Tomáseen Foley's A Celtic Christmas
Biography
For the past 13 years, with a world class ensemble of musicians, dancers and singers from both sides of the Atlantic, Tomáseen Foley’s A Celtic Christmas has played to packed concert halls and critical acclaim worldwide, recreating on stage the now-famous Rambling House, that remote cottage in the West of Ireland where the neighbors gather every year for a communal night before Christmas.
There, the rafters ring with fiery traditional music, Irish Christmas songs, riveting traditional dance, and, of course, stories of life in the remote parish of Teampall an Ghleannt áin, Tomáseen’s birthplace.
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The show invites its audience to come into that cottage, into that world, into that era, with us, and be our neighbors for the night.Storytelling was once the most admired of all the Celtic arts, and A Celtic Christmas is unique in that it is the only nationally touring show that has storytelling at its center: around that center revolve the more-immediately recognized traditional Celtic arts of music, song and dance.
When I was a child it was around the fireplaces of my neighbors’ thatched cottages that I experienced the last remnants of the old communal way of life. The family was the center of the community then, and the community was the center of life itself, the shining axle around which the great wheel of the universe revolved. Stories, music, song and dance were the spokes of that slowly turning wheel.
Press Highlights
...it’s such a joy to experience “Tomáseen Foley’s A Celtic Christmas,” a unique blend of master story-telling, traditional music and dance that captures the heart and soul of Ireland in an evening of nostalgic holiday memories as only the Irish can share.
TIMES-STANDARD (Eureka CA)
We had to move the performance to a venue with twice as many seats . . . the mix of stories, music and dance was perfect. .
– Rockport Opera House (ME)
Move over, Garrison Keillor. As a presenter of the performing arts who’s always looking for a sure bet, I assure Tomáseen delivers. He deserves a world stage.
Craterian Ginger Rogers Theater, Medford, OR