This past September, the NEA honored Billy McComiskey, Baltimore’s Irish button accordion master, with a prestigious National Heritage Fellowship, the highest honor the U.S. bestows on traditional artists. A native of Brooklyn, Billy, who still has a thick New York accent, settled in the Baltimore region in the ‘70s. Since then, Baltimore’s musical community has reaped amazing rewards because of his presence and tutelage. Billy now joins the ranks of B.B. King, Bill Monroe, Mavis Staples and others who have also received this award. His recognition both honors his true virtuosic artistry, his musical impact regionally and internationally, and, as a central figure in the Baltimore Irish music and dance community.

Tonight, we give Billy a true Baltimore Irish celebration with the help from master musicians Mick Moloney, fiddler Athena Tergis, The Old Bay Ceili Band, Billy’s musical sons, and a slew of guest musicians and dancers.

What the NEA says about Billy: In the mid-1970s, McComiskey, (Brendan) Mulvihill, and guitarist Andy O’Brien were invited to play a weekend gig at the Dubliner in Washington, DC by Lou Thompson and Peggy Reardon, who were interested in growing an Irish music community in the region. Soon after, McComiskey played at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival during the U.S. Bicentennial, and after meeting his future wife, Annie, they settled in Baltimore. Over decades, McComiskey has played an integral role in building the now thriving Baltimore-DC Irish traditional music scene, connecting the deep legacy of the Slieve Aughty traditions of New York to the region. Through to today, he teaches musicians all over the world, as well as in his home state, as a master through the Maryland Traditions apprenticeship program. He won the Irish Echo’s Album of the Year for his 2008Outside the Box and was their 2011 Traditional Artist of the Year. He has been invited to share his outstanding talents at the White House, the Kennedy Center, and throughout the U.S., Ireland, and beyond

Mick Moloney, legendary Irish American musician, folklorist and National Heritage Award-winner, and “living cultural treasure,” will lead a virtuosic Celtic Appalachian celebration highlighting the cultural traditions that have blended over centuries in the Blue Ridge Mountains and the North Carolina hills. This fertile exchange has produced some of America’s oldest musical forms, such as bluegrass and old-time music that retain so much of their core DNA first brought to this original American “melting pot” by Scotch-Irish immigrants.

8pm | $25, $22 mbrs | + $3 at the door