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"We did a set where we went from two jigs, one of them was 'Morrison's Jig,' into 'Brenda Stubbert's Reel,' which is very driving," Leibowitz said. "You change from a jig into a reel, and there's a perceived increase in step. You have more notes per beat. The whole tempo doesn't change, but it seems faster and people whooped."
If you change a tune and an audience whoops, Leibowitz went on to say, you know you've got them. And so the Grateful Celtics - now Leibowitz (pennywhistle), Cecily Morris (silverflute), Chris Pace (guitar) and Rob Bosworth (drums/bodhran) - continue to make inroads in Juneau's dance scene. The band has played at least twice every season for the last two seasons, once at Centennial Hall and once during the Thursday nights at the old Capital School gym.
The Celtics play their first hour-long dance set at 11 p.m. Saturday night at the armory.
"We're pretty solid, but we need work," Leibowitz said. "What makes it all fun is when you get a tune that's just driving, and people are out there responding. The proof is that they're moving."
Leibowitz has been a familiar face at the festival for the last seven years, whether playing with the Grateful Celtics or earlier incarnations. Bill Thompson, Corin Whittemore, Steve Bodnar, Erin Tilley and Charles Rohrbacher have played in various forms of the band. The first, a trio named Tin, Skin and Strings, lasted about a year.
Leibowitz grew up in Juneau and attended the festival when she was younger. Her parents were members, but she was a classical pianist, and the music festival didn't seem "relevant" to what she was studying.
"I didn't realize what the festival was," she said. "I was young and ignorant. I liked it, but it wasn't the major event of the year that it is for me now."
On a break between undergraduate and graduate school in 1991, she filled out an application on a lark and won a spot on a weekend afternoon. She played Irish tunes on solo pennywhistle.
"You get the good, the bad, the beginners and the experts," she said. "And because it's only a 15-minute set, even if you aren't really good, you can't mess up too badly."
Leibowitz played sporadically with Jim Stey's Contradictions during breaks from law school and returned to Juneau at the end of 1995, shortly after earning her degree at the University of Michigan. (She played with a few groups of stage dancers in Michigan.) After finding a job, she formed the first version of the Grateful Celtics.
"We use a lot of traditional Irish material, and we use some traditional American contra dance music," Leibowitz said. "We stick a few of our songs into our sets, but a lot of the stuff that people would recognize ('Morrison's Jig,' 'Cooley's Reel,' 'Liberty,' 'Father Kelly,' 'Moon and Seven Stars') works well."
   
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