Once upon a time, Eileen Ivers dreamed of the mechanics of space flight.

"I loved math in school," she says. "And science. When I went to college, I was on target for a career in aeronautical engineering."

Things didn't work out the way she planned, and she couldn't be happier.

Ivers discovered music, and it changed the way she looked at the world.

"It was the heart of it, the wonderful experience of playing with people," she says. "Old music in particular lends itself to sharing. I found it interesting, and very fulfilling."

Before she knew it, music had become her life's work.

"The way you can affect people around you, in a good, healthy way, is what did it for me," she explains. "My music touched people, and when you can do that in life, it's a good thing. I love the power of performance, and the passion I feel when I play."

Now one of the world's most foremost Irish fiddlers, Ivers has become a musical trailblazer, boldly crossing musical boundaries to blend traditional Celtic styles with classical, jazz and a variety of world music styles.

She brings her holiday show, "An Nollaig: An Irish Christmas," to Elizabethtown on Nov. 29.

Not bad for a girl from the Bronx who once dreamed of the stars.

Ivers' New York state of mind was tempered by her first-generation Irish- American parents, who took her to the motherland often enough to instill a love of native melodies. Still, she admits with a chuckle, her first exposure to great fiddle playing wasn't at the feet of some wizened Irish bard; it was as a child, sitting in her parents' home and watching "Hee Haw" on TV.

"The fiddle lends itself to so many emotions," she says during a telephone interview from Fayetteville, Ark., where she was between a school program and an evening concert.

"Fiddle music is usually folk music. For instance, you can touch people with the simplest melody, a good slow air. It's very empowering, the nature of what the instrument can do. And the extreme joy that's in the instrument can get people to move and feel that joy."

Intrigued by the instrument, she developed her love of Irish music and set out to master the tradition. But her strict adherence to the way things had been done before veered to the left one day while she was strolling down 48th Street in Manhattan and passed a music shop with a blue electric fiddle on display in the window.

Ivers had to go in for a closer look, she recalls. While she was admiring the instrument, an employee there showed her how a wah-wah pedal -- made for a guitar -- could work with that fiddle.

"My life changed in a matter of minutes. I walked out of the store completely broke," she remembers.

Ivers has been an integral part of Irish heavyweight ensembles such as Cherish the Ladies and Riverdance. She has recorded with the likes of the Chieftains, the Afro Celt Sound System, Paul Winter and Black 47.

But it was as a solo artist -- and later with her band, Immigrant Soul -- that Ivers really made her mark.

She began exploring other styles of music in earnest, focusing particularly on connections between Irish and African-Caribbean-Latin themes.

Even Ivers' "Hee Haw" roots still are known to make their presence known in her performances.

Some of her concerts pierce the thin line between Irish music and bluegrass, drawing on the Appalachian roots of American fiddle playing and comparing that sound to the Irish traditions that spawned it.

But she also breaks the barriers between Irish music and all kinds of other sounds that a casual listener would never associate with the rolling green hills of Erin.

In fact, when asked if there's anything that wouldn't work with Irish music, Ivers laughs.

"Actually, no," she says.

She thought she might have hit a roadblock when she teamed up with Burhan Ocal, a Turkish multi-instrumentalist who was bringing his darbuka (a finger drum) to the mix.

"The rhythms, the scales, everything is pretty much different," Ivers says. "But we found places where we could meet. ... I think the audience was as surprised as we were."

Ivers -- who's often called the Jimi Hendrix of the violin -- and Ocal together crafted a show "that highlighted the differences and found similarities," she says. "The world is a lot smaller than we think."

Global influences aside, Ivers remains an Irish fiddler -- a style of music she believes will endure because it connects with so many people in different ways.

"It's something I think about a lot," she says. "The music touches people of all ages and ethnicities. And the honesty of the music -- it reaches out to a lot of life's emotions."

Irish music spans the musical spectrum "heart-wrenching slow airs" to very danceable, fast-paced "four on the floor" reels, Ivers explains.

"And it mostly uses friendly, pentatonic scales," she adds. "It feels very familiar to people, even if they don't know why. It's certainly a feel-good music at the end of the day."

Holiday music is also feel-good music, she says, and that's why Ivers enjoys doing Christmas shows.

The performance in Elizabethtown will include "beautiful old Irish carols," she says, as well as standard holiday songs in an Irish setting.

"We take it to some fun places," she says -- such as finding the hornpipe origins of "Deck the Halls" and reinventing "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" as a jig.

"We love this time of year," she says. "The concert is definitely in a spiritual vein. ... These tunes help us get centered. There's so much commercialism out there -- this brings us back to the miracle of this time of year, the extreme joy of it."

Ivers and her band will be joined on stage by the Elizabethtown College Choir and the McGinley School of Irish Dance.

Fiddler Eileen Ivers:

"An Nollaig: An Irish Christmas"

Thurs. (Nov. 29) at 7:30 p.m. $20-$40

Leffler Chapel and

Performance Center, College Ave.

Elizabethtown College. 361-1508

www.gretnamusic.org

Read more: http://lancasteronline.com/article/local/782701_Eileen-Ivers-has-the-world-on-a-string.html#ixzz2GBrnYZzf