Celtic celebration coming to Suffolk
Published 9:23 pm Thursday, March 7, 2019
- The “Next Generation Leahy” group will perform at the Suffolk Center for Cultural Arts on March 23. (submitted photo)
High-energy dancing and singing will liven up downtown when the “Next Generation Leahy” tour comes to Suffolk.
Doug Leahy and his family will perform on the evening of March 23 at the Suffolk Center for Cultural Arts, 110 W. Finney Ave. Doug Leahy is part of the second generation of professional musicians in his musically-inclined family, along with his brothers and sisters.
He will be joined by his wife Jennifer and their children Adele, Gregory, Angus, Cecilia, Joseph and Evelyn. The six kids range in age from 8 to 16, and all of them bring their own unique talents to the stage.
“It’s great because they get to put their own personality into it when they play by ear,” Doug said in a phone interview. “It comes out as a very unique kind of sound.”
Each of the children are accomplished multi-instrumentalists. Doug leads his family of musicians in performances that bounce with Celtic songs and hum with the sounds of the fiddle, cello, piano and French accordion.
They’re also singing and clacking on the stage as they do their French-Canadian step-dancing routines, and the two-hour performance is non-stop until the end.
“There’s quite a variety in the show,” Doug said. “Two hours goes by really quickly, because it’s ever-changing. We get to get up and have a lot of fun in two hours.”
The family wants to engage the audience in a way that makes the evening feel less like a performance and more like a party.
“You feed off the interactions that you create with the audience,” Doug said. “When we play our best is when we get a reaction from the audience. It makes it feel so real.”
“Next Generation Leahy” will perform at 8 p.m. at the Suffolk Center for Cultural Arts. Tickets are $25 and $30. Call the Suffolk Center box office at 923-2900 or visit SuffolkCenter.org to purchase tickets.