Karan Casey | June 13th, 2023

The Square, Vancouver, Canada

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Karan Casey

Legendary Irish folk singer Karan Casey  has toured extensively throughout North America, Europe and Japan, singing songs charged with a sense of social responsibility in a career spanning over 25 years. The songs draw inspiration from a wide range of sources from the personal to the historical and political, touching on themes of family, loss, love, the empowerment of women and Irish revolutionary struggle.

Karan is joined by Niamh Dunne on fiddle and vocals, guitarist and accordionist Sean Óg Graham (both of the Irish folk band Beoga) and Niall Vallely on concertina. The evocative trio have toured together for several years and this show premieres new material developed and recorded since the start of the pandemic as well as favourites from Karan’s back repertoire. She has also collaborated with such diverse musicians as James Taylor, Bela Fleck, Boston Pops Orchestra, Liam Clancy, Maura O’Connell, The Chieftains, The Dubliners, Peggy Seeger, Karen Matheson, Tim O’Brien, Solas and Lúnasa.

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In 2018, Karan helped to found FairPlé, an organization aimed at achieving fairness and gender balance for female performers in Irish traditional and folk musics.

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Karan has released 11 albums to date. 'Hieroglyphs That Tell the Tale' was released on the Vertical Records Label in 2019 and her song “Down in the Glen” was nominated for Best Original Folk Song at the RTE Folk Awards.

Karan continues to push boundaries for herself and as an artist. She completed a PhD in music in 2019. Her new solo drama performance I Walked into My Head, directed by Sophie Motley, premiered at the Kilkenny Arts Festival in 2021. She is currently working on a new stage show to be produced at the Everyman Theatre in Cork in 2023, as well as an album of new songs about women in the Irish revolutionary period, drawing inspiration from a wide range of sources from the personal to the historical and political, touching on themes of family, loss, love, the empowerment of women and Irish revolutionary struggle.