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CELTIC WOMAN performs in 2006 with a cast that features, from left, Órla Fallon, Méav Ní Mhaolchatha, fiddler Máiréad Nesbitt, Chloë Agnew and Lisa Kelly. Now Alex Sharpe is standing in for Kelly during her maternity leave, and Lynn Hilary has replaced Ní Mhaolchatha, who's pursuing a solo career.

With St. Patrick's Day close at hand, Celtic Woman is at the peak of its natural appeal, as timely as an Andy Williams Christmas show or a visit from Alice Cooper at Halloween.

Extensive touring is Celtic Woman's lifeblood, and as part of its current road trip, the act was in Connecticut for three shows over eight days, including one Friday night at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville and a pair of performances at the Chevrolet Theatre in Wallingford on March 22.

For anyone who has had a channel block on PBS for the last three years, Celtic Woman is a concept show that mixes traditional Irish songs and contemporary fare into a carefully contoured, neoclassical pop mesh. Less New Age-driven than Yanni but more mainstream than Andre Rieu, the group inhabits middle ground in the constellation of public-television mainstays but, despite its name's implications, is not especially representative of any form of Irish music.


When its melting pot coalesces, the act produces such easy listening enchantments as the plush, expansive "The Sky and the Dawn and the Sun." When it overreaches, it risks puzzling diversions along the lines of a rendition of Bobby Darin's "Beyond the Sea" sung by Emerald Isle-spawned robots. It proffers an unapologetically populist summary of a genre's component parts, a Disney-style conflation of elements foreign and familiar into a form as easily digestible for its PBS-forged demographic as an early-bird special.

Even so, the show is really about lovely dresses, evocations of exotic locales and attractive ladies with interlocking, autumn-cool voices. Taken on those terms, it is a hit sonically elegant, visually engaging and likable.

Its formula has been a huge success since the troupe was first assembled for a television special in September 2004. The show debuted on PBS in March of the following year, and the corresponding live CD spent a record-shattering 82 consecutive weeks atop the Billboard World Music album chart, where its run ended only when the group released a chart-topping Christmas CD that is its lone studio album to date, which in turn gave way to a 2007 follow-up live disc, "A New Journey," that even now sits atop the chart.

Fiddler Máiréad Nesbitt is the show's least mechanical moving part, a robust mixer of music and body language who infuses the stage with vitality each time she appears. Speaking from a tour stop over the weekend in Baltimore, the 32-year-old suggests that in the last year the group has seen its audience start to shift toward younger couples and twentysomethings, but acknowledges that "if it wasn't for public television, we absolutely would not be where we are today. The exposure they gave us, and continue to give us, has put us in a wonderful position and has opened the door for us to cross over, like we've done with the show musically."

Nesbitt's cohorts in Celtic Woman are a quartet of vocalists, two of whom weren't among those who appeared at the same two local venues in March last year. Still in place are ?rla Fallon, a redhead with a precise vocal presence who plays the harp for good measure, and Chloë Agnew, an 18-year-old Dublin native whose tone is sweet and appropriately girlish.

New for the current go-round are musical-theater veteran Alex Sharpe, who has taken over for Lisa Kelly during Kelly's maternity leave, and Lynn Hilary. Hilary replaces Méav Ní Mhaolchatha, who in August became the first founding member to leave the group for a solo career.

Nesbitt acknowledges that the shuffle of personnel is a challenge but asserts that the show isn't a franchise of interchangeable parts similar to "Riverdance." She says, "None of our switches were calculated, and really, the music, the songs and the blend of all of us together are the important thing. It's not something where we can wave a magic wand and it all happens. Some concept shows can be perfectly generic, but ours wasn't designed that way. I think we've succeeded so far, anyway in keeping the blend the way we like it and keeping our sound the way we like it."

As far as the act's songs, which are the brainchild of composer/musical director David Downes, Nesbitt maintains that there is a thoughtful method behind every excursion away from the show's Celtic roots. "There's no point in mixing up things if you don't know what you're doing, because that just ends up being messy," she says. "You have respect for the music, where you come from, your culture and the different style you play. I think that's really, really important, and I think we do that very well."

The group's next project will be its first without Ní Mhaolchatha, which will provide a first test of whether the overall concept or its individual pieces is more essential to the ensemble's appeal.

Meanwhile, Celtic Woman retains its golden touch, reason enough for Nesbitt to focus on the present.

"We don't know what's going to happen around the corner," she says. "We're really, really savoring what we have for the moment. We don't take it for granted. We're honored that we have such lively audiences that keep growing and changing, and we really love playing to them."

CELTIC WOMAN performed Friday at 8 p.m. at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville. Tickets were $60 and $45.

By THOMAS KINTNER | SPECIAL TO THE COURANT
    March 13, 2008