Page 18 - Phil Ivers benefit concert program DIGITAL_Neat

Fiddler Eileen Ivers plans benefit

concert for the Plymouth

Philharmonic Orchestra

She will be joined by unIVERSal Roots for a show
spanning multiple musical styles and traditions at
Plymouth Memorial Hall next month.

by David R. Smith wickedlocal.com

PLYMOUTH — Whether playing fast and connections stretch across continents.
joyful or slow and mournful, there’s one Her parents were both born in County
thing Eileen Ivers knows well: “You can’t Mayo in the west of Ireland, but they
fake it on the fiddle,” she said. didn’t meet until their late teens in New
For three decades now, Ivers has brought York City, where her father was renting a
the sound and soul of her instrument to room from her aunt.
global audiences. The couple married and settled in the
She and her band, unIVERSal Roots, Bronx, but Ireland – and its music – was
will bring their eclectic and educational never far away.
performance to Memorial Hall on It was through listening to the Celtic
Saturday, March 11, in a benefit concert songs her parents played that a 9-year-
for the Plymouth Philharmonic Orchestra old Ivers found herself drawn to the
that will explore music from Africa to the fiddle.
Appalachians with more than just a brief
stop in Ireland. After initially pushing for Eileen to learn
piano, her mother gave in and hired
Although the Phil will not be performing instructor Martin Mulvhill to teach her
that evening, Ivers has played with other daughter the violin.
orchestras on numerous occasions.
“I just gravitated towards it,” she said. “I
“I love the power of playing with an
orchestra,” she said, “I’m thrilled to just
do this performance and help in any way
I can.”
All ticket sale proceeds go directly to the
orchestra, whose 107th season is well
underway.

Summers in Ireland, school in the
Bronx

Like her musical interests, Ivers’ family

A young Eileen Ivers with violin
instructor Martin Mulvhill