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2010 - present
Joseph Sobol is a leading light in the contemporary revival of the cittern, a British Isles ancestor of the guitar (also known in some quarters as the Irish bouzouki).
During his eleven years in Chicago, where he performed regularly with some of America’s top Irish traditional musicians, he developed a ground-breaking four-finger technique for playing the driving rhythms and intricate ornamentation of traditional Irish and Celtic music on cittern, guitar, mandolin, and banjo. He has been a featured performer and teacher at Zoukfest, the Swannanoa Gathering, and the Seattle Cittern Symposium, and was a featured soloist in the world premiere performance of William Jackson’s “Dunn Albanach” suite at the 2002 Celtic Connections Festival in Glasgow.
His 1999 CD, Citternalia: Celtic Music for Cittern received a Homegrown CD Award from Acoustic Guitar Magazine, which called the recording “a watershed project” for finger-picking Irish music on fretted instruments. Joseph toured the country from 1994 through 1999 with his award-winning musical theatre piece In the Deep Heart’s Core: A Mystic Cabaret based on his musical settings of over 30 poems by the towering Irish poet W. B. Yeats.
He has released a cassette and five CDs of music and stories, alone and with his group Kiltartan Road. His latest solo CD, Citternity: Celtic Cittern and Beyond, was released in February, 2013.
2010 - present