Page 8 THE VILLADOM TIMES II • March 14, 2012 Area Donohue sings Irish lore with fire and fun by John Koster Irish bard Gabriel Donohue has performed at the White House, at Carnegie Hall, in a volcano crater in Argentina, and with the Boston Pops, but he probably never had a more delighted audience than the folks who packed the Ridgewood Library auditorium on Sunday, March 4. Donohue evoked good-natured laughter even as he taught some lessons in Irish history. He offered familiar and little-known songs. His audience sometimes sang along, and always took in with keen appreciation for his superb musicianship. A pianist and guitarist, Donohue also specializes in touching performances on the penny whistle, the instrument of Irish street and folk music. Born in County Galway, Donohue came to the United States as a youngster in 1978. He made his professional career mostly in New York City and made his home in Ridgewood. Along the way, he has performed with Michael Flatley of Riverdance, The Chieftains, and a group called Jigsaw with Eileen Ivers and Joanie Madden. Donohue joined Ivers, Madden, Joe Derrane, and Felix Dolan at the White House for a performance marking the 1995 Good Friday Peace Accords that calmed the fighting in Northern Ireland. His trip to the volcano crater was part of a 2000 Celebration that included The Chieftains and Art Garfunkel. Donohue’s selections were as eclectic as his itinerary. In one comic riff, he dropped his voice from a mellow light baritone to a rumbling bass and offered the audience his impression first of Johnny Cash, and then of Gloria Gaynor and the Spice Girls songs as they might be sung by Cash. A couple of comic Irish songs that made satiric fun of Scotsmen and Orangemen brought down the house, but his version of “The Wearing of the Green,” one of the anthems of Irish defiance and freedom, was dead serious and delivered with honest emotion. Dononue expanded his audience’s musical background with three Irish harp numbers adapted to guitar, as composed by the legendary blind harpist Derek Bell – Donohue called them “folk baroque” -- and a Gypsy guitar number by Dajango Rheinhardt that used fingers and a fist to hammer out a hypnotic rhythm. He also took the audience on a tour of Ireland county by county – including County Armagh, famous in the life of Saint Patrick. He offered some poetry and a love song by William Butler Yeats, the signature poet of the Irish Renaissance of the later 19th and early 20th centuries. The performance was so popular with the packed audience that it turned out to be double-barreled After the first hour ended, Donohue offered everybody 10 minutes to greet their neighbors and then added a second hour. Just about everybody stayed, and many sang along, with his encouragement, on familiar songs like “The Whistling Gypsy” – made popular by The Highwaymen in the early 1960s – and a song Donohue taught the audience as he went along: “Inch by inch/ Row by row/Oh, to make this garden grow.” The performance was one of the best-attended and best loved of the year at the Ridgewood Library, where Donohue is a regularly featured performer. Gabriel Donohue The Community Relations Advisory Board of Ridgewood and Glen Rock will meet in the third floor conference room at the Village of Ridgewood Municipal Building, 131 North Maple Avenue in Ridgewood, at 7:30 p.m. on March 21. All meetings are open to the public and provide a safe environment for community members who are experiencing or witnessing bias-related crime to be heard. The board is currently considering programs that empower bystand- Advisory board announces meeting ers of bullying. The Community Relations Advisory Board was created to overcome bias attitudes toward persons or groups based on race, color, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or disability. Board members are appointed by the mayors of Ridgewood and Glen Rock. The all-volunteer board meets the third Wednesday of each month. For information, or to report an incident of bias crime, contact the committee at njcrab@gmail.com.