The Pasadena Folk Music Society will present renowned harpist and storyteller, Patrick Ball on Saturday, March 7 at 8:00 PM in Beckman Institute Auditorium. Patrick has performed with us numerous times before, and, as usual, this one will combine his magnificent harp music with dramatic storytelling. This is a relatively new show that he has not performed in Pasadena, and we are very pleased and proud to have him back. His steel-stringed harp is a splendid recreation of the great harps that were played in Ireland a thousand years ago. The Washington Post wrote, “Patrick Ball…casts a haunting spell… a graceful and often bittersweet evocation of the past.” and The St Petersburg Times described a similar show as being “richly theatrical…the spell he casts is hauntingly beautiful…Ball embodies his subject with uncanny realism…a gem of a show.” The sound of his harp is rich and evocative, and his masterful storytelling skills drive the story.

The show, Come Dance with Me In Ireland: A Pilgrimage to Yeats Country is based on the life and works of William Butler Yeats. The piece is the story of an elderly Irish couple who had spent their entire adult lives in the states but have returned to Ireland to go on a “Yeats Country” tour to try to recapture some swiftly fading memories of their youth. They visit many of the places beloved by William Butler Yeats: Innisfree, Coole Park, Thoor Ballylee, Knocknarea, Glencar and Drumcliffe. They hear again some of his most beautiful poems, The Lake Isle Of Innisfree, When You Are Old, The Song Of Wandering Aengus, and others. And their story unfolds… Patrick performs the accompanying music on the legendary wire-strung Celtic harp. Made of maple, with 32 brass strings, it is tuned diatonically in the key of D and played with the fingernails.

Patrick has spent considerable time in Ireland in the last few years, having been awarded Visiting Fellowships by the Moore Insitute at the National University of Ireland, Galway, in order to study the life and works of Yeats. He spent a good deal of time in the Archives and Special Collections, but perhaps even more time in the pubs and rambling around Yeats Country, giving this piece the savor of all of these influences. Join us for the adventure!

Tickets are $25 for adults and $5 for children and Caltech students. They are available at the Caltech Ticket Office by calling (626) 395-4652 and at the Caltech Ticket Office at 1200 E. California Boulevard in Pasadena (Southeast corner of Wilson Avenue). Their usual hours are 10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday. Tickets are sold for face value if you come to the Ticket Office. There are fees for phone orders by credit/debit card and for online tickets as well. You can also buy tickets at the door on the night of the show with no additional fees. We begin admitting people into the auditorium at about 7:15 PM.

The show will be in Beckman Institute Auditorium at 400 South Wilson Avenue. On concert night, free parking is available in the lot behind Beckman Auditorium (the large round, white building at the end of Michigan Avenue), but this lot may fill up, especially if there are other events on campus that night. You can always find parking for our shows in the two parking structures on Wilson Avenue, just south of Del Mar Boulevard. On weekends and after 6:00 PM, you may park in spaces that have individual names. Restrictive wording at the structures refers to weekdays before 6:00 PM. There is also parking available on Wilson Avenue itself. Beckman Institute is on the other side of the large lawn (currently a staging area for nearby construction) on Wilson Avenue, on the first floor of the left portion of the building. If you get to the fountain and pools that point toward the white, round, Beckman Auditorium, you have gone too far. See this map. Beckman Institute is building #74 and the parking structures are #123 and #124.