At one point during the foot-stomping, two-encore concert Friday night (May 19, 2006) at the Irish Center, Dublin-born uilleann piper Ivan Goff said to the audience, “You all know where Sligo is?”

 

To his left, Brooklyn-born fiddler Tony DeMarco, who learned his craft from Sligo fiddlers, feigned confusion. “It’s in Brooklyn,” he retorted.

 

It must be. But this night,  the duo, who sometimes play together at sessions in New York (where Goff is a Ph.D. candidate in music at New York University and DeMarco a commodities trader), brought Sligo to Philadelphia, playing this popular variation on Irish ceili music that must have inspired the traditional American hoe-down. Sometimes, the foot-tapping was so loud, it sounded like the entire graduating class of the Coyle School of Irish Dancing was stepping (in their hard shoes) through the door.

 

Bouncy, danceable (“I give it a 95, Dick”), Sligo style employs fancy finger and bow work that makes the music seem almost improvised. “It sounds like Irish jazz,” said one audience member, many of whom were musicians.

 

Like Terry Kane, local sean nos (old style) singer and musician, who, with partner John Beatty, was the opening act for Goff and DeMarco. “I’ve played with Tony at a session up in Stroudsburg, and any time I can play with him it’s heaven,” she said.

 

We should only have this much fun in heaven.

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