Character Fleadh Irish Band from Chicago, IL

Character Fleadh plays Irish, Scottish, and other Celtic traditional music - lively jigs and reels and polkas, jaunty hornpipes, stately strathspeys and marches, swooning waltzes, achingly beautiful airs, and songs that are humorous, invigorating, and heartbreaking - all to make your event just perfect. The band comprises fiddle, flute/whistles, guitar, bodhran/percussion, and male/female voices. Concertina, accordion, tenor banjo, mandolin, bouzouki, piano/keyboards, and Uilleann pipes are also available. Bass and drums are available for clients who want some rock "oomph." We play a mix of instrumentals and songs, and can go all instrumental if the situation calls for it. We're available for public and private events, from festival concert stages to pub sessions to weddings to birthday parties - we bring the craic and ceol (good times and song) wherever and whenever we play! We have a great selection of beautiful instrumental pieces perfect for wedding ceremony music or memorial services - inquire for details. We can go totally acoustic, use your sound system, or bring our own, as you require. In 2023, we released a pair of albums - the rocked-out Celtic album _Logical Fleadh_ and the more traditional _Acoustic Mixes_ - which received strong critical notices and airplay on Celtic/Irish/Scottish specialty radio stations throughout the US, Canada, Ireland, Scotland, Australia, and New Zealand. A partial accounting of our past performances includes festivals (Bartlett Heritage Days, Crown Point Irish Parade, Peoria Irish Fest, Chicago Scottish Highland Games, Illinois State Fair, Shamrock and Roll, Guinness Oyster Fest), museums (Adler Planetarium, Lombard Historical Society, Cantigny), public libraries (Barrington, Itasca, Lansing, Lincolnwood, Mount Prospect, Oak Lawn, Park Ridge, Skokie, Orland Park), colleges and universities (College of Lake County, Kalamazoo College, Lewis University, Notre Dame, Loyola), concert series (Allerton, Bucktown Garden Walk, Chicago Riverwalk, Oak Park Thursday Nights Out, Des Plaines, Geneva), park districts (Chicago - Nichols Park, Bartlett, Veteran’s, Oswego), cultural organizations (Beverly Art Center, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Wilmette Center for the Arts), bars and restaurants (Duke’s Alehouse, Durty Nellie’s, Fiddlers Hearth, Hailstorm, Horse Thief Hollow, House of Blues, Imperial Oak, Kaiser Tiger, Kerry Piper, Mrs Murphy and Sons Irish Bistro, Milk Money Brewing, Molly Malones, Nevin’s, Nine Irish Brothers, Goose Island, Palmer Place, Sister Lakes Brewing, Timothy O’Tooles, Irish Patriot), churches (Holy Nativity, Old St. Pat’s, Saint Athanasius, Saint Zachary, Saint Philip Neri, Southminster Presbyterian, Wesley United Methodist, Saint Cornelius), retirement/senior events (Alto Wheaton, Autumn Green, Bridgeview, Covenant Living, Bartlett Township, Lincolnwood, Monarch Landing, Park Place Elmhurst, Saint John’s on the Lake, Rolling Meadows), non-profit clients (Barrington Area Community Trust, Bishop McNamara school, Glen Ellyn Lions, Chicago Scots), corporate clients (Tullamore Dew, Aberdeen Investments, Ball Horticultural, Edward Jones, Glenlivet, Metropolitan Capital, University of Glasgow, Whole Foods), and countless private and wedding events.

• Reels, jigs, hornpipes, polkas, slip jigs, hop jigs, airs, waltzes | traditional Irish
• Drinking songs, rebel songs, laments, funny songs, ballads, love songs | traditional Irish, Scottish, and more - just ask, if there's something you want to hear
• Strathspeys, flings, marches, reels, hornpipes, waltzes, slip jigs | traditional Scottish, Nova Scotian, and Cape Breton