Legends of the Celtic Harps: A Winter Gift

Celtic Harpers at Arena Theater

Legends of the Celtic Harp will perform at Arena Theater on Sunday, Nov. 20, at 3 p.m. Doors will open at 2:30 p.m. Tickets are $20.

The trio, with Patrick Ball, Lisa Lynne and Aryeh Frankfurter, will present a new program, “A Winter Gift,” which offers a musical journey into a magical world of Irish and English literature, Celtic legend and traditional folk beliefs and draw out tales such as “A Child’s Christmas in Wales,” a chapter from “The Wind in the Willows,” and passages from Shakespeare, William Butler Yeats, and Thomas Hardy, and mingle them with beloved and original pieces of seasonal music. “All of the music and all of the stories touch on the central message of the Christmas/Winter season,” said Lynne. “Hope. Hope for something wondrous. Hope for a light in the darkness.”

The harpers have toured extensively throughout the U.S. to sold-out audiences. One recent review said, “Legends of the Celtic Harp is a blend of music and oratory, falling somewhere between concert and theater. It spanned nearly the range of human feeling, from humor to tragedy, tenderness to rage, reality to mysticism, and more besides. The effects were powerful and exhilarating.”

Award-winning story-teller Ball has recorded nine instrumental  and three  spoken  word  albums,  which  have  sold over a half-million copies internationally and have won national awards in both  music  and  spoken word categories. Lynne has gained worldwide recognition for her original music featuring Celtic harp. Her original melodies have repeatedly placed in the Top 10 and Top 20 on the Billboard New Age music charts. Her music can be heard throughout the award-winning PBS special “Alone in the Wilderness.” Multi-instrumentalist Frankfurter is a renowned Celtic harper, who went from progressive rock violin to intricate Swedish folk and Celtic music.  Recently he has added the rare, wire-strung Swedish nyckelharpa to his repertoire.

Advance tickets can be  purchased  online through the Arena Theater website at www.arenatheater.org; at  Four-Eyed Frog  Books  and The Sea  Trader  in  Gualala; Arena Market in Point Arena. The Arena Theater snack stand will be open.