Wel­come to a Celtic Music (and more!) Fes­ti­val fea­tur­ing (among many oth­er things) music from around the Celtic Lands, along­side music inspired by or express­ing Celtic themes, in cel­e­bra­tion of Imbolc.

Today you’ll hear a wide vari­ety of Celtic and Celtic-influ­enced mate­r­i­al, with orches­tral works like Shaun Dav­ey’s Bren­dan Voy­age; a wide range of per­for­mances by tra­di­tion­al Celtic artists; and music inspired by the Celtic her­itage. There are also some large-scale per­for­mances from artists like Celtic Woman, Celtic Thun­der and even the Cincin­nati Pops! And lis­ten out for some of the Celtic/Goddess themed pieces from Nashville-based artist Lau­ra Pow­ers’ Leg­ends of the God­dess tril­o­gy, along with Rut­land Boughton’s sel­­dom-heard clas­sic, first per­formed in Glas­ton­bury between the wars, The Immor­tal Hour.

Then tune in at 12 noon or 4pm Pacif­ic Time/SLT, 8pm or mid­night in the UK, for episodes from our orig­i­nal series, “Where Have You Been?”, where we dis­cuss things to do and places to vis­it across the Sec­ond Life Grid. And catch “Engines of Our Inge­nu­ity” from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hous­ton every four hours from 4am Pacific.

Imbolc, also called Saint Brigid’s Day, is a Gael­ic tra­di­tion­al fes­ti­val. It marks the begin­ning of spring, and for Chris­tians it is the feast day of Saint Brigid, Ire­land’s matron saint. It is held on 1 Feb­ru­ary, which is about halfway between the win­ter sol­stice and the spring equinox. His­tor­i­cal­ly, its tra­di­tions were wide­ly observed through­out Ire­land, Scot­land and the Isle of Man. It is one of the four Gael­ic sea­son­al festivals—along with Beal­taine, Lugh­nasadh and Samhain.

Imbolc is men­tioned in ear­ly Irish lit­er­a­ture, and there is evi­dence sug­gest­ing it was also an impor­tant date in ancient times. It is believed that Imbolc was orig­i­nal­ly a pagan fes­ti­val asso­ci­at­ed with the god­dess Brigid, and that it was Chris­tian­ized as the feast day of Saint Brigid, who could be a Chris­tian­iza­tion of the goddess.

“Imbolc Fes­ti­val Feb­ru­ary 3 2007” by Steven Earn­shaw is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 .
“mars­den imbolc Fire Car­ri­ers” by Paul Steven­son is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0