When Dana Fitzgerald Maher got up from her piano and began plucking a Celtic harp, it was the easiest instrumental transition she would make, and with it, a new Irish sound was born. It all seemed so logical to her. “My degree is in classical piano, my initial training was purely classical,” she commented. “I got into playing Irish music specifically because I wanted to connect with my family heritage. The music was a way to honor that.”
The honor belongs to those lucky enough to hear her perform as she does Sunday evening on the Millennium Stage at the Kennedy Center as part of the group Vintage Wildflowers.
| Onstage |
| Vintage Wildflowers |
| Where: Millennium Stage, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, 2700 F St. NW |
| When: 6 p.m Sunday |
| Info: Free; 800-444-1324, 202-467-4600; kennedy-center.org |
Back in 2009, Maher, along with two musical colleagues, Abby Bozarth and Melissa Schiavone began playing Irish traditional tunes together. By their first performance in February 2010 as the Wildflowers, the three women took down the standing-room only-crowd at the University of Tulsa and have never looked back.
Theirs is a full and rich sound that can fill a concert hall with song and three-part harmonies or, if they choose, make a tune resonate softly to float on the air over a coffee-house audience.
“Melissa plays the Irish flute and banjo, and Abby, the fiddle, mandolin and guitar,” Maher continued. “We all have the capability of playing the melody at any time so there are a lot of options for creativity.”
Creativity, that something “out of the ordinary” in the songs and tunes they play, is one of the things the group really enjoys exploring.
“I like to see if I can play the harp in ways people are not going to expect, Maher said. “It’s not the kind of harp most people think of, like concert harps in an orchestra. The Celtic harp has no pedals [and] it is lighter and more portable; the kind of harps that have been in Ireland for a thousand years.”
