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Mick helming An Irish Christmas was like a miracle on 51st Street. He was somewhat ambivalent about traditional Christmas fare but he delighted in surfacing lesser-known midwinter musical gems like “The Bushes of Jerusalem” and “The Wren Song” that touched the heart of the holiday, and we all loved finding ways to expand the show beyond Ireland and Christmas to include other cultures. Over the years, An Irish Christmas, and its later iteration, Winter Solstice Celebration, yielded ongoing collaborations with such artists as Tamar Korn, who developed with Mick, Athena and company a stunning Yiddish/Irish medley that became a perennial audience highlight; Grace Nono, whose soaring Filipino chants lifted us out of the concert-in-the-kitchen to a cosmic sacred space; and scores of onstage conversations with everyone from Gabriel Byrne, whose interview one night was magically enhanced by snow falling from the Donaghy stage ceiling (as staff feverishly shoveled the roof during a blizzard), to Loretta Brennan Glucksman, to Ellen McCourt, to Colum McCann, to one of Mick’s favorite special guests, his Greenwich Village hairdresser! All of this was navigated by Maestro Moloney with deftness and aplomb. Year after year, Mick’s musical delights and wryly warm welcome kept audiences coming back each year, lest they’d be missed at the annual holiday soiree.
Uptown Adventures

We made so many memories with Mick over the years in our home on 51st Street – and even more in our uptown “home” at Symphony Space, which we rented for larger shows like If It Wasn’t For the Irish and the Jews, A Tribute to the Famous McNulty’s, An Evening with Harrigan and Hart, and seven annual Celtic Appalachian celebrations. Mick and I both enjoyed long friendships with the late Isaiah Sheffer, founder and artistic director of that great Upper West Side cultural home. I used to love watching audiences pour into Symphony Space with Isaiah from his perch at the top of the entrance stairs; we marveled at our amazing communities coming together to enjoy Mick’s musical journeys through the nourishing intersections of Irish American, New York, and world music history. One of my fondest adventures with Mick at Symphony Space was our Celtic Appalachian show in 2013, which involved a procession of seventy Breton musicians, brought to New York by Charles Kergaravat, parading down the aisles of Symphony Space in a glorious grand finale!

There have been and will continue to be a myriad of testimonials to Mick in the days and weeks and months and years ahead -- each with a powerful story to tell that help compose the mosaic of his astonishing achievements as an academic, musician, bandleader, mentor, and humanitarian. He was a learned scholar who lived in the trenches of his field, an entertainer whose gems of wisdom were diligently researched (and happily adorned with hyperbole for effect!) He was insatiably curious and uncommonly generous with what he’d learned and who he’d met along the way. And he always took care of the audience.

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Thus, wherever he intersected our lives – as collaborator, colleague, mentor, teacher, or entertainer – we could all proudly claim him, because whatever or whoever was the focus of his generous, relentless attention, there was nothing more important in the world, and he wanted you to know it. His legacy is truly vast, and thus so is the sense of loss.

Mick wasn’t much given to sentimentality, but I’ll always remember his signoff at the end of most shows. After recognizing his fellow musicians and the crew, with a rare earnestness, he would look at the audience squarely, thank them for “lifting us up,” and bid a light, fond farewell: “We’ll see you down the road.”

We were all on the same journey, and everyone had a role to play. We still do. Our beloved seanchaí has departed the stage but what gifts he has left within us all to share.