Virtuoso New York fiddler Eileen Ivers is thrilling audiences everywhere with her wild Celtic rhythms in Riverdance, the sensational Irish dance revue which is taking the world by storm.
ONE of the most electric moments in Riverdance occurs when the slight figure of virtuoso fiddler Eileen Ivers bounds into the spotlight and effortlessly teases up the tempo until the entire audience is rocking.
With her eye-catching blue fiddle flashing, Eileen Ivers brings the Riverdance orchestra’s terrific sound out of the pit and into the face of the audience, proving again her mastery of her chosen craft.
The term mastery is no exaggeration. Eileen has been wielding her precious fiddle for the past 23 years with devastating effect.
Born in 1965 and raised in the Woodlawn section of the Bronx to parents John and Annie, immigrants from County Mayo, Eileen Ivers won her first all-Ireland medal in Buncrana, County Donegal, at the age of nine for banjo playing. That same year she came second on the fiddle, but that was soon to change. She took first on the fiddle the following year. To date she has accumulated some eight solo all-Ireland titles on the fiddle, another half a dozen for slow air playing, and, when you throw in the banjo, duets, and trios, Eileen Ivers has an incredible 35 all-Ireland titles under her belt.
Her mother, Annie, laughed as she remembered packing her two daughters, Eileen and the older Maureen, off to Irish dancing class on Saturdays. The Bronx neighborhood in which they lived was at the time a microcosm of Ireland, and families held on to their culture as tightly as possible. “Eileen had about six dance lessons and then said one night, `Do you mind if I quit?'” Annie Ivers said. “But she never said that about the violin. Eileen always loved music, and as a child, when she watched the TV show Hee Haw she would just bounce around when she heard the violin.”
The Ivers children spent a lot of time in Ireland with their parents. “We were in Ireland one summer, and Eileen said, `When I go back I’m gonna learn the violin.’ I said, `What about the piano instead?’ and she said no, it had to be the violin,” Annie recalled.
“I thought she would forget about it, but she didn’t. We rented the first violin, because we didn’t think she’d stick it and we didn’t want to buy one — but from the first lesson she was hooked.”
Eileen had contracted the bug which will stay with her forever. “Mom would let me practice for an hour and then make me do my homework,” Eileen remembered. “I’m sure I was annoying her and the neighbors, but when the squeaks were increasing it got to be fun,” she said jokingly.
“I thought, `How will I put up with this scratching?'” Annie said, “but then I realized she showed talent from the beginning. I would make her go to bed and half an hour later she would sneak out again and say, `I just thought of something that will sound good. Can I do it now before I forget it?'” Annie invariably relented, and it has paid off in spades.
If Eileen Ivers had decided to become a classicist she would be feted at Lincoln Center. But her first and abiding love was Irish music, and she credits her success to her teacher, the famed Limerick-born fiddler, Martin Mulvihill, who passed away about ten years ago.
“He was my main influence,” Eileen said. “I just loved him, and always wanted to please him. He taught hundreds of Irish American kids in New York, Washington and Philadelphia, and it was almost a thankless task. I don’t think he ever competed, and he never got the chance to play before an audience.”
Eileen and her family spent every summer in Ireland when she was playing competitively. “The competitions were very difficult and the interpretations had to be really traditional,” she remembered. “But it really helped me focus and get the traditional stuff down right — it made you want to get to the next level when the last thing you wanted to do sometimes was practice. It wasn’t the hippest thing at the time in St. Barnabas school, as you can imagine,” she quipped.
“By the time I was 18 and had won a senior fiddle championship the pressure had become too much, I just wanted to play for enjoyment and not have people judging me anymore. But it’s thanks to Martin that I played in Riverdance at Radio City Music Hall. He’s still part of the way I play — the rhythm is everything. Martin always said, `Don’t get fancy until you have the rhythm down and you get the feel of the music,'” she recalled. “You ain’t got a thing if you don’t got the swing — that’s what he told me.”
Eileen Ivers, the undisputed Sultana of Swing, has taken what she learned from Mulvihill and transmuted Irish traditional music into a vibrant new style which encompasses the best of its roots and other musical treatments. It’s another strand in the colorful tapestry of Irish American culture, woven by taking the best of Irish culture and broadening it by mixing the influences of America.
The current resurgence of Irish dance and music in Ireland has been stoked in no small way by Irish Americans such as Michael Flatley, Jean Butler and Joannie Madden, the extraordinary whistler of Cherish the Ladies fame (who went to St. Barnabas grammar school with Ivers), whose different treatments made the Irish sit up and take notice.
“Irish Americans are turning it around, with people like Jean and Michael leading the way,” Eileen agreed. “When you grow up in New York learning Irish music or dance you are obviously influenced by American culture too. Even with Martin, where I learned the traditional stuff, I was still affected by outside influences so it’s not as pure as it would be if I grew up in County Clare. But I think that has a lot to do with the success of Riverdance — we might be more creative, like Michael Flatley with his arm movements in Irish dance,” she pointed out.
