It is getting down to the wire now for locating and obtaining that special musical gift for a certain someone or even yourself if you have everyone else looked after. 

Celtic Crossings (www.celticcrossings.com), the San Francisco company operated by Cecelia McDonnell and Gearoid O’hAllmhurain, are offering free gift wrapping services with any orders this month which they will expedite in time for Christmas. Two offerings available there for special recommendation are the newly released CD entitled The Independence Suite: Traditional Music from Ireland, Scotland and Cape Breton, and O’hAllmhurain’s handy tome A Pocket History of Irish Traditional Music (O’Brien Press, Dublin in its third edition). 

The Independence Suite CD is one of those tasty compilations gathering the brightest stars in the Celtic music sky like Tommy Peoples, Maeve Donnelly, Geraldine Cotter, Mick O’Brien and Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, Robbie O’Connell, Dougie MacDonald, Barbara MacDonald Mangone and Aine Meenaghan among others. 

The tracks all appear on previous recordings but producer Cecelia McDonnell (Gearoid’s wife) has creatively selected a sampling for those who appreciate the differences and similarities of the vibrant music scene in Ireland, Scotland and Cape Breton, and for uninitiated Celtic music fan, a welcome introduction by some of its most respected practitioners. 

The CD cover appropriately depicts a crossroads dance, and the music inside will have you searching for the next Celtic crossing you can find. The Pocket History originally published in 1998 is a concise 189-page guide to the sensational rise of traditional Irish music from one of Ireland’s most respected observers, now sitting in the Smurfit Chair for Irish Studies at the University of Missouri/St. Louis.