Emma Langford headlines Irish concert at Kirkland Art Center
The first night I ever spent in Ireland was in a city in the south-west called Limerick. It’s a wonderful city with open, warm people, but it was not portrayed in the most flattering manner in Frank McCourt’s “Angela’s Ashes”, and I was cautioned not to mention his name when exploring.
The city has undergone a bit of a renaissance since the days when Mr. McCourt was a child, but whatever its faults may have been, for singer/songwriter Emma Langford, it was the perfect place to grow up.
“I’m fiercely proud of the place,” enthuses Langford. “It gets a bad rap and is a bit of an underdog, but it’s a beautiful, vibrant, creative place full of wonderful scrappy people. It’s made me who I am and my community here is why I’m still working in music ten years after I started out.”
On Saturday, Jan. 20, the Kirkland Art Center will welcome the award-winning Irish entertainer to the KAC Gallery stage for a 7:30 p.m. performance.
In 2017, Langford released her debut album “Quiet Giant,” which garnered her an RTÉ Folk Award for Best Emerging Artist and the Irish Post Music Award nomination for best Irish folk act.
In the following years, she was twice nominated for Best Folk Singer at the RTÉ Folk Awards. She received the inaugural Music Network RESONATE residency in 2021, as well as an Arts Council Agility Award, to support continuing research and explorations into women in Irish history.
While the influence of Irish performers like Wallis Bird, Declan O’Rourke, Sinéad O’Connor and Dolores O’Riordan is not unexpected, the impact of artists like Janis Ian, Joni Mitchell, and Eva Cassidy may surprise some.
“Honestly I can’t say anything I do is uniquely my own,” says Langford. “I’m blessed with endless inspiration from the artists around me.”
Two of those artists will join Emma for her Clinton stop. She’ll be playing with two long-standing members of her band, Alec Brown on cello, flute and vocals and Hannah Nic Gearailt on piano and vocals.
Tickets are $20 and are available at https://www.kacny.org/kac-live-tickets/p/emma-langford. KAC members are eligible for a 10% discount.
“We’ll have delicate choral moments, and big brassy Irish folk moments; some weird ambient soundscape pieces, some simple trad-influenced instrumentals,” promises Langford, “and lots of stories and jokes.”
Other than that, because of her insistence that each show be different, predicting what she may play can be difficult.
“I like to put on a slightly different show for each audience. It keeps it interesting for me and for them,” she explains. “I try to make every show feel equally like an intimate and personal experience, invite the audience into my world and hope they’ll invite me into theirs in return.”
This article originally appeared on Observer-Dispatch: KAC welcome Emma Langford for concert
