Celtic Odyssey album cover Celtic Legacy album cover

Narada Celtic Samplers

Narada, the New Age record company, has produced two quite excellent sampler albums that make a great introduction to modern celtic music. They have pulled together some of the best of recent recordings, spanning a range of countries and styles. Not surprisingly, there is a bias towards the more refined and contemporary - no ceili bands or pub ballads here - and there are a few tracks that are more New Age than traditional, but overall, the two collections are very good. The production is flawless and both include extensive liner notes on the featured musicians.

Sound icon Narada was kind enough to make available sound samples from several of the tracks. Whenever this icon appears, you can click on it to get a sample of that track (~30 seconds, 350kb). See the helpfile if you need assistance in setting up audio on your Web browser.

Reviews and samples:

* Celtic Odyssey
* Celtic Legacy

Which is the better? I would go for Celtic Legacy, which is not only longer (65', 16 tracks) than Celtic Odyssey (49', 14 tracks), but also has a few more memorable tunes. Having said that, both are quite similar, so if you like one, you'll probably like the other too.

Other celtic albums from Narada

* Celtic Voices featuring four women singers from different celtic regions.
* Celtic Treasure, a terrific instrumental album, dedicated to the music of Turlough O'Carolan.
* Celtic Spirit, a luscious treat of of Christmas and other celtic spiritual music music from Aoife Ni Fhearraigh, Connie Dover, Billy Jackson and others...

Availability

These albums should be widely available in record stores in North America (try under New Age if you don't see anything in Celtic). If you need more info, or can't find them locally, give Narada a call at 1-800-966-3699. I have also heard that they are both available through the BMG CD club: the number for Celtic Odyssey is 106229 and that for Celtic Legacy is 108277.

You can also order online, at a discount price from CD Universe. Here are the direct links for Celtic Odyssey, Celtic Legacy, Celtic Voices, Celtic Treasure and Celtic Spirit.

Feedback

Narada is interested in receiving feedback about sound samples on the WWW. Please email your comments to them at friends@narada.com.


* To the Ceolas home page.
Gerard Manning
ceolas@celtic.stanford.edu