Arts and Entertainment

St. Patrick’s concert featuring Celtic music coming to Westminster United Church

March 12, 2026   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

The band Chroí, Gaelic for “Heart,” will be entertaining us as only the Irish can at Westminster United Church in Orangeville on Saturday, March 21.

Beginning at 7 p.m., this concert is part of a four-date tour celebrating St. Patrick’s Day and the joy of Irish and Celtic music and stories.

Chris Dawes, the band’s founder, joined the Citizen for an interview late last week. Dawes has been part of the local music scene as the accompanist for the Achill Choral Society since the 1990s and, for a short time, their conductor.

As a musician of organ, piano, keyboard at least, Dawes works on many platforms as a conductor and keyboard collaborator. Living in Georgetown with his family, Dawes is a prominent figure in many Southern Ontario musical communities. He has been conducting programs with the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music and as a director of Canada’s Summer Institute of Church Music since 2004. He is especially well known for his work with choirs.

Busy as that sounds, Dawes very much admires and enjoys Celtic music, laying claim to the heritage through his Irish-born Fitzpatrick grandmother. Perhaps that was in part why he founded the band Chroí in 2013; they performed until 2019, when, like everyone else, Covid shut them down. In fact, there were plans in 2020 for them to bring their music to Westminster United Church. Fast forward to March 21, 2026.

Coming back even now, as they would have done then and joining Dawes are Jenna Gallagher on the violin, originally a Suzuki violin player, learning by ear. She went on to study at Wilfrid Laurier University under Jeremy Bell of the Penderecki String Quartet for a Bachelor of Music in Performance. Bell has since moved to Eastern Ontario with her family.

And Doug MacNaughton, beginning his singing career with the Edmonton Opera, has sung across Canada and the U.S.

Now, “against his better judgement,” living in New York, MacNaughton has come up to join Chroí for their tour, to play and sing in the concerts with the band.

“Doug’s spouse is the tech director for the Met Opera,” Dawes explained.

He added, “As a MacNaughton, he’s Scottish and some of that colours the show too.”

Paul Ormandy, based in Orangeville, plays the Bodhrán as the Band’s percussionist and is their heartbeat for this, their “adventuresome trail.”

“It’s a great thing that Jenna and Doug are back for this concert,” said Dawes. “It was Nancy [Dettbarn, Minister of Music, pianist, and organist for Westminster United Church] who suggested they come to Orangeville.”

He continued, “This concert is a little different from the standard Irish gig –– they tend to be played in bars and pubs. We started in churches singing and telling stories, where we can tell the tales that come with the songs in the quieter venue.”

One such song and story is about the “peg and awl,” traditional tools of the shoemakers, how, when shoes were first made by machines, the shoemakers suffered. There are stories about the people immigrating from Ireland to America, who were abused in the New World. It was a time of pride, demanding justice and protest.

“We don’t fit in a pub scene,” he remarked, “more in churches, small festivals, the Goderich [Celtic Roots] Festival.”

For the Chroí concert program, all four performers sing and play their instruments, but there are yet more treats in store for the audiences.

“They have gone all out,” he declared.

The treats someone is preparing for the audience were named: Guinness Brownies, Earl Grey Shortbread and Bailey’s Truffles at a reception after the show, available as a fundraiser for the church’s much-needed new roof.

Dawes mentioned that he did not travel with the Achill on their journeys to Europe, but he did join them to go to Ireland, specifically to the Achill village and area of Ireland, after which the choir is named. It made a profound impression on him. The hospitality and humour of the people he encountered could only meet with deep affection for them.

Be sure to come to Chroí, as Dawes said, “People like the feeling of Irish music, and they don’t necessarily want a beer. This is a different feeling.

“We just love sharing Celtic music with other people.”

Tickets are available at BookLore on First Street and at Westminster United Church during office hours.

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