By Allison Schieber
Do you need a date night plan or maybe just a fun night out with friends?
Poor Man’s Gambit, a Celtic band, will perform on Oct. 11 in Herod Hall as the second show of the four-part Northwest Oklahoma Concert series.
Poor Man’s Gambit is an Irish-American trio that plays music from the folk genre.
The group formed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 2015 and has released three albums and completed two international tours, according to the group’s website.
Performances typically have singing and dancing and feature instruments such as the fiddle, button accordion, guitar, bodhran and bouzouki.
This increasingly popular Irish-American group performs at many festivals.
Poor Man’s Gambit consists of Corey Purcell, who plays the button accordion, cittern, bodhran, sings and dance. Purcell competed in dance for 14 years.
Purcell taught himself the Irish-style button accordion. He said he enjoyed traditional Irish music so much that he branched out to learn other instruments.
Federico Betti plays the guitar and fiddle. Betti grew up in Milan, Italy, and that is where he learned how to play the fiddle. He fell in love with traditional Irish music.
In 1996, Betti co-founded a group called Inis Fail, which became a leader of the Italian Irish music scene.
Betti moved to Ireland in 1999 and lived there for 20 years.
Betti moved to Pensylvania in 2017, and that’s when he joined Poor Man’s Gambit.
The last member is Deirdre Lockman, who also plays fiddle, sings and dances.
Lockman has been playing the fiddle since she was four years old. Lockman has held several regional fiddle titles since she started competing. Lockman began Irish step-dancing when she was five years old.
The concert series board chose Poor Man’s Gambit to perform because they enjoy folk music, said Dr. Karsten Longhurst, concert series board member.
Tickets can be purchased at www.nwocs.ludus.com, and tickets will be available at the door. Adult tickets are $20, senior citizens are $15 and students and children’s tickets are $5.