Flute Player Sean Grace Celebrates St. Patrick's Day with Irish Music

Award-winning recording artist, multi-instrumentalist and virtuoso flute player, Sean Grace brought the spirit of St. Patrick's Day to the during Sunday afternoon's performance.  The program featured Irish music, storytelling and "good crac" or banter.

Through classic, contemporary and original works, Grace treated the audience to his uncanny ability to meld classical, jazz, Celtic-folk and progressive rock sounds.

The consummate professional and engaging live performer wowed the crowd with his unique style of musicianship on his many flutes and whistles.  His boundless energy was further evidenced as he danced with wild abandon wielding frame drums and hand percussion.

He was joined on the stage by talented musicians:  Jason Crosby on keyboard and Glen Saunders on bass.

Grace, 46, who lives in Washington D.C. said, "When playing in New York, these are my A-list guys ... A lot of these tunes, that's the first time we've played them.  I haven't played with these guys in a long time.  They're amazing musicians, able to pick up things quick."

The son of Irish immigrant parents, and the youngest of eight, Grace comes from a family of Irish dancers, and would often go to the Irish American Center in Mineola.  There, at five years old, he spotted a man playing the tin whistle.  Seeing that the young boy showed a keen interest in the instrument, the generous musician let him keep it.

Since his parents couldn't find a whistle teacher they got him a flute instead. 

"I said okay, I'll give it a shot," recalled Grace.

He began studying the flute at eight years old, and at just 10 performed solo at Carnegie Hall.  At 11, he won the U.S. Championship for Irish traditional music on both the flute and tin whistle.  By 12, he entered the Julliard School of Music on scholarship.  By the time the wunderkind graduated from high school he served the dual roles of a featured soloist with a symphony orchestra one night, and on the next shared the stage with legendary jazz greats at New York's Bottom Line.

As a child prodigy Grace demonstrated a rare musical gift. Whilst performing Mozart flute concertos in front of awed audiences as a preteen was exciting, he found it far more rewarding playing Jethro Tull cover songs with his junior high school rock band.

These diverse early experiences laid the foundation for this singular, groundbreaking composer and performer.

Grace's work has drawn comparisons to both James Galway and his idol, rock flutist, Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson, whom he got to meet in Frankfurt Germany and kept in touch with over the years.

According to Grace's website Anderson was quoted calling the artist's 2004 release New Frontiers, "an excellent CD which I enjoyed enormously."

"I derive some of my influence from the rock of Ian Anderson mixed with Celtic, Irish, jazz and classical," explained Grace.

His first nationally distributed album was Celtic Voyage.  Following its release in 1995, it quickly became the best selling record in its category for Borders Books & Music.  That same year, the Sean Grace Band headlined a series of concerts for Amnesty International, raising money and awareness for Irish prisoners of war.

Grace's 2004 album New Frontiers was one of XM Satellite Radio's "Best Picks" of that year and went on to become the number one record of the year on over 200 new age/ world music radio stations worldwide.

Throughout the past several years Grace has performed over 150 concerts.  In 2008, he was picked to be the featured artist at the Emerging Artist concert presented by the renowned Mann Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia.

During the recent concert, in between songs Grace told a few jokes such as this witty one-liner:  "Murphy told Quinn, he said, 'My wife is driving me to drink.'  Quinn thinks he's very lucky, because my wife makes me walk."

Another one told by Grace that exemplifies Irish wit was about a man named Patty who was trying to find a parking spot in New York City.  "He said, 'Lord, please God if you find me a space I'll go to mass every Sunday, give up me Irish whiskey.'  All of the sudden a parking space shows up and he goes, 'Never mind, I found one.'"

The set included originals "Earth Song" and "Lark Spur."  The latter featured a South American instrument made out of clay that mimics bird sounds called an ocarina.

"This time of year I always like to play a couple of tunes mom would approve of; this one goes out to her," said Grace before beginning "Danny Boy", a song that needed no introduction.

"When I was a boy my father loomed large in my life, though he was a very small man," said Grace about his father from Belfast who passed away a few years back.  "He believed in Irish nationalism, and fought against the concept of England ruling Ireland."

His father came to the United States as a political refugee in the '50s, and struggled against British imperialism.  Grace learned many stories and legends of Irish characters and history from him.

Grace recited a poem called "The Man from God Knows Where," which is about the old jail at Downpatrick where many Irish rebels were executed.

Mike Leveen from Holbrook said the presentation demonstrated, "the Irish way of cordiality and happiness, sometimes under the toughest of circumstances."

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