Crossroads Concerts: Irish & Albanian Fusion

On Thursday, June 11, 2026, the New York Irish Center in Long Island City hosts a two-hour concert that puts Albanian string and frame-drum traditions in the same room as Irish trad fiddle and bodhrán. It is a small, focused show — five musicians, one stage, two musical languages that share more than most people expect.

The Essentials

• Date: Thursday, June 11, 2026
• Time: 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
• Place: New York Irish Center, 1040 Jackson Ave, Long Island City, NY 11101
• Cost: Paid admission. The Eventbrite listing for this specific concert does not show a confirmed ticket price in the sources we checked — other shows on the same organizer page have started around $28, but that figure is not attached to this concert. Check the Eventbrite page before you go.
• Weather: Indoor venue. Mid-June in Long Island City is usually warm and humid in the evening, sometimes with thunderstorms rolling through. The show runs rain or shine because it is inside.

Getting There

The New York Irish Center sits at 1040 Jackson Ave in Long Island City, a few blocks in from the East River and within walking distance of the Court Square area. If you are driving in from Queens or Brooklyn, the Long Island Expressway and the Pulaski Bridge both feed into this part of LIC. Coming from Manhattan, the Queensboro Bridge and the Queens-Midtown Tunnel are the closest crossings.

Street parking exists in the surrounding blocks, but Long Island City has gotten dense and competitive for spots, especially on weekday evenings. There are paid garages scattered around Court Square and Queens Plaza if street parking does not work out. The venue does not publish a parking rate in the sources we have, so plan to pay garage prices if you need a guaranteed spot.

For transit, the venue is in a neighborhood served by multiple subway lines that converge around Court Square and Queensboro Plaza, but the specific closest station and walking distance are not confirmed in our sources. If you are riding in, look up the route to 1040 Jackson Ave the day before, because LIC is one of those neighborhoods where the station that looks closest on a map is not always the easiest walk.

One local gotcha: Jackson Avenue is a working commercial street with delivery trucks and bike lanes, and the sidewalks around show time can be busy with people heading home from the office towers. Give yourself an extra ten minutes if you are not familiar with the block.

What to Expect

This is a concert, not a festival. Two hours, one room, five musicians, and a program built around the meeting point of two folk traditions.

The Albanian side is carried by Taulant Mehmeti on çifteli and guitar and Nezih Antakli on darbuka, riqq, and bendir — that is the long-necked two-string lute that anchors so much northern Albanian music, paired with the hand drums and frame drums that drive the rhythm across the Balkans and the eastern Mediterranean. The Irish side brings Tom Fitzgerald on fiddle and dance, Dylan James on banjo, fiddle, and dance, and Colin Harte on vocals, piano, and bodhrán. The show is supported by The Irish Institute of New York.

What does Irish-Albanian fusion sound like in practice? Both traditions are built on modal melodies, ornamentation, and dance rhythms that go back centuries, and both have a strong solo-and-response feel. Expect sets where a çifteli line answers a fiddle reel, where the bodhrán and the darbuka trade pulses, and where a sung verse in Albanian sits next to a sean-nós-style vocal in English or Irish. The dance element — Fitzgerald and James are both billed for dance — suggests at least some of the program will have visible footwork on stage, not just seated playing.

The rhythm of the evening is straightforward: doors, settle in, two hours of music with the musicians talking through what they are playing, and out by nine. It is the kind of show where you actually hear what each instrument is doing.

The Food

Here is the honest answer: we do not have confirmation that Albanian food is served at this concert. The New York Irish Center is a community venue with its own bar and kitchen operations, and many of its events offer Irish pub fare or light refreshments rather than a full meal. Whether this specific show has any food service, an Albanian menu item, or just a bar, is not something the listing confirms.

If eating Albanian is part of why you are coming, do not count on it at the venue. Eat beforehand. Long Island City has a deep restaurant scene within a few blocks — everything from diners to sit-down spots — and you can make a proper dinner of it before the 7 PM start. If you want to ask the organizer directly whether there will be Albanian snacks, byrek, or anything similar at the show, the Eventbrite page is the place to message them.

New York's Albanian Community and Why It Matters

New York and the surrounding metro hold one of the largest Albanian populations in the United States — a community built across generations from Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, and the Çam diaspora, with neighborhoods, parishes, businesses, and cultural associations spread across the Bronx, Brooklyn, Staten Island, Queens, Westchester, and into New Jersey and Connecticut.

Here is the number problem. The U.S. Census counts roughly 224,000 Albanian Americans nationwide. The real community is close to a million — somewhere near 1,000,000 people of Albanian heritage living in this country. That gap is not a small rounding error. It is the difference between being treated as a small ethnic footnote and being recognized as one of the larger southeast European communities in America.

The gap exists for ordinary reasons: people check "white" and stop, mixed-heritage kids do not get written down, ancestry questions get skipped, and the Census form does not make it easy. The Census stays essential — it is the official count, it drives federal data, and we need it. The National Albanian Registry is the parallel count that sits beside it, run by the community, for the community, so that the close-to-a-million number has something behind it.

A concert like this is where the uncounted community becomes visible. Two Albanian musicians, on a stage in Queens, playing for a mixed Irish and Albanian audience — that is the community showing up in public, in a room, where it can be seen and counted. Registering with NAR takes about two minutes, costs nothing, is not an ID, is not citizenship, and is open to anyone with Albanian heritage, whether you speak the language or not, whether you were born there or three generations removed. NAR is a 501(c)(3) (filed; IRS confirmation pending).

What to Bring

• Your ticket confirmation on your phone
• A photo ID if the venue checks at the bar
• Cash for the bar or merch in case card systems are slow
• A light jacket — indoor AC in June can run cold
• Something to take notes or photos with if you want to remember the set list
• Patience for LIC parking if you drove