Cathie Ryan

Few performers straddle the worlds of “Irish traditional singer” and “singer-songwriter” as gracefully - or as successfully - as Irish-American singer Cathie Ryan.

As the Boston Globe recently wrote, "Cathie Ryan is a thrilling traditional vocalist, but her honey-pure soprano is equally at home on probing original ballads about a woman's place in the modern world."

Indeed, in the folk hive of Boston, Ryan has headlined Boston College's staunchly traditional Gaelic Roots Festival; but also the hip songwriter mecca Club Passim, where the legends of folk music all cut their teeth. In 2003 one of her songs was included in the famous Irish music collection, A Woman’s Heart – A Decade On placing her amongst Ireland’s finest female vocalists and songwriters. It was the first time Americans were featured in the series and she shared the honor with Allison Krauss, Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris. In recent years, her original songs have been recorded by such distinguished Irish vocalists as Frances Black and Mary Black among others. All of this inspired the LA Times to name her, “One of the leading voices in Celtic music.“