran just about four hours.  It was such a fabulous time, I'm so glad I was there for it!  I also got to spend time with Mairéad and her Mum having really lovely conversation.  Overall, a really incredible vacation!  I feel so fortunate that I'm able to do things like this.  Everything has just lined up perfectly in my life that allows me to do this - I have the vacation time, I have the money, I'm able to travel.  I absolutely love seeing Mairéad perform, love that I've gotten to know her so well, love spending time talking with her.  All of it is just wonderful and I'm going to keep going back for more!  Five weeks from now Gregg and I will be in Derry together to attend Mairéad's solo concert - can't wait!

 

6
Mairead Carlin / Performance Dates
« on: February 11, 2023, 08:08:42 PM »
I have edited the subject to Performance Dates so we can keep adding to this thread as Mairéad announces more performances. I'll keep editing this list to keep it current.

Upcoming:

• March 14, 2024 - Lincoln, Nebraska - special guest with Trinity
https://www.liedcenter.org/event/trinity-classically-irish


Past:

• April 29, 30 and May 1, 2022 - Derry, Northern Ireland - Derry Jazz Festival

 • August 5, 2022 - Belfast, Northern Ireland - special guest with The Shamrock Tenors

 •April 4, 2023 - Derry, Northern Ireland - Opry le Daniel Celtic Country

• May 26, 2023 - Derry, Northern Ireland - solo concert

7
Mairead Carlin / St. Patrick's Day performance
« on: December 04, 2022, 10:18:39 PM »
Trinity had an Instagram live today and Mairéad joined them to announce that they will be performing on St. Patrick's Day together! The show is in Lincoln, Nebraska. I've got my front row ticket and am so excited for the show!

Tickets can be purchased here: https://tickets.liedcenter.org/2734?queueittoken=e_safetynet21~q_00b173a2-fc46-4ef6-b618-fd771f448256~ts_1670213779~ce_true~rt_safetynet~h_cb382ea675184406f3d03d6721a4ea587b34a8f6f8320aff409390753f72c2dd

The Instagram live can be rewatched here: https://www.instagram.com/tv/Clw1vs-guI5/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

Mairéad's Facebook announcement: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid0NJt9ijncpMXsYk86PMNXt6vtBTjHyYLJDDKcbVkZxGG7w4JqPXjj47y3Yci5zbqZl&id=100044496097057&mibextid=Nif5oz

8
Celtic Woman / New member auditions
« on: July 07, 2022, 06:51:23 PM »
The Celtic Woman website has a post up that they are auditioning for a new principal vocalist:

https://www.celticwoman.com/news/audition-for-principal-vocalist-in-celtic-woman/

9
Mairead Carlin / My Experience at the Derry Jazz Festival
« on: June 23, 2022, 10:57:47 PM »
Hi Everybody!  Well I've been meaning to write about this for quite awhile, it's time to actually do it!  It was 8 weeks ago already that I saw Mairead & Ronan perform in the Derry Jazz Festival in Derry, Northern Ireland.  Side note - does anybody know how to type the fada over the e on a computer?  I can do it on my phone, but am on the computer now and have no clue on here.  Anyway, I'm sure most of you reading this know that Mairead is my all-time favorite singer and has been since the first time I saw her perform.  I've been loving her online stage it concerts, but nothing compares to being there in person, so literally within minutes of finding out that she'd be performing in this festival, I was looking up flights and starting to plan my trip.  I wasn't going to miss my first opportunity in more than two years to see her in person!  I traveled on my own since Gregg used all of his vacation time on our spring Celtic Woman trips and on our upcoming trip to Ireland, and he's holding onto a couple of days for the Christmas tour.  I thankfully have a massive bank of available vacation time because my company allows unlimited carry-over, so I accrued tons of hours in 2020 and 2021 using so little.  That banked vacation time is going to be invaluable coming up I'm sure because I'll keep time set aside specifically for Mairead's performances.

So I traveled to Ireland and Northern Ireland by myself for these performances.  I spent the first few days just outside of Dublin and enjoyed Portmarnock Beach (lovely recommendation from Mairead!) and the Howth Cliff Walk.  I also went into Dublin one night for dinner and live music.  I took the bus to Derry the day before the first performance.  In 2018, Gregg and I were in Derry for just a few hours (the day before the Ancient Land filming!) as a stop on our bus tour around the country.  On this trip I spent a lot more time walking around the city, which is really beautiful.  I did a lot of what Mairead recommended to me and loved it.  It's a great city to walk around and explore and was even more fun with the jazz festival going on.  There was live music all over the city for that whole weekend, in hotels, in pubs, out on the street, everywhere.  I saw quite a few performances and loved it and would absolutely go again anytime Mairead is in it!

