For 18 years, the Atlanta Celtic Christmas Concert has been a local mainstay, a blending of music, dance, poetry and stories.
Last year’s show at the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts at Emory University was filmed live and will air this weekend on Georgia Public Broadcasting – the first time the concert is being televised and a possible gateway to national PBS distribution next year.
Helping to connect the musical and traditional threads of the ancient Celtic lands and the American South are Celtic songstress Moya Brennan, bluegrass banjo virtuoso Alison Brown, “Riverdance” composer Bill Whelan with a choir, percussionist Joe Craven, Irish balladeer John Doyle and other artists.
We queried James Flannery, director and host of the concert – as well as a Yeats scholar and Winship Professor of the Arts and Humanities at Emory – about the concert.
Q: What do you think is the primary appeal of this concert?
A: There are a lot of connections between the Celtic land and the South and their music encompasses a lot of it, [such as] a longing for home, the high lonesome sound of country music. The traditions of the South are rural, which is close to Celtic traditions. The Southern literary renaissance has tremendous parallels to the Irish literary renaissance, especially with the value placed on idiosyncratic personalities. In some ways, those connections come through in this concert…Some people have come back seven, eight, 11 times to see the show and the phrase that comes back is a sense of community. It probably hits pretty deep with the roots culture of the area.
Q: If the concert does receive national PBS distribution next year, there has been some question of whether Atlanta should stay in the title.
A: We’ve had some people at PBS say, ‘If you’re going to make this a national show, you can’t have Atlanta in the title.’ There’s a certain truth in that. But the stuff Alison [Brown] does, it’s very sophisticated, but it’s rooted in tradition – you really feel the roots of the thing. That’s Atlanta to me. There are people and companies that have supported this concert for 18 years, so you have an obligation to them. But I also feel that this is the capital of the South, so it also could and should be the cultural capital.
Q: What are your feelings about some of the more mainstream Celtic offerings, such as Celtic Woman and Riverdance?
A: I’m not a fan of things like Celtic Woman. I think it’s an elevator music version of a lot of things. It all sounds the same. The arrangements sound the same. It’s squeezed into a format. [Their shows] have real production values, but I think missing in it is the real core, a heartwarming direct experience that gave rise to a lot of that music to begin with. When it’s all about flash, it’s a travesty to the human authenticity that gave rise to it in the first place. It’s glitzy escapism. In some ways, I view [the GPB show] as a counter to Celtic Woman. But I’m a huge fan of "Riverdance" because it maintains a tremendous authenticity and is highly sophisticated at the same time.
TV preview
“An Atlanta Celtic Christmas”
11:30 p.m. Dec. 24 and 5 p.m. Dec. 25 on Georgia Public Broadcasting.
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