Sheffield — Fans of Celtic music won’t want to miss the concert coming up at Race Brook Lodge on Sunday, August 25, by Reverie Road, an Irish “supergroup” composed of members of some of the most popular North American Celtic bands of the last 30 years. The four-member instrumental group emerged about two years ago out of the pandemic, in what New York-based fiddler Winifred Horan called an “organic coming together, just really wanting to get out there and play music live again.”
Horan, formerly of Cherish the Ladies, had been working a lot with former Gaelic Storm fiddler Katie Grennan teaching online fiddle workshops during the pandemic, and they grew closer. Horan had been playing for many years with jazz and Raga pianist Utsav Lal, who is also based in New York, and whom she met at the New England Conservatory in Boston where he was studying. Horan had founded the band Solas in 1996 with accordionist John Williams, who is based in Chicago, as is Grennan.
As Horan told The Berkshire Edge, it was “kind of a no brainer” and “provided us with some much needed music and hope after COVID.” Now, the group has finished a national tour for the album released earlier this year, which won the “Debut Album of the Year” title by Ireland Tonight.
“Having played together in different formats over the years, I kind of knew it would work,” said Horan. “I just knew that the sound would be cool.”
This sound, explained Horan, reflects everyone’s unique individual backgrounds. Lal brought an eclectic background as an Indian Raga pianist who had been exposed to a lot of Celtic music growing up in Dublin. “John Williams is a very prolific multi-instrumentalist and has covered a lot of ground in his career,” said Horan.
Both she and Grennan are classically trained, and this background definitely comes through, Horan believes, in their playing and stylizing. If some tracks sound “a little bit almost orchestral,” it is because they gravitate towards the soundscapes you can create in the studio, “different landscapes to put the more traditional material on top of … I’ve always been a fan of that sort of arranging and layering and providing almost a little symphonic vibe behind some of the tracks.”
That is one quality that Horan sees as being definitive of Reverie Road’s sound. Another is the piano and Lal’s brilliant accompaniment. “It’s not genre specific, so that creates a really gorgeous bed and platform for us to be able to live in, for us to lay stuff down on top of. He’s really key … to the sound of Reverie Road. It comes through on every track.”
Horan and Grennan also share a background as champion Irish step dancers, and the self-titled album is full of pulsing, heart-thumping sets of traditional Irish reels that keep rebounding with new tunes in a different key. “All of us,” Horan said, “have a pretty strong connection to our Irish roots, and that comes through in the material we chose and the way some of the sets sound.”
But they also “stepped outside of the Irish tradition,” explained Horan, especially on some of the slower tracks. With two fiddlers in the band, it’s “fiddle heavy,” and both she and Grennan bring their love for different fiddle traditions including Norwegian, Swedish, Scottish, and Irish.
“We have some Norwegian music, we have some French waltzes. It’s a reflection of the taste of members of the band, and our collective musical experiences. We’re really interested and turned on by lots of different types of folk music.” There are a couple of originals on the album, too, and there will be even more on the next album, which they’re already working on, said Horan.
The Irish Echo declared that Reverie Road “takes Irish music and uses it to look beyond the horizon of the tradition.” The band members, ventured Horan, would agree that they don’t want to be put into a genre-confining box. She thinks they successfully let the music breathe and let everyone’s stylistic ideas and individual voices come through. “It just bloomed into what it organically wanted to be.”
With folk music, there aren’t many rules, Horan pointed out. “There’s no right or wrong way, actually, because it’s a folk tradition. It’s really what people and musicians bring to the table, and then whatever comes out of it, I feel is valid.”
And you don’t need to already love Irish music to enjoy Reverie Road.
While it is stylized, and all the members are very technically skilled, Horan thinks “the music itself and the musicality shines through, as opposed to being, like, this technical machine. I think it’s very breathable and very accessible to different audiences outside of our tradition. People gravitate to it in a beautiful way.”
Tickets for the show, at 7 p.m. on August 25, can be purchased on Race Brook Lodge’s website. Joining Reverie Road will be Irish dancers from Scoil Rince Bréifne Ó Ruairc, an Irish dance school in Pittsfield. Click here to see a trailer for Sunday’s performance.
