By Andrew Gilbert

@mercurynews.com

Posted: 10/28/2010 12:00:00 AM PDT

For centuries, Celtic music traditions were passed down father to son, a male instrumental confederacy into which few women were welcomed. But in less than a generation, a glorious revolution overturned the old conventions, and nowhere are the results more visible than in the far-flung fiddle community.

Irish-American fiddle star Eileen Ivers is one of the trailblazers, an incandescent player who's created a turbocharged Afro-Celtic sound with her band Immigrant Soul.

But before she expanded the Irish tradition, she immersed herself in it, first making her mark with Mick Moloney's Green Fields of America. The County Limerick troubadour, banjo expert and ethnomusicologist had played an essential role in the Dublin folk revival scene in the late 1960s before relocating to the United States, where he was struck by the rising generation of female players.

Always looking to stir the pot, Moloney created Cherish the Ladies in 1985, an all-female all-star band led by Joanie Madden, the first American to win the senior all-Ireland championship on the tin whistle. Ivers helped found the hugely popular group, which boosted her career and set the stage for Immigrant Soul.

"It was wonderful, because Joanie and I were childhood friends who went to grammar school together in the Bronx," says Ivers, 45, who performs with Immigrant Soul on Wednesday at Villa Montalvo and next Thursday at Berkeley's Freight & Salvage. "The fact that there weren't really other women out there when we started never entered into my psyche.

"The fiddle was something I wanted to play as a kid. It was only years later that someone said this is very unusual."

The dearth of female players may not have made an impression on Ivers, but her example has inspired countless young women to pursue their musical passion.

As a little girl growing up in Cape Breton, Natalie MacMaster had the best role model possible for a life in music. Her father, Buddy MacMaster, is a revered fiddler in the Cape Breton tradition. But in the small Scottish-inflected communities off the coast of Canada's far eastern province Nova Scotia, female fiddlers were few and far between.

"There really weren't other people besides my friends," says MacMaster, 38, who performs Friday at Campbell's Heritage Theatre as part of a series of Bay Area gigs. "Before we started, the three or four women fiddlers I had heard of, half of them were dead and the others seemed very old.

"I was 16 when I discovered Eileen, and she had this new sound I never heard before. I was such a fan, I was in an Eileen phase for two years."

MacMaster first gained fame for her mastery of the Cape Breton sound, which hearkens back to the music of the Scottish Highlands and Outer Hebrides brought to Canada by immigrants fleeing land enclosures and famine in the 18th and 19th centuries. After collecting a shelf-full of East Coast Music Awards for her traditional albums, she started branching out, incorporating elements of jazz and Latin music.

Like Ivers, she's transcended her roots without severing them, collaborating with artists from across the musical spectrum. Fiddle renegade Darol Anger produced MacMaster's 2002 album "Blueprint" (Rounder) in Nashville, surrounding her with stylistically omnivorous string stars such as Béla Fleck, Sam Bush and Edgar Meyer. She appears on two tracks on the eponymous 2005 U.S. debut by Kiran Ahluwalia, the brilliant Indian-born, Toronto-based interpreter of Indo-Persian love songs known as ghazals.

For her Bay Area gigs, MacMaster is revealing a different side of her musical life, collaborating with her husband, Canadian fiddle star Donnell Leahy. Best known as part of the popular Ontario family folk group Leahy, he's stepping out on his own for a tour with his wife for the first time. They're joined by two pianists, Mac Morin from MacMaster's band, and Donnell's sister Erin Leahy.

"It's completely different than our own shows," MacMaster says. "It's pared down, so you hear everything, what we're doing and the pianos. People don't realize that piano is the main accompaniment for fiddle music in our tradition. It's a hell of a style, very rollicking. We're coming with the pure drive from the tradition that we grew up with. It's dance music. Very rhythmical."

While Ivers is performing with her working band, she's also touring with a set of new music she uncovered while doing research on early Irish immigration to America. As the name Immigrant Soul suggests, she's fascinated by the evolution of Irish culture in the New World, particularly the intermingling of Celtic and African-American music and dance.

"We have a huge love and respect for the Irish tradition, and we never want to dilute that element, the gorgeous slow tunes, the heartbreaking tunes about immigrating and lost love, and the dance music, so upbeat and joyous and improvisational," Ivers says. "I love marrying those components with styles that haven't been in the mix but really support each other. It broadens the audience, and makes a lot of new fans of the music."