“The way I play definitely had to do with the years I spent with different rock bands, playing jazzy things. I was much more open to other influences,” she added.
Riverdance producer John McColgan, she said, picked up on the differences and was glad to give Eileen and the other musicians creative freedom. The Riverdance orchestra comprises a lot of musicians from the former band Moving Hearts, a wonderfully talented group. “There’s Noel Eccles, Owen O’Neill and Davy Spillane — all ex-Hearters — then Bill Whelan, the show’s composer, took influences from [former famous traditional group] Planxty and wrote great music. It’s a dream band,” she said simply.
While Irish traditional purists may once have resented the onslaught of the Irish Americans, Eileen believes that resentment is not so prevalent now.
“When I was competing I would hear stuff like: `Oh, she’s from New York.’ They were so protective of the music and dance and worried would the Irish American kids have the right interpretation. But in the last few years it’s amazing how much the Diaspora has affected Irish culture in a positive way, and it’s not a threat anymore, as it was perceived years ago. It’s part of our tradition now, like emigration, but you still have the conservative and very traditional 18-year-old concertina players in Clare preserving the purity, so it’s not any kind of threat,” she explained.
“You will still get the purists who hate us, and it upset me years ago, but now I can understand it. They are just a little closed-minded.” Eileen is all in favor of expanding her work, but she has no desire to stray from traditional music. “Seisiuns here were very similar to what you find in Ireland — there’s not much improvisation, which is the beauty of it really, and we play very traditionally and are very respectful,” she said. “We always had older Irish musicians to show us the ropes, which I feel is very important for the next generation. They would show us seisiun etiquette,” she said with a laugh, “which was good because you couldn’t jump in and play a tune and show off. You know how kids are — jumping up and down because they learned a new tune and wanting to play it immediately.”
Eileen has passed her knowledge on to the next generation through her own teaching. “Martin Mulvihill is sorely missed,” she said. “I don’t think the music is dying out in popularity but there seems to be a lack of teachers, so it’s something I want to get back to.”
Three New York kids spotted busily busking in Manhattan’s South Street Seaport some time ago are a testament to Eileen’s teaching. “Oh, those guys were great,” Eileen said when reminded of them. “It’s stuff like that I really miss. It was great to teach other Irish American kids the things I had learned.”
Her busy tour schedule in recent years has kept her from teaching as much as she would like, but, much to the delight of her fans, Eileen has just recorded a new album, Wild Blue, on Green Linnet Records. Her first recording was made as part of a ceilidh band called Erin Og (Young Ireland) when she was only 11 years old in Martin Mulvihill’s basement in Bainbridge in the Bronx. “We were playing tag outside and then Martin called us in so we just came in and played,” she remembered. “We were just kids — we didn’t get overwhelmed. I love listening to that now.” Since then she has made more than 50 recordings with various musicians. Her first solo album, simply titled Eileen Ivers, came out in 1994.
“Going solo was sort of difficult because I felt much more exposed,” Eileen said. “It took a while for me to get used to it. But the latest album was put down in the studio in four days — I was on such a high. Everything just clicked. I had put together a band with which I’ve played on and off for years — it was all recorded live, and at the end I never touched a fiddle track. We just went for it.”
It’s been some years since Eileen decided to play music for a living. When she finished high school, her parents insisted that she go to college, and at the time, Eileen did not want to go.
“But now I’m delighted because I went to Iona and got a degree in math [she is currently working on her masters degree] and I really think that math and music are connected. They both have patterns and I really think that one helps the other,” she explained.
Upon earning her degree, she decided to look for a job. “But I just started playing in bars and doing gigs and wanted to keep it up. Things, again, just fell into place. I played a lot in Irish bars, then got into the festival scene. I played with [acclaimed Irish musician] Mick Moloney — and I give him a lot of credit because he showed a lot of us youngsters the road — and [Philadelphia-born Irish-raised multi-instrumentalist] Seamus Egan and others and it was great exposure.”
Mick Moloney put together a band called Green Fields of America in which Eileen played. “In fact,” she said, “Michael Flatley, Jean Butler and Donny Golden danced with that band. Mick spotted their talent too.”
It still came as something of a surprise to Eileen when she began making enough money playing the fiddle to support herself. “I’ve never had a real job,” she joked. “In the early 90s I did a lot of gigs around New York, then hooked up with Luka Bloom.”
Before long, Eileen was in demand. Her innovative and expansive playing captured audiences and earned her much praise. The explosion of new Irish immigrants into cities such as New York and their desire to express their native culture led to a huge resurgence in popularity of traditional music — but it was traditional music with a difference, as played by Irish Americans, which won their hearts.
