Vancouver Celtic Festival:5 Years of Celebration
- 5 Millennia of Inspiration
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SCOTLAND'S legendary Battlefield Band will be among this year's banner entertainment line-up. |
VANCOUVER
- Tickets go on sale February 6 for the fifth annual Edgewater Casino CelticFest Vancouver, to be held from March 12 to 16.
The much-loved annual entertainment event will bring visitors and locals together for an extraordinary five-day, four-night celebration of Celtic performance and culture.
The popular annual festival is presented by CelticFest Vancouver Society and features hundreds of gifted performing artists from around the world and at home, with more than 50 events at dozens of popular venues - including three outdoor stages in downtown Vancouver.
Headliners this year come from Scotland, Ireland and France as well as Eastern and Western Canada, and include Scotland's Battlefield Band, Tony McManus, Steafan Hannigan, Wendy MacIsaac and Patrick Gillis, Spirit of the West, plus the international supergroup Celtic Fiddle Festival.
The World's Greatest Céilídh is back again this year (March 12 at 6:30 PM), and moving to a larger venue, the Commodore Ballroom, due to the incredible response in 2007 to this much-loved annual CelticFest kick-off.
The event's headliner will be Scotland's Battlefield Band, a world pioneer in the integration of bagpipes with fiddle, keyboards, guitar and voice. The Battlefield Band artfully mixes old songs and tunes with new self-penned material, and performs them on a unique fusion of ancient and modern instruments.
Over the years, new band members have contributed fresh ideas, new music, instruments and influences and after 30 years, Battlefield Band still leads the way for Scottish music, always involving its ever-widening audience as it travels the world.
Another not-to-be-missed event is the BIG St. Pat's Night Out! featuring Celtic Fiddle Festival, Wendy MacIsaac and Patrick Gillis at Richard's on Richards (March 15). Celtic Fiddle Festival is a true supergroup, bringing together three internationally acclaimed fiddlers - Kevin Burke, from Patrick Street (Ireland), Christian Lemaître (Brittany, France) and André Brunet (Quebec) - with Ged Foley (guitar).
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CELTIC FIDDLE FESTIVAL is a true supergroup, bringing together three internationally acclaimed fiddlers - Kevin Burke, from Patrick Street (Ireland), Christian Lemaître (Brittany, France) and André Brunet (Quebec) - with Ged Foley (guitar). |
Sold-out tours and standing ovations give testimony to the electricity and excitement generated by these three great individual fiddle stylists, masters of their respective styles of Ireland, Quebec and Brittany.
Wendy MacIsaac is a gifted fiddler, piano player and stepdancer from Creignish, Cape Breton who has toured the world for the last 10 years with Mary Jane Lamond, Ashley MacIsaac, Beblach (her current band) and as a solo performer.
Patrick Gillis is one of the finest guitarists to emerge from Cape Breton. He has performed with Ashley MacIsaac, Natalie MacMaster and Glenn Graham, and has appeared at many festivals throughout the U.S, Canada and Europe with Beblach.
Guitar fans will be racing to get a good seat at The Yale, when revered Celtic guitar wizard Tony McManus takes the stage with his special guest, multi-instrumentalist Steafan Hannigan (March 14). His claim to fame is his uncanny ability to take complex arrangements normally performed on fiddles and pipes, and accurately perform them using just his own six guitar strings.
2008 marks Spirit of the West's 25th anniversary and the Festival is thrilled to be co-presenting this band with Live Nation for two historic nights at the Commodore Ballroom (March 14 and 15).
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VANCOUVER'S CelticFest gears up to celebrate its fifth anniversary with more than 50 events at dozens of popular venues - including three outdoor stages in downtown Vancouver. |
Other festival highlights include the Festival Artists' Lounge, the annual Whisky Kiss Scotch Tasting event, the Battle of the Bards (a supercharged literary pub crawl), Celtic music and dance workshops, Fiddlers of The Future, A Swarm of Drones (bagpipe demos), The Great Big Session (an interactive Celtic music session), the weekend Celtic Village Street Market, The Journey to Tyr-Na-Nogue (an Irish Fairy folk play for children), free lunch-time stage shows at Granville Square and at Canada Place (North End Pointe), the fifth annual St. Patrick's Day parade (March 16) and much, much more.
For more information and tickets, please visit www.celticfestvancouver.com. Tickets are also available through Tickets Tonight by calling (604) 631-2872, online at www.ticketstonight.ca or in person at the Tickets Tonight booth located in the Touristinfo Centre, Plaza Level, 200 Burrard Street, Vancouver. Tickets for the Commodore events (The World's Greatest Céilídh and Spirit of the West) are available through TicketMaster.ca by calling 604.280.4444, online at www.ticketmaster.ca.
Festival Program Guides will be available at most 7-Eleven outlets throughout the Lower Mainland and at participating venues after February 15.
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