Award-winning Irish band comes to Columbia

Columbia takes St. Patrick’s Day pretty seriously. So no one should be surprised that a St. Patrick’s Day celebration with authentic Irish music is on tap at Harbison Theatre Thursday.

Cherish the Ladies is headlining a concert that will “absolutely wow our community,” said Katie Fox, executive director with Harbison Theatre.

Cherish the Ladies is an award-winning folk band that blends instrumentals, vocals and Irish stage dancing with entertaining stories of their Irish-American upbringing. The group has been nominated for a Grammy and has toured internationally and performed everywhere from the Olympics to the White House.

The band has produced 15 albums and a PBS special, “An Irish Homecoming.” It has won the BBC’s Best Musical Group of the Year, was named Top North American Celtic Group by the Irish Music Awards and has a street named after it in the Bronx.

Joining Cherish the Ladies are The Ennis Sisters from Newfoundland, fiddler Liz Carroll and the dancing of Jason Oremus, Garrett Coleman and Julie Fitzgerald.

The Ennis Sisters perform a broad mix of original folks songs and uniquely interpreted traditional Newfoundland tunes with strong ties to ballads. As Juno (Canadian Grammy) winning artists, they have been acknowledged by the government of Newfoundland as cultural ambassadors.

Carroll is a winner of the National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage award, an Irish Echo Traditional Artist of the Year, a Grammy nominee and an Irish-American Magazine Top 100 Irish American. Her album, “Lost in the Loop,” was named Celtic Album of the Year by the Association for Independent Music.

Oremus and Coleman are renowned Irish step dancers, and Fitzgerald is a fiddle player and step dancer.

“As an industry, the past decade or so we’ve seen a shift away from tradition in large Celtic music concerts,” Fox said. “This performance returns to the heart of the tradition. The instruments, the stories, the steps that have passed from one generation to the next – all will be excellent, and all will be authentic.”

The concert is at 7:30 p.m. at Harbison Theatre at Midlands Tech, 7300 College Street in Irmo. Tickets are $24 and can be purchased at www.harbisontheatre.org.

Lezlie Patterson, Special to The State