Tartan Terrors have been making Celtic music fun — genuinely, rowdily fun — for nearly three decades, and their Celtic Invasion show is built to prove the case. Bagpipes, fiddles, electric guitars, pounding drums, step dancing, and storytelling all share the stage: not a folk revue, not a heritage program, but something closer to a full-on rock show that happens to be wrapped in tartan.
About the Show
Celtic Invasion comes to Universal Preservation Hall on Sunday, March 14 — three days before St. Patrick’s Day, landing the celebration on a weekend. The eight-piece band is built for exactly this kind of night: the show is billed as bringing together “the energy of a rock concert, the excitement of traditional Celtic music and dance, and plenty of laughs,” with bagpipes, fiddles, guitars, driving drums, step dancing, and storytelling all woven into a single set.
Ian Irmisch and his late sister Ellen founded the group in 1996. Ellen passed away in 2019, and the band has carried her memory into their performances since. The catalog now stands at 10 albums; the most recent, ON THE ROAD Live, is a live record captured across venues throughout their North American touring schedule — 28 shows in 2026 alone, with dates already confirmed into 2027.
The piper credentials are worth a mention: Tyler Harris is a 15-time winner of the North American Bagpipe Championships, 13 of those titles in Grade 1. Peter McArthur, who performs more than 250 events a year, is also a Grade 1 piper and has been with the band since 2015. The group has performed at The Iridium in Times Square — the kind of booking that tracks for a band that has been at this for nearly 30 years.
Venue & Logistics
Universal Preservation Hall is a theater in downtown Saratoga Springs at 25 Washington St., and it sits squarely in the capital region circuit — a natural draw for audiences coming up from Albany, Schenectady, or Troy. A Sunday evening in March is one of the more relaxed ways to arrive in Saratoga: the summer racing crowds are months off, and the city moves at its own pace in the off-season.
Tickets
No ticket price was available from sources at the time of publication. Tickets were not yet on sale at the time of retrieval. The show begins at 6:00 p.m. on Sunday, March 14, 2027. Buy tickets