To celebrate the arrival of winter, Ensemble Galilei teams up with journalist Neal Conan to present A Winter's Night, an evening of prose, poetry, and Celtic and Scandinavian folk music.
Ensemble Galilei performs unique blend of Irish, Scottish, early and original music on a variety of ancient and modern instruments, including the Celtic harp, Scottish small pipes, gamba, fiddle, recorders, whistles and percussion. The group is equally at home with Irish Reels, Medieval Cantiges, and English country dance tunes. Since beginning in 1990, Ensemble Galilei has redefined the boundaries of chamber music, created new work, seized opportunities for collaborative relationships, and pushed the envelope in a series of innovative projects that explore combinations of images, words, and music. The group features Ryan McKasson on fiddle and viola, Jackie Moran on percussion, Sue Richards on Celtic harp, Kieran O'Hare on uillean pipes and Carolyn Anderson Surrick on viola da gamba.
Neal Conan may be the luckiest man on earth. With no discernable musical skill whatsoever, he managed to achieve a lifelong ambition to perform on stage with a great band. Neal first read poetry and stories to the music of Ensemble Galilei in 2000 and worked with the group to put together both “A Universe of Dreams,” which debuted in 2004, and “First Person: Stories from the Edge of the World,” which premiered at the National Geographic Society in 2007.
An award winning journalist, Neal was the final host of Talk of the Nation on NPR, where he brought decades of news and radio experience to the program. He served as NPR’s Bureau Chief in both New York and London and covered national political conventions, confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominees and a presidential impeachment. For five years, he hosted Weekly Edition: The Best of NPR News. On the other side of the microphone, Neal served as editor, producer, and executive producer of NPR’s flagship evening newsmagazine, All Things Considered and, at various times, acted as NPR’s foreign editor, managing editor, and news director. He tours nationally with Ensemble Galilei as the narrator and host of A Universe of Dreams, which features images from the Hubble Space Telescope, and First Person: Seeing America, which features selected images from the photography collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
To celebrate the arrival of winter, Ensemble Galilei teams up with journalist Neal Conan to present A Winter's Night, an evening of prose, poetry, and Celtic and Scandinavian folk music. 
