Winifred Horan Trio
The extraordinary Irish fiddler Winifred Horan brings her new trio to PS21 for a lively evening of Celtic music with Dan Faiella on guitar and Shane Makem on guitar and vocals. Horan was a member of Cherish the Ladies, the stellar all-female Irish music group, and co-founder of the Irish super group Solas. She has also performed with multiple orchestras including the Boston Pops. She is a nine-time champion Irish stepdancer and an All-Ireland fiddle champion, having won an All-Ireland Junior Fiddle Championship at age eleven.

Winifred Horan was born in New York City to Irish parents and studied piano and Irish fiddle playing at a young age. She attended the New England Conservatory in Boston, Massachusetts, where she studied classical violin. She has played with multiple orchestras, including the Boston Pops Orchestra, and string quartets, before joining the all-female Celtic music ensemble Cherish the Ladies in 1990. She co-founded Solas in 1994, performing both fiddle and backing vocals. On her participation in Solas and, in particular, touring with the group, Horan expressed in a 2008 interview: “Traveling the world with Solas has been one of the best things about being in the band.”

Outside of her work with Solas, Horan is, a nine-time champion Irish stepdancer and an All-Ireland fiddle champion, having won an All-Ireland Junior Championship at age eleven. In a December 2001 interview, Horan identified Liz Carroll, Egan, and Sharon Shannon as her top musical influences. Horan released her first solo album, Just One Wish in October 2002 on Shanachie Records. In 2006, she and fellow Solas member Mick McAuley, an accordionist, released Serenade on Compass Records, with covers of “After the Gold Rush” by Neil Young and “Make You Feel My Love” by Bob Dylan. Siobhán Long, writing for The Irish Times, listed Serenade as fifth on her list of top five Irish traditional music albums released in 2006. Horan composed two of the album’s tracks: “Little Mona Lisa” and “A Daisy in December”,which was featured during the third season of the American reality television competitive dance series So You Think You Can Dance.