KALAMAZOO, MI -- The instrumental voice for Celtic Woman, Irish fiddler Máiréad Nesbitt, had a busy St. Patrick's Day this month.
Nesbitt spoke with us a couple days after she and vocalists Chloë Agnew, Lisa Lambe and Susan McFadden, performed for the most Irish people on the planet, South Boston, Mass., politicians at a St. Patrick's Day breakfast.
"Yeah!" Nesbitt said, laughing, from a tour stop in Scranton, Pa.
She's used to the fascination in the U.S. with Irish culture that, at times, can be stronger and a bit more romanticized than on her home island.
"I think the whole thing about the Irish culture is that we love telling stories -- it's our music, it's our heritage. From such a tiny little island, the Irish have gone all over the world," she said. "It is a testament to such a small little country that we've done that and brought our music everywhere."
Nesbitt took up the violin when she was six, and learned both classical and folk. After hearing her, one can get the vision of her as a girl practicing the fiddle in a rough-hewn farmhouse out on the windswept green hills of County Tipperary.
"Close enough. I grew up in a farmhouse, my father grew up in the same house, it's been in the family for hundreds and hundreds of years ... I know it sounds kind of romanticized, but there are beautiful fields, beautiful everything in Tipperary."
Nesbitt said that her playing developed from "a really good mixture of the modern and the past. And I think you have to embrace that, you have to embrace progress and keep your heritage as well."
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http://www.mlive.com/entertainment/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2013/03/irish_culture_with_glamor_and.html