Celtic Harp: The Christmas Rose
Patrick Ball was born and raised in California and gave little  thought to such things as where his ancestors came from. He went to school  and supposed, when he thought about it at all, that he would one day be a  lawyer, like his father. But he studied music from time to time and over  the years developed a nodding acquaintance with the piano and the guitar.  At university he continued his flirtatious relationship with music by  playing the tin whistle, principally to annoy his roommate. But at this  time he found that he was irresistibly drawn to words, to the music of  words, to writers who made words sing, to writers from Ireland. Then, when  he began to study history to fulfill his academic requirements, he was not  surprised to find that it was the lyrical, turbulent history of Ireland  that engaged him. So much so, in fact, that when his father died all his  thoughts of law school died with him. He enrolled in graduate school and  soon made his way to Ireland. There he fell in love with the eloquence and  fire of the Irish oral tradition. There he fell in love with the Celtic  harp. And there a few pieces of his life fell into place. For he came to  know that marvelous unity of Irish words, music and history that would  become his passion and, eventually, his livelihood.Patrick returned to  California, was awarded a Master's Degree in History by Dominican College,  and soon discovered that jobs in the field of Irish scholarship were not to  be had for love nor money. So after laboring in various unrewarding lines  of work he set off hitchhiking around the country and finally fetched up at  Penland School of Crafts in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina,  where he lived for two years and worked as a groundsman. There he  encountered a branch of that living oral tradition that had captivated him  in Ireland. And there for him, among the Appalachian storytellers, his love  of the spoken word was rekindled. He returned to Ireland and listened, then  made his way back to California, determined to put his scholarship, his  love of words and his neglected musicianship to some use, to carve out for  himself an occupation from the things that he loved. He sought out a maker  of the rare wire-strung Celtic harp and taught himself to play. He then  gathered the stories he had heard and the history he had learned and  blended them with the music that had so often been their companion.He  now tours extensively throughout the United States and Canada, is  considered one of the premier Celtic harpers and storytellers in the world  today, and has recorded nine instrumental and three spoken word albums  which have sold well over one-half million copies collectively and earned  national awards in both the music and spoken word categories. Along withCeltic Harp and Story, his beguiling blend of music and spoken word  concerts, Patrick has also written and currently performs two solo musical  theater pieces:O'Carolan's Farewell to Music, which brings to the  stage the legendary life, the turbulent times and the glorious music of  Ireland's most celebrated and beloved musician, Turlough O'Carolan, andThe Fine Beauty of the Island, a musical journey to Ireland's  legendary Blasket Islands in search of a deeply haunting tune and the  vanished islanders who played it.Patrick has been awarded grants for his  work by the Zellerbach Family Fund and the California Arts Council and is  the recipient of the Circle of Excellence Award from the National  Storytelling Association.