Altan

Altan return to NYC, to Symphony Space, for “The Gap of Dreams” tour, on Sunday, Feb. 23.

Legendary Irish super-group Altan, renowned for their spirited live performances, have announced a six-week U.S. tour playing songs from throughout their career as well as their most recent Compass Records’ album, THE GAP OF DREAMS. (Scroll down for complete tour dates.) The touring band will feature co-founder, lead vocalist and renown fiddle player Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh, bouzouki player Ciarán Curran, guitarist Daíthí Sproule, and accordionist Martin Tourish. The band showcases traditional Irish language songs from County Donegal.

After 30 years of playing on stages all over the world from Dublin to New York, Tokyo to Sydney, Altan returned to the hills of Donegal to record THE GAP OF DREAMS. The album’s 13 tracks transport the listener to the lifestyle of rural Donegal, to a time before electricity when folks would gather together in the mists of winter to tell stories, sing songs and dance into the wee hours of the night. The music lifted the locals’ spirits and helped elevate them beyond the hardships of the day like famine, conflict, and emigration.

The album title is borrowed from a poem by Francis Carlin, “The Ballad of Douglas Bridge,” in which he writes: “The gap of dreams is never shut,” referring to the gap between this world and the “Otherworld.” The Otherworld has always exerted a large influence on the fiddling tradition of County Donegal and has served as inspiration for song, music, and folklore.

Singer and founding member Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh became the 2017 recipient of the TG4 Gradam Ceoil/Traditional Musician of the Year, one of Ireland’s highest musical honors, recognizing her prominent role in supporting, nurturing and strengthening Irish traditional music, Four of the songs are in Irish (Gaelic), which is Mairéad’s first language and the language of the northwest of Donegal.