Mairead & Ronan performed for three consecutive nights, two hours each night, at the City Hotel.  There was a stage set up in the lobby and lots of comfortable couches, chairs and tables.  It was a small, intimate setting and I loved it!  I sat super close to the stage and had a great view each night.  There was a lot of activity of people walking in and out and talking, but all the background noise actually didn't bother me.  I was able to focus in on the music and have it drown out the background noise.  It was a bit bothersome when people would walk right in front of me and block my view, but that would only last for a few seconds at a time, so it was fine.  Mairead & Ronan performed sooooo beautifully each night!  I can't even fully express how much I loved the performances.  So amazing!  I love the folk music that they were performing and of course I was hearing my favorite voice on earth in person so loved that too!  A lot of what they performed we've heard before, either from Celtic Woman or from the stage it concerts.  I'll list out the songs at the end of this post.  Ronan went back and forth between guitar and piano for all the songs.  Most were sung by Mairead, with some duets and some Ronan solos added in.  Really really fabulous, loved it so much!

The outstanding performances were only a part of what made the whole weekend so special.  Mairead and I spent tons of time talking about lots of different things ranging from random chit chat to a wonderful heart to heart.  I also spent time talking to Ronan and to their family members, who I was introduced to the first night and then sat with the second and third nights.  They're all such wonderful people and I had such great time with them.  I also met a fellow Mairead fan and enjoyed talking with him as well.  He and I were the two people there from North America specifically to see Mairead.  There are more personal things that happened throughout the weekend and I think I'm going to keep those to myself, but suffice it to say that Mairead gave me so much love and attention and it was absolutely amazing!  The whole weekend was exactly what I'd been hoping for and I went home and told Gregg it was the best Celtic Woman experience I'd had yet.  Things like being in the audience for the Ancient Land filming at Johnstown Castle and going to Red Rocks were absolutely epic, but this weekend with Mairead had so much personal touch to it, on top of how much I love her voice and performances, that it topped all the other epic experiences.

It was a long two years from March 2020 to April 2022 waiting to see Mairead in person again.  I was so sad when she left Celtic Woman (let's be real here, I was crying when she announced she had left the group!), but I'm finding it to be so incredibly fulfilling and rewarding to support her as a solo artist.  I can't speak highly enough about this experience in Derry.  As Mairead performs more, I will be in attendance as often as I possibly can!  Listening to her sing, watching her perform, and getting to spend time with her all completely fill my heart with pure joy.  Love love love love it!  And I'm also so excited to see Ronan perform in Trinity when they get out on tour soon!  There's going to be a lot of fantastic performances to come and I would highly recommend to anybody to go see Mairead and Ronan perform anytime you can!

Here's the list of songs performed and who sang them.  The songs stayed mostly the same from night to night, with a few changes.  I wouldn't be able to tell you what order they were sung in and the order did change from night to night, so I just have the list alphabetical.  They put together an excellent setlist.  I'd say my favorite song from the weekend was Feels Like Home.  The lyrics and the way in which Mairead performed it (the second night in particular) really struck me on a very personal level. <3

Caledonia - Mairead
Carrickfergus - Mairead
Cold Outside - Mairead
Dancing In The Dark - Ronan
Dreams - Mairead & Ronan duet
Falling Slowly - Mairead & Ronan duet
Feels Like Home - Mairead
Galway Girl - Mairead
Have I Told You Lately - Ronan
I Can't Make You Love Me - Ronan
I See Fire - Mairead
Kiss Me - Mairead & Ronan duet
Lovefool - Mairead
Man In The Mirror - Ronan
New York State of Mind - Ronan
Ride On - Mairead
Show Me Heaven - Mairead
Songbird - Mairead
The Nearness of You - Mairead
The Water Is Wide - Mairead
The Whole of the Moon - Mairead
True Colours - Mairead
When You Say Nothing At All - Mairead
You Take My Breath Away - Mairead
Your Song - Ronan
 

10
Toured 2023. Canceled / 2023 spring tour
« on: June 21, 2022, 07:09:32 PM »
The first dates of the 2023 spring tour are now up on the calendar and tickets go on sale this week! Thanks to Daniel for sharing this info with me!

11
Mairead Carlin / Derry Jazz Festival - 3 concerts
« on: March 18, 2022, 03:38:06 PM »
Mairead announced today on her social media accounts that she & Ronan will be performing 3 nights of concerts, 2 hours each, in her hometown Derry Jazz Festival! The festival is April 28th to May 2nd, with Mairead & Ronan's concerts on April 29th, 30th and May 1st. They are performing at City Hotel Derry.

I will be attending and have already started booking travel. I'm so incredibly excited to see Mairead in person for the first time in 2 years! The amount of joy that I feel when watching her perform and when talking to her is indescribable. Cannot wait for this!!

12
Mairead Carlin / Christmas Concert
« on: December 13, 2021, 08:05:32 PM »
Mairead announced today that she's having a Christmas concert on StageIt, next week Tuesday December 21st.

Mairead's online concerts have been absolutely breathtaking. These tickets are selling very fast, get yours now!

https://www.stageit.com/mair_ad_carlin/happy_holidays/103350

13
Postcards from Ireland / Postcards From Ireland special
« on: November 27, 2021, 07:39:11 PM »
I watched the Postcards From Ireland special this morning in the PBS app. It's available for Passport members, which you can get by donating to PBS (I activated mine earlier this week when donating for meet and greet tickets).

The special is so stunning! I loved it! The scenery all around Ireland is so beautiful and those visuals really enhance the beauty in the music.

My dinner is just about ready so I don't have much time to write now, but I'll try to come on again later and write up some more. Really loved this special!

14
Eabha McMahon / Eabha's first solo concert
« on: November 05, 2021, 08:24:56 AM »
Eabha announced on her social media that she'll be having her first solo concert on December 3rd! It'll be at the Irish Institute of Music and Song in Dublin with a small audience of 60. It will also be filmed and then broadcast online the following weekend. This will be amazing, can't wait to see it!

https://www.irishinstituteofmusic.com/iims-events/ava-3rd-december

15
Postcards from Ireland / Postcards From Ireland as part of my CW journey
« on: October 30, 2021, 07:16:23 PM »
I have listened to Postcards From Ireland about 5 times now (with the first being the moment it released at 11pm Thursday night and staying up way too late on a work night!), so time to put some thoughts here on the forum.  I was trying to think how to write this up and I'm not the greatest at writing up each individual song.  So instead I'm going to talk about how Postcards fits into mine & Gregg's personal Celtic Woman journey.  If this is too long-winded, jump on down to where I label Postcards  :) 

The first time I heard Celtic Woman was in 2007 when visiting Gregg's parents and they had A New Journey saved in their dvr.  Gregg and I liked it a lot and purchased both A New Journey and the original show on cd and dvd (after getting the dvd from Netflix multiple times and never wanting to return it!).  We listened to the music and watched the dvds quite frequently and were enjoying them.  Over the years, we added more of the cds and dvds to our collection and continued to enjoy the music, but we hadn't gone to a live show and weren't really paying any attention to them on social media or to any of the changes in members.  We were just kind of like, they get new members a lot but they always release beautiful music, so terrific we'll keep buying it.

Then came Destiny and the Gavin Murphy era of Celtic Woman.  Right around the time that Destiny was going to release, we heard that there was going to be a Celtic Woman concert very close to where we live.  We thought, let's buy this new album that they're going on tour for and then decide if we want to go see them live for the first time.  I listened to Destiny and was blown away.  I loved it so much and remember thinking, this is Celtic Woman at a whole new level, this blows everything else they've done out of the water!  I told Gregg how much I loved it and said we must get tickets for that concert!  Destiny was our first live show, we loved it immensely, and we left the show saying that we needed to see them again.  Thus began our epic awesome period of nearly 4 years (June 2016 to March 2020) in which I attended 27 concerts (Gregg 26, he still needs to catch my count!), in multiple states, 4 different countries, including being in the audience at Johnstown Castle and being at Red Rocks, both for Ancient Land.

