Moya Brennan , the ‘First Lady of Celtic music’, to showcase Voices & Harps IV album at Pocklington Arts Centre

Moya Brennan: Playing Pocklington Arts Centre for the first time next Tuesday

IN the words of Bono, Moya Brennan has “one of the greatest voices the human ear has ever experienced”.

In the wake of her Celtic family band Clannad calling time on 50 years together in 2023 after a farewell tour spread over two years, the Irish singer is picking up the reins of her solo career once more at 71.

Promoting her new album, Voices & Harps IV, her 12-date English, Welsh and Scottish tour opened last night (14/3/2024), arriving  at Pocklington Arts Centre on March 19 for her only Yorkshire show.

This will be Dubliner Moya’s first appearance in The Press territory since Clannad’s November 3 2021 concert at York Barbican on their valedictory In A Lifetime travels. “That was a great night,” she recalls. “It was fantastic to include York in our farewell tour as we hung up Clannad’s touring boots for good.

“It was nice to finalise everything. I love my brothers to death but when you travel with them for 50 years, it can be trying!  But I like touring and I enjoy doing it under my name, because it’s done on a different level, much more relaxed, without loads of crew and big tour buses. Not that I didn’t enjoy everything with Clannad.”

Joining Moya in Pocklington will be daughter Aisling Jarvis, on guitar, bouzouki and vocals, and son Paul Jarvis, on keyboards, percussion and vocals, after performing on the last Clannad tour.

Alongside them will be fiddler and whistle player Cathal O’Currain and harpist Cormac De Barra, her accompanist on the latest album. “He’s one of the finest harp players in Ireland,” says Moya, who is well placed to make that judgement as a harp player (and pianist) herself.

“We’ve done our own tours together and recorded several albums under the Voices & Harps banner. We have the new one for this tour, recorded as a tribute to the great Mary O’Hara, who was huge in the Fifties and Sixties, playing the Royal Albert Hall, Sydney Opera House and Carnegie Hall in New York.

“The first well-known band to come out of Ireland were The Clancy Brothers, and she was as popular as them, performing these beautiful Irish Gaelic and English songs, with over 20 albums to her name.”

Voices & Harps IV is available on Moya and Cormac’s own label, BEO Records, ‘beo’ being the Gaelic word for ‘alive’. “There were times when I was busy with Clannad so I didn’t have time to record my own albums,” she says. “But Cormac has been playing with me for 19/20 years, so we’ve done four records now – and we have the best of fun on stage together.”

“I feel blessed that I can sing,” says Moya Brennan. Picture: Tim Jarvis

Moya has released nine solo albums in all. “There’ll be a lot of those songs within the show but because people know me as ‘Moya from Clannad’,  there’ll be a couple of well-known Clannad songs, without the big drum sound, but if you like the harp and vocal harmonies, you’ll like it.”

The intimate scale of this month’s shows brings its own pleasure. “People love hearing the different ways you sing, how you share the singing, and they enjoy you telling stories about the songs,” she says.”More and more people are attending concerts again after Covid, and it wasn’t until the lockdowns that they realised how much they’d miss them.”

Moya, native Irish Gaeilge language speaker, ambassador for Irish culture and “the First Lady of Celtic music”, has garnered such honours as the RTE Radio Folk Awards Lifetime Achievement award, presented to her in October 2019 by Irish president Michael D Higgins, who said that “her name would be forever etched in the history of Irish music”.

When she was conferred with an Honorary Doctorate from Dublin City University, her citation at the May 2022 award ceremony read: “Moya has an innate ability to find the heart of music, to reach the essence of a song or a tune, and to make the ordinary extraordinary.”

“It was an extraordinary day. Being acknowledged in that way was very humbling. My whole family was there; I’m the eldest of nine siblings, and my mother was able to go too,” she says. “That honour is something you don’t expect because it’s so removed from what you do on stage. I didn’t even go to university, but here I am, a doctor!”

In her 50 years as the voice of Clannad, the band achieved 15 million record sales worldwide and a string of awards, a BAFTA, Ivor Novello, and Grammy among them. And yet… “It took me ages to realise that I enjoyed my own voice, as I’m not really a rock’n’roll singer, which I would have liked to have been,” says Moya.

That voice, “quiet and breathy” in her own description, continues to connect through the years: a magical power that had her thoughts turning to her fellow Dubliner, the late Sinead O’Connor.

“I knew Sinead well,” she says. “She was so shy, but once she was on stage, she could feel the audience’s presence inside her. When you sing, you find you find yourself enjoying giving pleasure – a transcendent feeling, where music makes people feel alive and puts a smile on everyone’s face.

“They leave their troubles at the door, and for two hours you can bring joy to them. I feel blessed that I can sing. Singing makes you feel so well afterwards, it takes ages to come down from that high as it’s such a lovely feeling.”

Long may that feeling continue, as the honours roll on too. Next up, Moya will be attending a gala ball in April to receive the honour of Donegal Person of the Year for 2023. Irish tour dates will follow in the autumn, that voice conjuring magic once more.

Moya Brennan, Pocklington Arts Centre, March 19, 8pm. Box office: 01759 301547 or pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk.

More Things To Do in and around York and at home despite Cassandra Boris’s “six months” of masked-up misery. List No.15, courtesy of The Press

Fields And Lanes creative couple Mick and Jessa Liversidge head to the Easingwold Community Library willow tree for an open-air hour of poetry and song on Sunday

BORIS Johnson put on his serious face and hands act on Tuesday night to address the nation on the ins and outs of his Government’s latest Covid-clampdown measures: a stitch in time saves nine, Rules of Six, 10pm curfews and any number of other numbers that invariably add up to confusion.

However, Covid-secure, socially distanced theatre shows, exhibitions, cinema, comedy and concerts can continue, as well as home entertainment, of course.

