Irish Massachusetts

The Boston Irish Tourism Association (BITA) has released its 2022 summer/fall issue of Travel & Culture magazine, a compendium of Irish festivals and concerts, culinary, cultural and literary activities taking place in Massachusetts and Rhode Island and also tips on traveling to Ireland this summer and fall. Read the online version here . This issue has feature stories on the new Sailing Museum in Newport, RI, and current exhibits at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum in Boston and the JFK Museum in Hyannis, Cape Cod.  It also highlights summer Celtic festivals and concerts in the region, and news about US Ambassador Caroline Kennedy, Congressman Stephen Lynch and Boston College Professor Rob Savage.  A walking map of Boston’s Irish Heritage Trail is included, along with descriptions of the 20 downtown sites, and updates on three landmarks, including the Swan Boats in the Public Garden, the Shaw Memorial on Boston Common, and the Cambridge Irish Famine Memorial

Three years ago today, a memorial commemorating 800+ Irish immigrants buried on Deer Island in Boston Harbor was unveiled on Saturday, May 25, 2019, several miles off the coast of Boston.  Speakers included Boston Archdiocese Sean Cardinal O’Malley and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh.  Gene O’Flaherty was the master of ceremonies, City of Boston’s Chief Archivist John McColgan gave the historical remarks, while Connemara native Máirín Keady sang the American and Irish anthems. Afterwards, the Boston Curragh Rowing Club placed a ceremonial wreath in the water in memory of those who died.  Deer Island currently houses the wastewater facility operated by the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA), but in 1847 the island was converted to a makeshift quarantine station and hospital as thousands of sick and impoverished Irish immigrants flooded into Boston Harbor, fleeing the Irish Famine, a series of potato crop failures that decimated Ireland. In 1847 alone, some 47,000 Irish came to Bost

  The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum presents  Mark Updegrove , president and CEO of the Lyndon B. Johnson Foundation and presidential historian for ABC News, to discuss his new book  Incomparable Grace: JFK in the Presidency  with  Martin Dobrow , professor of communications at Springfield College. The event takes place on Tuesday, May 24, from 6-7:30 p.m. It is part of the JFK Forum and is available virtually. Register here , and order a copy of Incomparable Grace from the JFK Library Bookstore .  Learn more about the JFK Library's current and upcoming exhibits and activities here .

A special shout-out to the amazing quartet of musicians touring with the Riverdance 25th Anniversary Tour , now in Boston, Massachusetts at the Boch Center Wang Theatre .    The band consists of Musical Director Mark Alfred on drums, percussion and bodhran; Tara Howley on uilleann pipes, long whistle and concertina; Haley Richardson on fiddle; and Emma Frampton on soprano saxophone.  Read more about them below.  Here is a list of the entire cast of dancers and musicians on the tour .  Tara Howley  Uilleann Pipes   Tara is an award winning multi-instrumentalist, singer and dancer from Clenora, Co. Clare. She is a two-time senior all Ireland champion on the uilleann pipes. Starting both classical and traditional music at the age of 4, Tara has numerous all Ireland titles in solo competitions and with bands and groups in various instruments such as concertina, fiddle, drums, mouthorgan, piano, whistle and uilleann pipes. In 2014 Tara toured Britain and Ireland with the group Macalla na hE

Morgan Bullock Morgan Bullock, a 22 year-old African-American from Richmond, Virginia, is part of this year’s Riverdance 25th Anniversary Tour performing in 40+ American and Canadian cities across North America.  Riverdance comes to the Boch Center's Wang Theatre from May 10-15, 2022 in Boston, a long-time bastion of Irish culture, music and dance, with dozens of Irish dance studios devoted to the art of Irish step dancing.   Boston hosed the prestigious World Irish Dancing Championships in March 2013, only the second American city selected to host this international event.  A dancer since the age of three, Morgan is the first female African-American dancer in the acclaimed show, which has been a worldwide phenomenon since it debuted at the 1994 Eurovision show in Dublin.  In fact, it was a YouTube video of that famous performance, featuring lead dancers Jean Butler from New York and Michael Flatley from Chicago, that inspired Morgan to fully turn her attention to Irish dance as