Deeply rooted in Irish traditional music, Boston-based flute player/singer/composer Shannon Heaton has appeared on stages in four continents… mostly with guitar & bouzouki player Matt Heaton.
Matt & Shannon Heaton have been playing Irish music together since before the turn of the millennium. They started learning tunes and songs in Chicago and spent several winters in County Clare before moving to their adopted home of Boston in 2001.
With care and humor, they’ve created a body of work—original tunes, re-imagined traditional favorites, recordings, instructional books, videos, and podcasts. Along the way Shannon was named Massachusetts Traditional Artist Fellow in 2016, co-founded Boston’s Celtic Music Fest, and launched Irish Music Stories. Matt forged a calling as a kid musician and formed surf rock band The Electric Heaters.
Still their dedication to the duo and to sharing Irish music has remained constant. In 2020 when venues were shuttered, the Heatons created the Virtual Guided Session, an outlet for learners and seasoned players to share tunes and encouragement. They continue to offer tips and tunes for the VGS community.
On stages around the world—and on the small screen, live-streaming from home—Matt and Shannon are world-class American performers with Irish roots and universal appeal. They’re always dreaming up new live and online events, which you can learn about on the EVENTS PAGE and by subscribing to the monthly HEATONTuneShed.
“Their playing is masterful and inventive, their arrangements city-smart and spacious. Still, they never forget that Irish music is, at its heart, a neighborly form, meant for sharing, not showing off.” —The Boston Globe
“Matt and Shannon Heaton’s music is like making a pot of tea and lighting a candle on a dark afternoon.”
SHANNON
Irish flute player Shannon Heaton was exposed to a variety of music traditions early on. By age 16, she’d lived in Nigeria, Thailand, and all over North America. She received a flute degree from Northwestern University. After several winters in County Clare, she settled in her adopted home of Boston in 2001, where she taught for Comhaltas for 10 years, co-founded Boston’s Celtic Music Fest with Laura Cortese, was named 2016 Traditional Artist Fellow by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and was twice named Live Ireland’s Female Artist of the Year.
Shannon is a wildly creative and empowering teacher and excels at making Irish music relevant and accessible to a wide variety of audiences. She hosts the Irish Music Stories Podcast, performs in a duo with guitarist husband Matt Heaton, and brings people together from around the world through her ShannonHeatonMusic YouTube channel.
MATT
Matt Heaton found the guitar after a disastrous start on the trumpet. For $35, he landed a Harmony Electric at a rummage sale in his neighborhood in Pittsburgh. Before landing in Irish traditional music circles, he played in rock bands, fronted a tango quartet, and turned pages and sang in the choir for his organist father Charles Huddleston Heaton. Irish music is home for Matt now, and has taken him around the globe with his wife Shannon, singer Karan Casey, the Boys of the Lough and many others. He also performs music for kids and has received multiple awards for his engaging family music performances. And his instrumental surf rock trio The Electric Heaters gives him an outlet for all his musical ideas that don’t fit anywhere else.
Because of his versatility and diverse profile, Matt is really good at simplifying elevated musical concepts. He’s contributed indispensable accompaniment-centered content and dry wit on the ShannonHeatonMusic YouTube channel.
A few performances with Matt Heaton:
Live at the Music Emporium, Lexington, Mass
Millennium Stage, Washington, D.C.
Livestream from the Heaton home
Live at SRU, Surathani, Thailand
Live at Acadia Trad School, Bar Harbor, Maine
Video shot in the Heaton home
BIGGER STORY:
Medford, Massachusetts
February 2021
When people ask me where I’m from, I usually say that Boston is my adopted home, but I started out in Chicago. Chicago is where I first became deeply involved in Irish music. It’s the place I’d lived the longest up to that point. (And it’s easier to say you’re from one place.)
But I didn’t really GET to Chicago until I was 18. Before that I’d lived in:
There were good, kind people in Southern Illinois. And in rural Wisconsin, where we’d summer with cousins. And in my dad’s homeland of Spokane, Washington, where we’d visit Grandma and Grandpa Murphy and play Kings in the Corners.
