Eileen Ivers exploded on the Traditional Irish music scene while she was just a teenager. Her mastery of Irish fiddle music was fostered by Martin Mulvihill, a National Heritage Fellow originally from Limerick. Mulvihill took his students to competitions in Ireland and Ivers did exceptionally well there, earning seven All-Ireland fiddle titles before she was twenty years old.
One thing that has been true of Ivers throughout her lengthy career is a willingness to experiment with musical conventions and blur boundaries between disparate styles of music. At 18, she acquired her famous electric blue violin, plugged it in to an amplifier and started playing it through effects boxes. This earned her the moniker “The Jimi Hendrix of the violin.” Later, after listening to a performance by percussionist Kimati Dinizulu at a New York folk festival, she brought the African drum-master into her regular working group. More cross-cultural pollination came during her three-year stint with the show 'River Dance,' which featured an amalgamation of Irish, flamenco and Eastern European influences.
For her appearance at the National Folk Festival, Ivers will join Buddy Connolly on accordion and piano, Ivan Goff on Uillian pipes, Colin Forhan on guitar and banjo, and bodhran player Anna Colliton and will play a traditional set of Irish music. However, you never know what unusual combinations of musical cultures might take place. It would not be unprecedented to catch Ivers jamming with musicians from any part of the country, or from any region of the world.
