Orla Fallon says she's running around a lot these days to make music with Irish supergroup Celtic Woman.
"I'm here in the studios, rehearsing," Fallon says recently in a phone interview from Dublin. "We're going to Japan on Thursday."
This week, it's on to North America. Celtic Woman starts a new tour Wednesday night in Toronto, then visits the Landmark Theatre in Syracuse Thursday night.
"Good. Hectic," Fallon says, describing the rush.
The harp player and vocalist says she and Celtic Woman band mates Chloe Agnew, Lisa Kelly and Meav Ni Mhaolchatha on vocals and Mairead Nesbitt on fiddle were "the right project at the right time."
All five Irish artists have successful solo careers. According to Billboard magazine, the group and its members accomplished a feat last month that also was achieved by KISS and its rockers in 1978.
In the sameweek, the group and each of its members have albums listed in the Top 200 of a Billboard chart. The self-titled album by the group had its 46th- straight week at No. 1 on the Billboard world albums chart the week of Jan. 23, while the solo disc of Agnew was at No. 4, Kelly at No. 9, Ni Mhaolchatha at No. 10, Fallon at No. 11 and Nesbitt at No. 12.
The supergroup was put together by musical director and composer David Downes, artistic director Sharon Browne and executive producer Dave Kavanagh.
They were first introduced to American music fans through a 90-minute concert that premiered on PBS in March 2005.
"It hadn't been done before with an all-female group," Fallon says of the decision to put these five together. "It was done with the Three Tenors, and so many different tenors. Our group is a completely different slant than the usual music scene. David thought it would be nice to put us together, and PBS opened the show to a huge audience. We're eternally grateful to PBS."
A successful tour of the United States followed that show. Fallon, who calls tiny, rural Knockannanna in the southeast of Ireland home, said she and her band mates are ready to return.
"There are five girls in the group, we all love to shop, going to great malls and great shops," Fallon says. "We come back with two or three case loads of extra stuff."
She says she's looking forward to America's warm welcome just as much.
"We've met such lovely people," Fallon says. "The American people always like the Irish."
They likethe Irish's music, too, as Celtic Woman's countrymen Van Morrison, U2 and The Cranberries, just to name a few, have discovered.
But Celtic Woman's music is more akin to that of Irishwoman Enya, with several of her dreamy songs in a repertoire that straddles Celtic, classical and world music. The disc includes the traditional classic "Danny Boy" as well as the song that helped sustain Josh Groban's pop fame, "You Raise Me Up."
"There's such a wide selection," Fallon says. "We do traditional songs, a Disney number, light classical stuff, then big Broadway stuff. You can't pigeonhole us. I think that's part of the charm of the show, that there is something for everybody."
© 2006 The Post-Standard. Used with permission.
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