Moya's New Christmas CD

Moya Brennan, the First Lady of Celtic music, stands at the top of her profession, but you don’t need us to tell you that. You don’t need the role-call of success read out – the 15 million units sold worldwide, the influence of Clannad on the global music scene or the courting by Hollywood for soundtrack treats. You don’t need to be told of the way that Moya’s fingerprints can be found over the whole Celtic music scene or how she has lead the charge in taking the local histories out to an international audience. What you need to know is not what happened in the past, but what the Irish songstress does next.

Which is why Moya’s latest release is particularly intriguing. Still fired up about the success of her most recent studio album – the epic Two Horizons – Moya has decided to turn her thoughts to Christmas. The result is ‘An Irish Christmas’ – about as far away from shopping mall Santas and TV specials as you could hope to get.

Instead, ‘An Irish Christmas’ charts a different course, reviewing the Christmas story through a blend of familiar favourites with a unique Irish twist. From ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’ to ‘In The Bleak Midwinter’, Moya reworks the classics with an intimacy that restores the personal and the passionate to what have become mumbled, half-remembered musical yarns. In her hands, with layered production that adds inches of fresh, crisp depth and those trademark vocals bringing light to the darkest of nights, tracks like ‘Carol Of The Bells’  and ‘What Child is This’ make perfect sense. The listener is placed in the front row of the ultimate nativity opera.

According to Moya, the idea for the album first came to her some time ago: “I’ve been involved in number of other people’s Christmas projects in recent years,” explains Moya, “but I wanted to capture my own Celtic Christmas feeling.”

The result is clear. As an alternative to anodyne interpretations of the meaning of Christmas, Moya’s latest album offers the full story:

Moya will be appearing at two shows next week in Atlanta as part of the Emory Celtic Christmas concerts, an annual event which has become a staple in the Atlanta holiday music calender. The shows are on Saturday 16th and Sunday 17th and tickets are $25

For more details visit Moya's own website