From now through Dec. 22 at the Cutler Majestic Theater in Boston, WGBH’s Brian O’Donovan will be hosting A Christmas Celtic Sojourn, an annual concert series that highlights traditional yuletide folk music. This will be the event's 17th season.
O’Donovan and performer Olov Johansson stopped by Boston Public Radio Friday to preview the event.
"We’re so privileged to have this,” O’Donovan said of the annual concert series. "We feel privileged to be in a position to gather people, especially at this time of year."
The series, which began in 2003, highlights music from the Celtic tradition, along with several other folk stylings. Johansson, who hails from Sweden, will be playing music on his nyckelharpa.
"It’s like a big lumpy fiddle,” Johansson joked. "And instead of a grip board, it’s a set of wooden keys that are sliding under the strings."
When asked to address the Celtic–Scandinavian connection, O’Donovan quipped that the event is "part of a wider effort for peace and reconciliation for the invasion of the Vikings back in the eighth century.”
"There is a kind of DNA connection, all jokes aside, by the movement of people across those areas, and I think nowadays particularly, I think this music comes from the same root,” he said.
