Fr Charlie Coen

Fr Charlie Coen (born 1933), is a younger brother of Jack Coen, and followed him to New York in 1955. After working as a bellhop in the Catskills for a few years, he entered a seminary and was ordained in 1968. His clerical duties did not greatly interfere with his music making, and in 1976 he accomplished the rare feat of taking three All-Ireland championships (concertina, whistle and flute slow airs) in one day. Father Charlie would later win an English-language singing championship as well. Charlie also played with Mick Moloney’s Green Fields of America troupe and, in addition to his duet recording with his brother Jack, made his own solo recording on the Green Linnet label in 1979. In the 1990s, he produced a concert series at the Rhinecliff Hotel a few miles up the Hudson River from the city, that introduced a generation of young musicians in the area to the Irish tradition.