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Celtic Fire: Teasley & Fulk


Details

Tom Teasley full profile / Strings, World Percussion, Hand Pan / 2 musicians

Other players: Tom Teasley Chelle Fulk


Full program notes

Celtic Fire is an intimate collaboration between percussionist Tom Teasley and fiddler Chelle Fulk — two musicians meeting at the crossroads of rhythm and melody.
Chelle’s playing is rooted in Celtic tradition — Irish and Scottish airs, reels, and dance tunes — with a tone that can be both fiery and deeply lyrical. Tom brings a lifetime of study in classical percussion, jazz, and drumming traditions from India, Africa, and the Middle East. In this duo, those worlds don’t compete — they converse.
Frame drums, tambourines, hand percussion, and subtle vocal rhythms weave around the fiddle. A reel might open into improvisation. A slow air may settle into a quiet pulse. Techniques learned from master drummers abroad find their way into Celtic forms, not to change them, but to let them breathe in new ways.
Tom often shares stories from his travels and collaborations as the music unfolds — how rhythm moves across cultures, how traditions echo each other, how melody and pulse shape one another.
In a living-room setting, the music feels close and alive.
Not a big stage performance — but a shared experience.
Fiddle and drum. Fire and space. Tradition and improvisation meeting in real time.


Historical context

Across cultures, string instruments have carried melody, memory, and migration.
From the Celtic fiddle traditions of Ireland and Scotland to bowed instruments of North Africa, the Middle East, and India, string traditions have long told the human story — at dances, in village squares, in courts, and across oceans.
Rhythm evolved along different paths.
In Celtic traditions, pulse often lives inside the bow — in lift, lilt, and the feet of dancers. In much of Africa, India, and the Middle East, rhythm is articulated through dedicated drum traditions — frame drums and hand drums refined over centuries.
Celtic Fire places these lineages in conversation.
Chelle Fulk brings the lift and lyricism of Irish and Scottish repertoire — reels, jigs, and slow airs. Tom Teasley brings frame drums, tambourines, and hand percussion shaped by decades of study with master drummers across cultures.
He also brings the handpan — a modern instrument that grew from the steel drum tradition of Trinidad, itself born from ingenuity and resilience. Its ringing, melodic percussion voice becomes a bridge between string and drum, between pulse and song.
Rather than blending traditions for novelty, the duo explores how these musical languages can coexist — how melody and rhythm inform one another across history.
A reel may sit inside a subtle frame-drum cycle.
A slow air may float over the resonant tones of handpan.
Improvisation becomes the meeting place.
In an intimate setting, bowed string and hand drum — ancient voices — meet a modern steel resonance.
Past and present speak in the same room.


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