The Ithaca Catholic Worker is delighted to present a benefit concert w/ Irish singer Karan Casey. Thursday, March 9, 2023, at 7:00PM at Community School of Music & Arts. Karan has not been back in several years and we are really excited that she has made room in her busy touring schedule to come back to Ithaca.
Tickets are $25-35 (sliding scale) (Email [email protected] for family rates)
Tickets available at Mama Said Hand Pies in Press Bay Alley
Karan will be touring with Sheila Fallson on fiddle and guitarist Matt Heaton. The evocative trio have toured together for several years and this show premieres new material from Karan’s new album“Nine Apples of Gold”(to be released 22nd February 2023) as well as favorites from Karan’s back repertoire. The songs draw inspiration from a wide range of sources from the personal to the historical and political, touching on themes of family, loss, love, the empowerment of women, and Irish revolutionary struggle
Karan Casey has been blazing a trail for over 25 years. A lover of ballads, love songs and searing versions of social justice songs, a great storyteller, fond of a good yarn, she has toured the world making deep connections with her audience connecting via Ireland’s past but crucially repositioning women and songs in a universal and a modern setting. Karan has been striking out lately to explore new areas of performance on the piano and with spoken word and theatre.
She has released eleven albums as well as contributing to numerous other artists’ projects – appearing on more than 50 albums so far - and has toured extensively throughout North America, Europe and Japan, performing with her own band as well as collaborating with such diverse musicians as Maura O’Connell, James Taylor, Bela Fleck, Boston Pops Orchestra, Kate Ellis, Niall Vallely, Pauline Scanlon, The Chieftains, The Dubliners, Peggy Seeger, Karen Matheson, Mick Flannery, Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, Tim O’Brien and Solas.
In 2018 Karan helped found FairPlé which is an organization aimed at achieving fairness and gender balance for female performers in Irish traditional and folk musics.
Karan's song “Down in the Glen” from her album Hieroglyphs That Tell the Tale was nominated for Best Original Folk Song at the RTE Folk Awards 2019 and she completed a PhD in music in 2019. Karan has recently performed her new show with Director Sophie Motley called I Walked into My Head which was premiered at the Kilkenny Arts Festival 2021.
Karan is currently working on a stage show about women in the Irish revolutionary period to be produced at the Everyman Theatre in Cork in 2023.
About the Ithaca Catholic Worker (excerpt from our December newsletter)
Through your generosity, you are part of welcoming and befriending marginalized people, advancing racial and economic justice, and speaking up for peace. Over the years, our Catholic Worker community has distributed thousands of dollars to people in need. These gifts have no strings attached, no applications to fill out, it’s just neighbors showing solidarity to neighbors. For example, we recently provided back rent for a mother and her children who were facing eviction. Thank you for making this possible.
Your donation will also support the work of hospitality at the Peter De Mott Catholic Worker House. In the past year, we are privileged to have received guests at the house, including an asylum seeker from Latin America, a domestic abuse survivor from Iraq, and a young couple (and their dog!) facing homelessness.
The Catholic Worker community also orchestrates a food-sharing hub in the backyard, providing hundreds of pounds of fresh produce and prepared food to the neighborhood and beyond. Your generosity helps to maintain this solidarity with people in need.
And your gift will help to reinforce the work of peace-making and resistance. We continue the Catholic Worker weekly peace vigil and other public witnesses against nuclear weapons, drone warfare, and environmental destruction. We work intentionally to be loving and effective allies to the first people of
this area, the Gayogo̱ hónǫʼ (Cayuga). In all of these efforts, we strive to build up what our dear friend Peter DeMott referred to as the "kin-dom of God."
Thank you for considering a contribution to strengthen this mission of peace and justice to which Peter so tirelessly dedicated his life, and to build a society, as Dorothy Day said, “where it is easier for people to be good.”
Peace be with you!