Celtic music is one of our most popular styles of music to perform for weddings,
private parties, cocktail hours, corporate events and, of course, St. Patrick’s Day parties.
“Celtic” music has many definitions including:
- Irish and Scottish folk melodies
- Traditional fiddle tunes
- Irish jigs, hornpipes and reels
- Highland bagpipes
- The more commercial genre with New Age influences featuring flutes, harps, and high voices
SoSco Duo plays a variety of Celtic music, but the majority is arrangements of Irish, Scottish and Isle of Man (now a British crown dependency) tunes from the 18th and 19th centuries. These include airs, jigs and slip jigs, carols, songs, marches arranged for flute and guitar, many with variations composed by the arrangers.
Some of the more popular Celtic pieces we perform include:
- Eleanor Plunkett by Turlough O’Carolan, a composer from the 17th century who, although blind, was a harpist, composer and singer who became famous for his keen ability to write beautiful melodies
- Down in Yon Banke from The Skene Manuscript of Scottish tunes from 1610 – 1620
- MacPherson’s Lament by James MacPherson who played it just before his execution at Banff, Aberdeenshire (Scotland) in 1700
- Blackbird Will You Go, a song about a young man who asks the blackbird to go to his true love
- Down by the Salley Gardens, a lovely tune by Hubert Hughes who set the music to Butler Yeats’ poem
- The Parting Glass, a Scottish tune to be played when it’s time to go
In addition to this type of Celtic music, we can play more traditional-sounding Celtic tunes including Annie Laurie, Molly Malone, The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond, When Irish Eyes Are Smiling, Star of the County Down (My Love Nell) and Danny Boy.
Many of these melodies can be made to sound more or less “Celtic” by the way the flute ornaments the melody and the guitar voices the chordal accompaniments, so we play this music how it’s best suited for the situation. We play more traditionally for weddings and parties with Celtic themes and play less traditionally, emphasizing melody line, for events that just require beautiful music of no specific style.
We invite you to listen to some of our Celtic demos to get an idea of our sound. We believe you’ll find that the flute and guitar pair together beautifully in this style.