But all good things come to an end. And new chapters begin.
My dad died just before my 13th birthday, and we moved back to the Milwaukee area, just two miles away from where we’d started, in the comfortable town of Shorewood. The local high school had a robust music and drama program. I got to play in the pit band for musicals on the silver flute and alto sax.
Two years and one more Ireland visit later, a few of my mom’s grad students encouraged me to revisit the tin whistle. Aidan, Chris, and John even arranged a backstage visit with Matt Molloy, whose music had rocked my world since that childhood trip to Ireland. And with that, I was back in Irish music land…
… until my first year of college at Achiwa Seuksa in Suphanburi, Thailand. I played lots of Thai music that year. But it was “Pleng Pae,” not the “Galway Rambler.” Still, it was a social music tradition, and our little tribe got together to learn tunes and have meals together. I knew I wanted to keep that going, even after leaving Thailand.
So after an interlude in rural Wisconsin with my beloved WOAJ (Weird Old Aunt Jane) and an extended Euro backpacking trip, I headed to Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. The closest Thai music group was at Wat Dhammaram on the far South side of Chicago. It took over two hours each way on the bus, and I couldn’t keep up the commute. So I ended up in the local Irish pub for my social music fix.
At the Evanston Sunday session, I heard flute players Brendan and Siobhan McKinney, John Creabhan, sometimes Kevin Henry and Larry Nugent. Then my friend Tom Peterson found an old German 8-keyed flute for me. It had a huge crack in the headjoint, and I had to seal it up with beeswax in order to get a sound out of it. But it was my way in.
In between music theory, orchestra rehearsal, and anthropology classes at the university, I’d play tunes at Tommy Nevins. The more I showed up, the more Brendan, Siobhan, and accordion player John Williams brought in albums for me to borrow. As I delved deeper, I learned that some of my favorite flute players were also singers: Josie McDermott, Cathall McConnell, Marcas O’Murchu. I listened to more singers and even learned a few songs on my own (the first ones were from a recording my mom had made of Paddy Tunney, whose son John had helped arrange that Matt Molloy backstage visit back in the day).
I started going to Ireland regularly. And I found singing gatherings and set dance events. I made friends. When I met Matt Heaton back in Evanston, I took him with me for the next trip to Ireland.
Matt and I graduated from college. We got married. We fell into a habit of going to Clare in the winters. And we took trips to Boston and New York. In the late 90s we tried something really different and moved to Boulder, Colorado. We did a lot of mountain biking. There were Irish music sessions there, too. And we started up a tune learning session and formed our band Siúcra with singer Beth Leachman and later fiddle player Sam Amidon. And we kept going back to Ireland, which is where we were on September 11, 2001.
After the Twin Towers attacks, flights were grounded in Ireland for a while. And after our unexpected extended stay in Galway we moved to Boston. Good Irish music town. And I had an Aunt in JP and a cousin in Cambridge.
We started out in Somerville, Mass in October 2001, in a little apartment near the Burren Pub. We played tunes seven nights a week. In 2004 I founded Boston’s Celtic Music Fest with my friend Laura Cortese. And then Matt and I started performing extensively as a duo, including big Fulbright/State Department tours through Thailand and month-long concert tours in Germany. Between trips, we bought an old home in Medford and gradually fixed it up.
Almost 25 years later, we’re still here, with dear friends we’ve made through Irish music, and the Thai temple, and the local public school our son (a Medford native) attends. I’ve never lived anywhere as long as here, and we have no plans to leave. I’ve received support from my community and from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, who awarded me an Artist Fellowship in 2016 (which I used to launch the Irish Music Stories project, a culture and oral history podcast and collection of essays).
So, where am I from? It’s complicated. But the short answer is I started playing Irish music in Chicago and now live in Boston. Ask me again in 25 years.