Swept away by the sounds of Ireland's 'Celtic Woman'
A PBS special turned tour has taken America by storm
Sharon Browne had a vision. She had signed a number of young Irish women to her Dublin-based record label, Celtic Collections, but they were largely ignored by Ireland's radio and television stations. Feeling snubbed, Browne decided to make her own TV special -- pooling the talents of ''my girls," as she calls them, and targeting American audiences instead.
As luck would have it, Browne ran into PBS programming chief Gustavo Sagastume in a bar in Cannes, France, during an entertainment conference last year. He was hunting for new talent, and Browne had just the answer. ''I was looking for a way to launch my girls," she says.
Now what began as a PBS special called ''Celtic Woman" -- shot in Dublin and featuring four of Browne's singers -- has exploded into a phenomenon, spawning a chart-topping CD and a tour that's crisscrossing America. A concert at the
''I had never produced a PBS show and had no idea what I was doing," Browne says. ''I was making it up as I went along."
The response to ''Celtic Woman" was immediate. Since debuting in March, the TV special has aired on more than 200 PBS stations (WGBH was one of the first to play it) and helped generate millions of dollars in pledges, Sagastume says. The CD has been at the top of Billboard's world music charts for five months and is approaching gold status (500,000 sales). The DVD alone has sold another 50,000 copies.
The show's theatrical production recalls ''Riverdance," another touring phenomenon steeped in Celtic mythology and pageantry. But where ''Riverdance" focuses on dance, ''Celtic Woman" is all about singing. There are some common threads, however. Several members of the ''Celtic Woman" cast worked on ''Riverdance," including music director David Downes, singer Lisa Kelly, and some of the eight-member chorus now on tour.
''The spirit and how we connect to our culture and traditions is similar," Downes says. ''And there's a certain excitement that we had in 'Riverdance.' "
The success of ''Celtic Woman" has Browne feeling giddy -- and proud that she's been able to pull off such a feat without much help from the Irish media.
''I made a decision that we were going to come back to Ireland victorious, so that's what we're doing," she says. ''They wouldn't have given us a chance anyway. I haven't even released [the CD] yet in Ireland." It's slated for release in the UK and Ireland later this year.
Credit must also go to Sagastume for nurturing the vision.
''You really have to fashion a customized special for the US market," he told Browne at that bar in Cannes. ''You need to have the fancifulness of a Sarah Brightman show, the innocence of a Charlotte Church special, and you need to bring the appeal and harmonic beauty of Enya's music."
He didn't mind that singers Chloe Agnew (who's 16), Lisa Kelly, Orla Fallon, and Meav Ni Mhaolchatha and fiddler Mairead Nesbitt were virtual unknowns in the United States.
''I know my market pretty well," he says. ''And we try to bring the public things they don't get to see."
When Sagastume attended the taping of the special at the Helix Theatre in Dublin, he was delighted.
''It's really a mixture of Celtic music and classical crossover and new age," he says of a repertoire that includes ''Ave Maria," ''Nella Fantasia," the Enya hit ''Orinoco Flow," Irish traditional songs like ''She Moved Through the Fair," as well as some original songs, all performed with an orchestra and chorus. The singers wear shimmering gowns with colors representing air, water, earth, and fire.
''There's a strong belief in a Celtic woman being strong and being the earth and the wind and fire -- just all involved in nature," Kelly says. She portrays fire, and for the new tour wears a fiery orange sash. Agnew is meant to connote water and wears an aqua dress, while Fallon represents the earth and has a ball gown with a train with rust and champagne-colored beads. They also wear $500 Dolce & Gabbana shoes.
''We're girls -- and gowns and shoes is what we do," Browne says with a laugh. ''When you've got a girly record company and a girls' cast, there's no skimping on style."
To promote the tour, PBS partnered with Clear Channel Entertainment to buy the best seats and auction them off as part of their fund-raising. PBS had exclusive rights to the tickets for a month before they went on sale to the general public. Local Clear Channel executive Dave Marsden, who books the Bank of America Pavilion, says this is the first time he can remember such a partnership in the Boston market -- and he remains pleasantly surprised by the turn of events.
''This has been one of the highlights of our summer," Marsden says. ''I don't remember the last time a show that never toured anywhere before has sold out a 5,000-seat venue."
''Our instinct was that this would be new and a little bit different and would have to have the highest production values," music director Downes says. ''The other important thing was that it would have the next generation of Irish stars." (That goal looks as if it may come to pass, since Browne has just licensed the singers' solo albums to Manhattan/Blue Note Records in the United States.)
High production values aren't inexpensive. The special, along with the CD and DVD, ended up costing Browne close to $1 million. But she isn't one to shrink from a difficult task. She began her career as a receptionist for K-Tel Records in Ireland. She later bought the company and turned it into Celtic Collections. But she sold part of the label to David Kavanagh (formerly U2's booking agent) to help finance her new venture.
Browne clearly has an eye for talent. Although the singers have stylistic differences and had never met one another until three days before the taping, they mesh extremely well.
''I know it sounds like a cliche to say that we're like sisters now, but we are," Kelly says. ''Orla is a very traditional Irish singer. . . . And Deirdre Shannon [who replaced the pregnant Meav for this tour] is more of a classical singer. She has a lovely, big, rounded voice. And Chloe sings all the traditional classic songs . . . like 'Ave Maria.' . . . And I get the more poppy numbers."
The TV special features an orchestra, but the tour, which started in Cleveland last week, employs a six-piece band and a choir of eight.
''We want this to be more intimate," says Downes. ''We had done the big orchestral thing for the DVD. I wanted to make it more for percussion and piano and guitars this time. I wanted to bring it in a slightly different direction. I think it's more exciting."