Eileen’s work, described as a “multi-cultural stew,” was recommended to musicians Darryl Hall and John Oates, who wanted an Irish fiddler for an upcoming recording. Hall &Oates producer T-Bone Wolk picked Eileen up in New York and drove her upstate to their recording studio. “We laid down two tracks, and when Hall & Oates appeared on MTV’s Unplugged the response was phenomenal,” Eileen said.
When Hall & Oates decided to do an American tour three months later, Eileen was invited to join them. But what started out as a six-week American tour soon evolved into a year-long world tour, taking in Australia, Japan and Europe. “It was incredible,” said Eileen. “I saw the whole world of rock and roll, which obviously wasn’t Irish at all.”
Pretty soon, though, Eileen started to have withdrawal symptoms. She missed hearing and playing Irish traditional music. It was not surprising to hear that she managed to hook up with a couple of seisiuns — in Sydney and Tokyo. “It was a really good year,” she remembered. “And it was healthy for me to absorb all that. That world really opened up for me, and when John Cougar Mellancamp wanted a fiddler to join him on a world tour I was mentioned,” she added modestly. “But I didn’t want to do it again. I knew the direction I wanted to go, and what I wanted was to play Irish stuff.”
So it was back to New York, this time to hook up with Seamus Egan, guitar player John Doyle and African-American percussionist Kimati Dinizulu to bring a wild mix of exuberant sound to the traditional world.
Monday nights in Paddy Reilly’s bar in Manhattan became almost legendary, with the band shaking the rafters with its cocktail of bluegrass, jazz, rock, swing, African and Irish.
“It was just so natural,” Eileen remarked. “I heard Kimati as part of a ten-piece ensemble at a world music fair in Queens, New York, and I had never heard anything like it. It was cooking,” she emphasized. “I immediately heard all kinds of Irish tunes on top of it — it was a natural marriage, so every Monday we did Paddy’s and we never even rehearsed.”
In fact, the musicians never formed an official group, although their rhythmic formulas added a whole new dimension to Irish music — still recognizable as the main ingredient in this eclectic recipe.
“It developed into an important New York Irish kind of sound,” Eileen agreed. But the musicians eventually went their separate ways.
Eileen’s next foray was with Celtic/hip-hop/rap group Paddy A Go Go, the brainchild of Chris Byrne of the successful Irish American band Black 47. “Now that’s a real Irish American group,” she said. “Chris was really into hip-hop and crossover stuff, then Pat Maguire [former lead singer with Spéir Mor], who has an amazing voice, joined in, and there’s a real connection there. We play together whenever we can but it’s something we haven’t given a lot of time to. Hopefully we’ll get back to it again.”
Eileen was not destined to stay for long in New York — last May she received a call from Riverdance composer Bill Whelan which would take her on the road again – this time replacing fiddler Maire Bhreathnach in the orchestra and joining Riverdance in London.
Bill Whelan had met Eileen in New York when he was putting music to Leon Uris’ book Trinity. When he needed a fiddler, he knew he didn’t have to look any further. “I was intrigued,” said Eileen, who knew this was something she had to do.
“I’m really enjoying it, but it was a real challenge learning all the tunes. It was the most stressful week I ever had. I remember having my Walkman on the plane trying to learn the music — on the way to London I was still rewinding the tape trying to get it down.”
On opening night, though, she was a hit. And the highlight for her was bringing it all back home, to Radio City Music Hall in New York for St. Patrick’s Day. “It was the dream of dreams,” said Eileen softly. “It was such a high.”
The show’s original choreographer, Michael Flatley, was still with the original cast when Eileen went to London. “It was amazing to have seen him in the show, because he was outstanding,” Eileen said. “I’m a great fan, and we miss him, and everyone was sorry it happened [when Flatley left]. His replacement, Colin Dunne, has been incredible. He took the part only 21 hours before we opened in London and everyone knew we had to pull together. So on stage we were whooping and screaming, and when we pulled it off it was like we won the Super Bowl.”
Riverdance moved from New York to the King’s Hall in Belfast in April, then on to Cork, before opening in London again this month.
“Belfast was amazing,” Eileen said. “And I think it was a really good statement to make at the time. I think it helped with the peace process, because it’s such a great statement of Irishness and it brought everyone together.”
However, Eileen will be back in New York this month, taking a break from Riverdance to promote her new album and catch up with her family. Besides, she is brimming with ideas for her next album. “I’m such a fan of African percussion, and some hip-hop rhythms are very appropriate for Irish music. I want to pursue African and Jamaican influences because there’s so much crossover there and I think it will lead into the next level of Irish music. It’s so natural and easy to play — it just fits. Some people simply want to change Irish music just to do something different but without an understanding of the internal rhythms within the tunes, and that’s not where the future of Irish music will be.” Eileen Ivers, however, will be part of that future.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in the May/June 1996 issue of Irish America. ⬥
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