Irish eyes are smiling for the holidays

Young Chang

She has stories about playing in little pubs on Sunday afternoons.

They involve parents in the audience and a raffle made possible by a bar

owner in Brooklyn who put up spirits at the end of the evening.

Eileen Ivers chuckles at how she and a makeshift kids band, with

children ages 12 and 13, would trickle out of the pubs and continue

performing on street corners. The young fiddler and her posse would raise

money in hopes of raking in enough to buy air fare to Ireland. They

wanted to take part in Irish music championships -- wanted to return to

the land that defined their musical heritage.

“There’s great spirit, great emotion, it’s very real,” Ivers said of

Ireland. “You hear that in the music. It’s very uplifting and joyous.

It’s really about rhythm and making folks dance.”

Ivers, a virtuoso violinist and fiddler who gained widespread fame as

one of the stars of the musical “Riverdance,” hopes to make Orange County

folks dance today as she performs with the Pacific Symphony Pops

Orchestra at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

“The first premise was we would like to have Eileen Ivers with the

Pacific Symphony,” said John Forsyte, symphony president. “And it became

clear that it would be wonderful to observe the Christmas tradition from

a different tradition’s standpoint.”

Called “A Celtic Holiday with Eileen Ivers,” the concert will feature

traditional classics of the season, Celtic tunes, dancers from the

Thompson School of Irish Dance and more.

Ivers’ style includes an “element of jazz, an element of the

classical, and there’s of course these Irish fiddle traditions, so we’re

really excited by what she’s going to do artistically, as well as from an

entertainment standpoint,” Forsyte said.

Now a New York City resident, Ivers says she was musically inspired by

the spirit of Ireland, her family and a western television show called

“Hee Haw.”

Her father was interested in country music and used to play records in

the house. The show “Hee Haw” offered a cheesy portrayal of country

music, but also featured a fiddler playing an instrument that was colored

red, white and blue. Ivers, 36, remembers watching the show as a child

and wanting to play.

“There was something about that instrument that I really wanted to get

into,” she said.

This was during her step-dancing days, because her parents were intent

on schooling Ivers and her older sister in dance.

“It was horrible,” the performer says about her dancing days. “I

bugged my mom for fiddle lessons.”

Now having established her reputation as an “incredible improviser,”

according to Forsyte, and known equally for her energy, Ivers admits she

still gets that jittery feeling of “something” that excites her before

the show.

“There’s something wrong if you don’t feel a little bit of that,” she

said. “That’s, to me, the time where the audience gets involved. They’re

involved in singing along and clapping along, breaking down that fourth

wall. That’s something every performer strives for.”

SH FYI

* WHAT: “A Celtic Holiday with Eileen Ivers”

* WHEN: 8 p.m. today

* WHERE: Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive,

Costa Mesa

* COST: $25-$77

* CALL: (714) 755-5799