Here, Charles Hutchinson tracks and traces signs of artistic life…with immediate results  

The Easingwold Community Library willow tree: Sunday’s setting for Fields And Lanes poetry and songs

Joint project of the week: Fields And Lanes Under A Willow Tree, Timeless Songs and Poems by Jessa and Mick Liversidge, outside Easingwold Community Library, Sunday, 2pm

INSPIRED by the “wonderful reaction” to the online streaming of their outdoor poetry and song performances in lockdown, creative Easingwold couple Jessa and Mick Liversidge present an hour of uplifting words and music in the open air this weekend.

The show will be Covid-safe and socially distanced; tickets are free, with a pay-as- you-feel collection afterwards, but must be acquired in advance on 07526 107448 or by emailing ecl.generalenquiries@gmail.com.

Giles Shenton…will go to any lengths to promote his one-man show Three Men In A Boat

Three is a magic number: Three Men In A Boat, Kick In The Head Productions, Milton Rooms, Malton, Sunday, 2.30pm

GILES Shenton takes the helm for 95 minutes in Kick In The Head’s one-man/Three Men show, a “rip-roaring barrel of fun” wherein he plays writer Jerome K Jerome and everyone besides in a delightfully ridiculous tale of men behaving badly while messing about on boats.

Shenton invites you to “join Jerome as he recounts the hilarious story of his boating holiday along the magnificent River Thames with his two companions, George and Harris, and Montmorency the dog”.

Justin Moorhouse will stay in his house to perform his Your Place Comedy set from the living room on Sunday. Shappi Khorsandi will surely not be needing armour to do likewise from her place

Living room laughs: Your Place Comedy: Justin Moorhouse and Shappi Khorsandi, Sunday, online at 8pm

IN the fifth of six Your Place Comedy shows live-streamed from their living rooms into yours since lockdown, Justin Moorhouse and Shappi Khorsandi form the digital double bill introduced remotely by compere Tim FitzHigham.

The virtual comedy project has been organised by Selby Town Hall manager Chris Jones in liaison with nine other independent North and East Yorkshire arts centres and theatres, with donations welcome after each free screening to be divided between the still-closed venues. You can watch on YouTube and Twitch with more details at yourplacecomedy.co.uk.

Top Of The Hill, acrylic on canvas, by Debbie Lush

Exhibition launch of the week: Debbie Lush, Featured Artist, Blue Tree Gallery, Bootham, York, and online at bluetreegallery.co.uk, Saturday to November 7

TEN new works by Devon landscape artist Debbie Lush go on show at Blue Tree Gallery from this weekend.

The former freelance illustrator, who ran a Somerset country inn for 13 years, draws inspiration for her vividly coloured coastal and rural landscapes from her walks with her dog along weather-beaten coastal paths, across muddy footpaths, through gateways and over fields and farmland.

“I love the act of brushing blobs of paints of varying thickness in bright colours on a surface, one over another, to assemble landscapes,” she says.

Uninvited Guests invite guests to Love Letters Straight From Your Heart at the SJT and on Zoom. Picture: Jonathan Bewley

Antidote to isolation: Uninvited Guests’ Love Letters Straight From Your Heart, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, and on Zoom on October 1, 2.30pm and 7.30pm

THEATRE company Uninvited Guests will construct a “completely digital, wholly personal and wonderfully live experience” at the SJT and on Zoom in “very different” afternoon and evening shows.

Performed by Jessica Hoffman and Richard Dufty, Love Letters Straight From Your Heart invites the audience’s words, song dedications and stories – sent in earlier – to the stage where they are given a new shape, look you straight in the eye and offer to dance with everyone in the room.

Only 45 tickets will be sold for each show to maintain intimacy, but any number of audience members can sit at screens to watch what unfolds in 60 to 75 minutes.

Giant story: Riding Lights Theatre Company go online for Christmas

Latest Christmas show to be confirmed: Riding Lights Theatre Company in The Selfish Giant, storytelling theatre on film online, for primary schools

YORK company Riding Lights say, “We can’t come to you, but we can still bring exciting entertainment into every classroom with our online version of The Selfish Giant.

“The Giant is angry. He’s been away for a long time and returns to find children playing in his beautiful garden!

Every day after school, they come and run about, laughing and playing games under the blossom on his peach trees, listening to the delightful songs of the birds. So, he puts up a big wall and an even bigger Keep Out notice to put a stop to all that. Then winter seizes the garden in its icy fingers.”

Riding Lights ask primary school to book the online show via: https://ridinglights.org/the-selfish-giant-no/costs-and-booking/.

No traditional queue at York Barbican when Daniel O’Donnell tickets go on sale tomorrow. Booking is online only

Looking ahead to Irish gigs at the double: Clannad, York Barbican, March 10 2021 and Daniel O’Donnell, York Barbican, October 21 2021

CLANNAD are booked in to play York Barbican on March 10 on their Farewell Tour, but let’s see where Boris Johnson’s new Rule of Six Months’ More Misery leaves that show. Fingers crossed, we can wave goodbye to social distancing by then to enable bidding adieu to the ethereal purveyors of traditional Irish music, contemporary folk, new age and rock, led by Moya Brennan.

Meanwhile, tickets go on sale at 9am tomorrow (Friday) at yorkbarbican.co.uk for Kincasslagh crooner Daniel O’Donnell’s return to the Barbican on October 21.

And what about…?

A visit to Duncan Lomax’s new photographic exhibition space, Holgate Gallery, opening officially from tomorrow in Holgate Road, York, to show work by the 2016 York Mystery Plays official photographer and political satirist Cold War Steve.

The York Printmakers Virtual Print Fair, running until October 4, with daily updates at https://www.facebook.com/YorkPrintmakers/