So, Destiny having blown us away and kicking up our fandom to a high level, set the bar for future Celtic Woman releases very high.  Voices of Angels and Homecoming both met the level of Destiny for us as we continued to love the music, love going to the shows and started to meet the performers.  Getting to meet the ladies made going to the shows even more enjoyable than they already were.  The ladies also meant a great deal to me in particular because it was the music on Destiny and Voices of Angels that was helping me get through a particularly challenging and stressful time of my life (work-related).  On one of those stressful days, which was after the Destiny tour and getting close to the release of Voices of Angels, I put in my earbuds while working and turned on Destiny and made the amazing discovery that listening to this music made my stress just melt away.  It was honestly a life changer and I fell even more deeply in love with this Gavin Murphy era of music and also formed an emotional attachment to the performers, my very favorite ladies Mairead C, Tara, Eabha, Susan, and then Megan when she joined the group. 

Many of you know that Gregg and I had booked our trip to Ireland for our ten year wedding anniversary nearly two years in advance and got the most epic surprise of a lifetime when about 6 weeks or so before the trip we found out Ancient Land would be filmed at a castle and all we had to do was change our flight home by two days and we could be in the audience.  It still amazes me to this day the way that timing worked out!  With the already very high bar set by Destiny, Voices of Angels, and Homecoming, we attended the filming of Ancient Land and were once again so incredibly blown away, that the bar moved up even higher than it already was.  We had a blast attending multiple Ancient Land shows and getting to talk to the ladies more and more, which also allowed them to get to know us.  A little over a year after Ancient Land came Magic of Christmas, so fantastically amazing that it met the bar set by Ancient Land.  We continued to have the time of our lives traveling to the phenomenal shows all the way up to a week before covid shut-downs started and the Celebration tour abruptly stopped.

Postcards From Ireland

So now after two years since the last album release and a year and a half since seeing these amazing ladies live, Postcards From Ireland comes out.  We've got the bar set at an extremely high level by everything from the Gavin Murphy era, with Ancient Land and Magic of Christmas at the top.  Does Postcards From Ireland get up to that level?  Honestly, I wish it did, but it comes in below the albums from the Gavin Murphy era, which of course means that it's not within my top 5 favorite Celtic Woman albums.  Now don't get me wrong and think that I dislike it.  I don't dislike this new album.  I think there are quite a few things to enjoy on it and I find nearly every song to be beautiful and good music.  It immediately struck me as feeling like I was back in Ireland, sitting in a pub, listening to live music.  It's definitely a new sound from the new music director and I found it to be quite enjoyable.  I'd say my favorite songs on the album are The Lakes of Pontchartrain (considering this one most has the sound that could fit into Ancient Land or Destiny, no surprise there) and Mise Eire (my goodness, so incredibly gorgeous).  I was bobbing my head dancing along with The Calm of the Day/The Banshee and found that to be a very fun song.  Beeswing is also a lot of fun.  I'm loving Muirgen's gorgeous voice and also loving how much Megan shines.  I haven't yet gotten very into Wild Mountain Thyme or Angel, but maybe those will come around with more listens.  I do think the video for Wild Mountain Thyme is gorgeous.  Gregg and I loved Connemara on our Ireland trip

So I would say that Postcards From Ireland is a good album with quite a few beautiful songs, but it's just not up to the level that Celtic Woman was at from 2016-2020.  There are a few things that stand out in this album as to why it doesn't reach all the way up to the five prior albums.  One is what I've been seeing other fans saying as well, which is that there is a complete lack of harmony on this album.  Harmony is one of the things that Celtic Woman is most well known for.  The harmonies all throughout Gavin Murphy's era blew me away and constantly made my jaw drop, even when I knew they were coming.  It just doesn't sound right to put only a few seconds of harmony into each group number as they did on Postcards.  Another thing is that throughout the group numbers, they're missing the violin segments that used to be a major part of the songs.  Tara is an absolutely amazing performer, she really should be more prominently featured on the group songs.  It's kind of difficult to even notice her on this album other than her solos, both of which I think are fantastic.  I hope they do some re-arranging before the tour starts to add those violin segments back in.  And my third thing is that I'm finding the orchestrations and choir to be too over-powering on this album.

Overall, Postcards From Ireland is a good album, but it could have been better.  It's not my favorite or my least favorite.  It's sitting somewhere in the middle of the pack.  And of course even middle of the pack Celtic Woman is incredible music.  It's maybe unfair to try to compare it to the likes of Ancient Land, Destiny, etc, but it's hard not to compare when I am so completely in love with that particular time period of Celtic Woman music.  Now there's a new music director and a very new sound, but I still love these ladies and I truly cannot wait to get back out traveling and attending their phenomenal concerts.
   

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