photo courtesy of the Saline Celtic Festival

When the Saline Celtic Festival opens its gates Friday evening at Mill Pond Park, it will mark a milestone for the event. This will be the 15th annual festival — 15 years that it’s been the summertime source of All Things Celtic for area Celt-ophiles.

Indeed, if you can’t find an aspect of Celtic culture that you like at the two-day festival (Friday and Saturday), then you probably don’t really need it: Celtic music and dancing will be bountiful, of course, but there will also be Gaelic football matches, a Limerick contest, Celtic cuisine, jousting, a Highland Dance competition, rugby, Celtic breeds of dogs and horses, Celtic birds of prey, historic re-enactments, merchants selling various Celt-themed items, a "Mr. Pretty Legs in Kilt" competition —and, of course, plenty of Irish and Scottish grog.

Music is always one of the fest’s biggest draws, and this year’s roster, between the Friday night Pub in the Park event and Saturday’s day-long lineup, will include such groups / artists as Vishten, Brogue, Beth Patterson, Road Kilt, An Dro, Finvarra’s Wren and Fiddlers Restrung, among others.

And Celtic dance will be performed by the likes of Leim Irish Dance, Ealain Ceime Irish Dance School and the Commonwealth Dance Collective. See http://www.salineceltic.org/celt-stages.html for the full entertainment schedule. Music and dance workshops will also be held.

Vishten is one of the headliners at the Saline Celtic Festival.

Vishten, Beth Patterson and Brogue are the co-headliners, and Celtic Festival artistic director Sheila Graziano is enthusiastic about all three.

“Vishten’s music is very energetic when it’s supposed to be, and very touching when it’s supposed to be,” she says. “The players in the group are real virtuosos, the arrangements are great, and they use foot percussion and dancing, which really makes the music and their performance more powerful.” The group is from Prince Edward Island, and their instrumentation includes fiddle, mandolin, accordion, banjo, guitar, whistles, bodhran and piano.

Patterson, from Louisiana, plays the eight- and 10-stringed bouzouki, and is known for her sharp wit, her sly give-and-take with the audience and her eclecticism. Her music is progressive and quirky, mixing trad-Celt sounds with styles from other cultures. Patterson studied ethnomusicology at University College Cork in Ireland, where she studied the music of Ireland, Africa, India, Indonesia and the Caribbean. “She has a great singing voice, and she’s an award-winning bouzouki player, and she plays very topical songs,” describes Graziano. “Being from Lousiana, she’s not shy about talking about the things that have been going on down there.

“She’s very engaging, and really gets the audience involved.”

Meanwhile, Brogue consists of three musicians and four dancers. The fiddler, Dan McDonald, hails from a very prestigious family of Cape Breton fiddlers. The instrumentation also includes pipes, whistles, mandolin and guitar. “hey play great traditional dance music,” says Graziano — in the tradition that produced such great Cape Breton fiddlers / dancers as Ashley MacIsaac and Natalie MacMaster.

Finvarra’s Wren, meanwhile, is a longtime local favorite. This “family band” features Jim Perkins on vocals and guitar and his wife Cheryl Burns on vocals, dulcimer and bodhran. Their daughter Alison Perkins plays fiddle and tin whistle, while son Asher Perkins plays concertina and button accordion. Joining them for this Celt Fest performance will be Toronto musician Nicolas Brown on uilleann pipes, flute and tin whistle.

Graziano, who has been the Fest’s artistic director ever since its maiden voyage in ’96, likes to add something new each year. And, this year, that ”something new” is a Textile Arts tent, on Saturday, that will feature local weavers and spinners demonstrating their own particular artistry.

This will include a demonstration of “waulking the tweeds” by a group of area textile artists, assembled by local spinner / weaver Mary Underwood. “Waulking” the tweeds is a centuries-old tradition of beating woven material in rhythmic patterns to “full” the fabric and prepare it for various uses.

“When they’re finished weaving, there are still some holes in the fabric, so they all sit around the table and pound the fabric, as they rotate it in a circle,” says Graziano. “And, also in keeping with the tradition, we’ll have a singer on hand, singing ‘waulking’ songs, in rhythm to the pounding, to give the waulkers something to focus on and to motivate them.”

The singing will be led by Renee Ginell, who will also teach the songs to the spectators. And Fest-goers can purchase items made from the woven fabric, like skeins of yarn and clothing, says Graziano.

Something else new this year is the Enchanted Statue. “It’s a style of entertainment where there is a ‘statue’ that looks like it’s made from cement, but there is really a person inside of it,” explains Graziano. “So, as far as anyone can tell, it’s just a display — but when people get up close to it, it moves a bit, or shifts, so it catches your eye in a surprising way.”

Dog lovers will enjoy the sheepdog demonstration, wherein these lovable animals will display their agility and their finely-trained responses to their handler’s instructions.

Celtic merchandise for sale will include “everything from kilts to chain mail armor to jewelry to toys to music CDs,” says Graziano.

She’s proud, she says, that the festival “has just grown and expanded every year, and has become one of the largest festivals in the area, and is respected by performers and competitors alike.”

Although Graziano is not of Irish or Scottish heritage — she’s of Polish and Russian descent — she got bit by the Celtic-music-and-dancing bug early on, back in the late ‘70s, and has become an accomplished step dancer.

“Celtic culture is the embodiment of just so much rich heritage, and it’s pervasive in the bloodlines and history of so many Americans. I just love the music, and the dance really gets my blood boiling.”

Being the artistic director is practically a year-long commitment - Graziano says she’s already thinking about next year’s Fest. And, like everyone on the festival committee, she does it all for free, on a volunteer basis.

“It is a lot of work, but at the end of the day, when the festival is over, to know that we’ve pulled off an event like this, and to witness so much great music and dancing, and seen so many people enjoy it all so much — well, there’s no other feeling like it.”

Kevin Ransom is a free-lance writer who covers music for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at KevinRansom10@aol.com.