The Barra MacNeils – Canada’s ‘first family of Celtic Music’ – perform in North Vancouver, Nov 22

he Barra MacNeils come to North Vancouver for the first time with their
“East Coast Christmas” tour, November 22

The Barra MacNeils — Canada’s “first family of Celtic music” — herald the arrival of the 2018 holiday season, bringing their East Coast Christmas tour to North Vancouver’s Centennial Theatre for an evening of world-renowned sibling harmonies and the signature beauty of Gaelic song. This concert on Thursday, November 22, marks the first time the group have performed in North Vancouver in their almost 40-year history.

The MacNeils — Lucy, Boyd, Stewart, Kyle and Sheumas — began performing together as children in 1980, in their native Sydney Mines, Nova Scotia. (The name “Barra” comes from an island in Scotland that is the family’s ancestral home.) Since then, the group have released more than a dozen acclaimed albums (including 1993’s gold-selling Closer to Paradise), won countless awards, and toured North America, Europe and the Caribbean. Their repertoire combines original material and beloved traditional songs, spanning Celtic and North American folk, country and pop. The family’s instrumental brilliance, honed throughout the decades, sees them playing the diverse likes of mandolin, tin whistle, fiddle, bouzouki, acoustic and electric guitar, piano, and various percussion instruments.

For their East Coast Christmas tour, the Barra MacNeils present a musical potpourri of traditional family favourites gleaned from Christmas ceilidhs, midnight masses and down-home festive frolic, steeped in Cape Breton tradition with strong Celtic roots. The result is a Christmas concert unlike any other of the season: one moment a rousing chorus; then a hauntingly beautiful Gaelic ballad; the next, a flurry of foot-stomping tunes that turns into step-dancing revelry.

“This show will be unforgettable for the community,” says Carolyn Phillips-Cusson of Celtic Performing Arts and CeltFest Vancouver Island, producers of the concert. “In addition to the magnetic sounds of The Barra MacNeils, we also look forward to welcoming local champion-calibre Highland and step dancers, along with accomplished young Celtic musicians.”

Tickets are $48 ($43 for children ages 4 – 12, and for groups of 10 or more) including box office fees and taxes, and are available at nvrc.ca/centennial-theatre or the box office at 604.984.4484.

CeltFest Vancouver Island Alumni will receive a discount promo code by calling 1.866.301.CELT.

The Barra MacNeils
Thursday, November 22, 7:30pm
Centennial Theatre
2300 Lonsdale Avenue, North Vancouver