Irish folk singer songwriter Susan McKeown is back on the road. The Grammy winning and BBC Folk Music Award nominee has performed with Pete Seeger, Natalie Merchant, The Klezmatics, Lúnasa, Flook, Mali’s Ensemble Tartit, Mariachi Réal de Mexico, and notably with the Scottish fiddle master Johnny Cunningham with whom she toured ‘A Winter Talisman’ featuring songs she collected of Celtic traditions of the winter months. She’ll reprise some of these songs as well as other seasonal originals in her show with guitarist Kyle Sanna.
Held in the Orchard Chapel, Hampton Falls (immediately next to Applecrest Orchards), this quintessential New England holiday setting (complete with oil lanterns, candles, and old wooden pews with plush velvet cushions) provides the perfect home for our 12 Nights of Christmas series that promises to fill you with the festive spirit and happiness!
ABOUT SUSAN McKEOWN
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In a distinguished career, Susan McKeown has performed with Pete Seeger, Natalie Merchant, Billy Bragg, Arlo Guthrie, Mamadou Diabate, Mali’s Ensemble Tartit, Queens band Mariachi Réal de Mexico, Lúnasa, Flook and The Klezmatics, with whom she won a Grammy Award performing lyrics by Woody Guthrie. She has recorded mariachi music, klezmer music, African music, Celtic music, and contemporary songwriting, and has performed at Glastonbury, The Edinburgh Festival, Carnegie Hall and the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Hers is the woman’s voice singing on the audio recording in the Irish apartment of New York’s Tenement Museum.
Susan began her songwriting career as part of the songwriting community at Sin-É Café on St. Mark’s Place and her first album Bones was commercially released in 1996. More albums followed including Prophecy in 2002 featuring two duets with Natalie Merchant: Susan’s setting of Emily Dickinson’s poem Because I could not stop for Death, and one of her best known songs River, commissioned by Liverpool’s Hope University for an album of songs of hope for Ireland.
Belong (2012) features McKeown’s own songs such as ‘On the Bridge to Williamsburg‘ (a duet with Declan O’Rourke), ‘Everything We Had Was Good‘ (which reached #1 on the U.S. Folk Music chart) and ‘Lullaby of Manhattan‘.
Sweet Liberty (2004) features "Eggs In Her Basket" a collaboration with Mariachi Réal de Mexico that earned her a BBC Folk Music Award nomination for Best Traditional Track.
Her musical setting of Massachusetts poet Emily Dickinson's Because I could not stop for Death, recorded as a duet with Natalie Merchant, was voted one of the Top 20 Songs of Fate & Destiny by the Guardian Newspaper and subsequently recorded by Ireland's RTE National Symphony Orchestra.
She conceived, arranged and produced the album Songs from the East Village (2010) for her daughter's public school that was featured on NPR and raised $30,000+ for the school’s language and arts programs.
In 2017 she established Cuala Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit that collaborates with communities in Ireland and the U.S. to repair, recover and build social, economic and cultural power.
“McKeown grabbed both song and audience by the throat, dragged them through heaven and hell and back again, and left the stage to the loudest applause heard all evening.”
– Rolling Stone Magazine
“The Irish are world-renowned as great wordsmiths and Susan McKeown has formed herself into a link in that chain.”
– Bob Edwards, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO