One World Concert Series will present "Innovations in Irish Music" featuring the Karan Casey Band and Flook for an evening of Celtic music at 8 p.m. Saturday, March 4, at the Southern Oregon University Music Recital Hall, Ashland.

The first of two bands to perform will be Grammy-award-winning singer Karan Casey from Ireland. Casey is known for her soulful interpretations of both contemporary and traditional material.

After moving to Dublin for university studies in Italian and Classics, Casey also trained in piano and voice at the Irish School of Music and The Royal Irish Academy of Music.

In 1993 she emigrated to New York and began a jazz degree in Brooklyn’s Long Island University. Later she joined Seamus Egan, Winifred Horan, John Doyle and John Williams to form the group Solas.

The band recorded three albums in just four years, and won NAIRD awards for each. They played with Bela Fleck, Iris De Ment, Jerry Douglas, Stuart Duncan, The Chieftains, Donal Lunny, Sharon Shannon and Paul Winter while touring extensively in America, Europe and Japan.

Advertisement

Casey has performed at many venues including the Kennedy Center, WOMAD USA, A Prairie Home Companion, Mountain Stage, Philadelphia Folk Festival, Strawberry Music Festival, Symphony Space, Knitting Factory, Kentucky Center for the Arts, and participating in Paul Winter’s Solstice Celebrations at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

From Ireland via the U.K. comes Flook, a quartet of two Irish and two British musicians featuring two flutes over a hard-driving rhythm section of guitar and bodhran, an Irish hand drum. Flook gives traditionally rooted tunes a subtle contemporary twist.

The group’s latest recording, "Haven," is steeped in the tradition of jigs and reels but features Flook’s distinctly non-traditional approach to the material.

Flook has toured extensively in the U.S., Europe, Japan and Australia and headlined Peter Gabriel’s WOMAD Festival in Adelaide. They were also nominated as Best Album in the BBC Folk Awards in 2002 and Flook members Sarah Allen and John Joe Kelly were voted Best Female and Male Musicians of the Year by the Irish-American News.

Flook’s current incarnation — Sarah Allen on flutes and accordion, Brian Finnegan on flutes and whistles, John Joe Kelly on bodhran and mandolin and Ed Boyd on guitar and bouzouki — has been together for five years.

Reserved tickets cost $32, general and $16 for SOU students and children up to age 12 are available at SOU’s Raider Aid in the Stevenson Union, the Music Coop in Ashland, at oneworldseries.org on the Web or by calling 552-6461.