Celtic Women: Postcards from Ireland

Sunday, November 28 at 6 p.m.

As the world looks forward to getting together again, Celtic Woman shares a message of love, hope and expectation with their fans around the world in the form of musical postcards, written with the songs from Celtic Woman’s latest album. Filmed in 14 different locations around the island, Celtic Woman brings viewers on a musical journey through some of the most stunning land and seascapes across Ireland.

Using the forests, lakes and beaches as their stage and the mountains and valleys as their backdrop, the soft light from dramatic skyscapes becomes their only source of illumination. Blending their performances into these sometimes wild, natural places, their costumes in lush palettes become the perfect visual match for these postcard settings.

“Celtic Woman: Postcards from Ireland” introduces viewers to Sean, an American now living in Ireland as he writes a postcard to his family back home. “You were right about Ireland,” he writes. “There’s music everywhere here. It’s in the trees, it’s in the rivers, in the wind and rain. It rolls in on Atlantic waves.”

And so the musical and visual journey begins as we follow the Grammy-nominated ensemble with their musicians and dancers to many popular locations. The postcards appear throughout the program as signposts to keep the viewer informed of the location, and performers share associations they have with the location or the song they are about to perform.

The journey begins in Ireland’s Ancient East with a return visit to Johnstown Castle in County Wexford, where the group delivers a spine-tingling performance of the ever-popular “Amazing Grace.”  At the monastic site at Glendalough in County Wicklow, Megan performs “Bonny Portmore.” On the spectacular seaside cliffs in County Antrim, the group performs a brand new rendition of “The Dawning of the Day.”

They then move on to a reconstructed early 20th-century Irish village in County Tyrone to perform “Beeswing,” a beautiful folk song. Then on to “The Wild Atlantic Way,” stopping off at Lissadell House in County Sligo, the holiday home of renowned Irish poet W.B. Yeats to hear Muirgen sing “Down By the Salley Gardens.” At Kylemore Abbey in Connemara, County Galway, Chloe delivers a stunning rendition of “Angel.”  In County Kerry, Tara performs the magnificent Bach violin solo “Where Sheep May Safely Graze” in the medieval monastic ruins of Muckross Abbey. In the Chapel at Trinity College in Dublin, Susan offers a powerful rendition of “May It Be.”

Select this program when you support Arizona PBS and get the CD and DVD with a set of postcards – or tickets to see Celtic Woman in person next May!