Chieftains Spice It Up With Spanish Flavor

Long before there was a World Wide Web linking the peoples of the earth electronically, there were the Chieftains, making the connection the old-fashioned way: with music.

Ireland’s best-known purveyors of traditional music always have excelled at establishing connections with unlikely places from China to Nashville. The veteran sextet’s latest album, the Grammy-winning “Santiago,” traces threads common to Irish music and that of Galicia in northwestern Spain.

For two hours Thursday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, where they were presented by the Philharmonic Society of Orange County, the Chieftains drew upon rhythms and melodies that were distinctly Spanish yet still revealed solidly recognizable Celtic qualities.

The combination of elements has upped the already high performance standards of this consistently inspiring band, broadening the sonic palette from which the Chieftains work and providing sufficient new material to break up some of the repetition that has seeped into their sets in recent years.

“Maneo” succinctly crossed at least three cultures: Briskly strummed Spanish guitars were joined by Irish uillean (elbow) pipes, flute, fiddles and tin whistle--and then, a deft shift from major to minor key brought an Islamic influence into the picture.

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Further pumping the spirits was guest Carlos Nunez, whose bright work on pipes (the Galician model looks and sounds more like Scottish bagpipes than the Irish uillean pipes), tin whistle and recorder added spice, as did his foot-stamping stage presence.

The Galician numbers for the most part followed the structure of the Irish folk tunes, built on four-bar building blocks that give way one by one to new melodies, keeping repetition at bay.

The program was fleshed out with quintessentially Celtic selections. Solo spots, doled out as usual over the course of the evening, included fiddler Sean Keane’s dazzling reading of “Iron Man,” a slowed-down Scottish reel. His fellow fiddler Martin Fay came through with a pair of achingly beautiful airs.

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Leader Paddy Moloney played a brief medley of themes from a symphony he is composing to commemorate the great Irish potato famine of the mid-19th century (“our Holocaust,” he called it). He acknowledged that he has a long way to go before the work is finished, but the seven-minute snippet--which moved from a mournful air to a buoyant, upbeat closing--indicated that something very powerful may be in store.

Moloney’s quick way with a quip further contributed to an evening high on freshness and spontaneity.

Naturally, the Chieftains brought along a pair of Irish step-dancers, as they have for years, long before “Riverdance” and PBS turned this into the latest dance trend.