Passim announced on Saturday the first recipients of annual grants from a Brian O’Donovan Legacy Fund, established by the family of the longtime host of GBH’s radio show “A Celtic Sojourn” who died in October 2023. Club Passim is a nonprofit that has roots in Cambridge’s Harvard Square dating back to 1958.
The recipients getting $2,500 to support their tours in New England include Rakish, Eight Feet Tall, Reverie Road, San Miguel Fraser, Brenda Castles and Kavaz, it was announced at the Nightcap Finale show of the weekend’s Boston Celtic Music Festival. One of six grants goes also toward bringing an act to perform at the festival – this year, North Carolina’s Rakish.
Headlined by the Celtic group Dervish, the Saturday show included a tribute to O’Donovan from his wife Lindsay O’Donovan and other members of the Celtic community including Rakish and Hanneke Cassel, according to a Passim press release that was cleared to be published the next morning.
O’Donovan joined GBH in 1986 to host the weekly “A Celtic Sojourn” with traditional and contemporary music and launched annual live “Christmas Celtic Sojourn” shows in the 1990s.
“We’re thrilled to continue Brian O’Donovan’s legacy of uplifting artists and celebrating the rich traditions of Celtic music through these grants,” said Abby Altman, Club Passim’s manager, in the press release. “Through this fund, we support artists who continue to share and evolve the music he loved so dearly. We are happy to fund their work and foster opportunities like BCMFest.”
While some performers winning the O’Donovan grants are from Massachusetts – such as Eight Feet Tall, members of which make music with shoes, voices and whole bodies in addition to instruments – others come as far away as Illinois (Reverie Road), California (San Miguel Fraser), Canada (Kavaz) and Ireland (Brenda Castles).
That is in contrast with Passim’s annual giving that goes to New England artists: Iguana Music Fund grants of more than $634,000 over the past 17 years; and the 2-year-old Gecko Fund grants of $5,000.
Information on the Brian O’Donovan Legacy Fund is here.
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