Celtic Music All-Stars : With the Help of Impressive Guest Lineups, the Chieftains Keep Pushing Their Limits

The Chieftains are up to their old tricks. As one of the most respected names in Irish music, they could easily sit back on their shamrocks and roll in the green from their heavily attended tours and high-selling albums.

But Paddy Moloney, the elfin piper and de facto leader of the veteran ensemble, has never been happy to limit himself to the status quo.

The band’s latest album, “Tears of Stone,” is yet another epic Chieftains production, with a lineup of guest performers that reads like an all-star list of contemporary female musical artists--among them Bonnie Raitt, Joni Mitchell, Sinead O’Connor, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Loreena McKennitt, Joan Osborne and Diana Krall.

“I love the challenge of bringing in guest stars,” Moloney says. “Always have.”

And he has done precisely that over and over, with everyone from Mick Jagger and Sting to Van Morrison and O’Connor (to name only a very few) appearing on Chieftains albums at one time or another.

The possibility of touring with such impressive lineups, however, is even more than the indefatigable Moloney could bring off.

But when the Chieftains make one of their frequent Southland appearances this weekend at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, they will nonetheless bring with them a typically stirring evening of Celtic music. (The group also will do a live broadcast Sunday at 3 p.m. on KCRW-FM [89.9].)

Featured guests for the concert include a group of Irish step dancers as well as the charismatic Irish American fiddler Eileen Ivers, perhaps best known for her work with the hit Irish musical “Riverdance.”

Like Moloney, the slim, dark-haired Ivers, with her eye-catching, electric-indigo instrument, has been fond of stretching the envelope of Celtic music since her early years as a championship player.

Her work with groups such as Hall & Oates and Celtic/hip-hop/rap group Paddy A Go Go, and on her own albums, “Wild Blue” (Green Linnet) and “Crossing the Bridge” (Sony Classical), has often found her in the midst of a caldron of instrumentation including everything from traditional uilleann (meaning “elbow”) pipes and flute to djembe, conga drums and electric organ.

“I got a lot of flak when I started experimenting,” Ivers said in a separate interview, “and sometimes I questioned what I was doing. But finally I just said, ‘Look, Eileen, you just gotta play what’s in your heart. The tradition has to move on.’ ”

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That’s fine with Moloney and the other Chieftains--percussionist-singer Kevin Conneff, flutist Matt Molloy, fiddlers Sean Keane and Martin Fay, harpist-pianist Derek Bell--who clearly are delighted with the idea of traversing new creative pathways.

Moloney, who spends a good part of his life on the road, either with the Chieftains or in search of unexplored musical vistas, is already hatching ideas for the next Chieftains albums.

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Ask him about an upcoming project, and he’ll pull a tin whistle out of his coat pocket. Whether he’s having a casual backstage conversation or seated in an elegant restaurant, he’ll knock out a few of the new melodies he has in mind.

“So what do you think of that, then?” he’ll ask, with a characteristic twinkle in his eye.

Now the proprietor of his own record label--Wicklow Records, named after his home county in Ireland--Moloney (in partnership with the Chieftains management) has already released albums by Mary Jane Lamond and the Finnish group Varttina, with, according to Moloney, “much more to come” (including a projected series of recordings from eclectic producer Bill Laswell).

But none of this activity will deter Moloney or the Chieftains from their essential franchise, sustaining and advancing the cause of Celtic music around the world.

And, at Cerritos this weekend, they will once again romp through songs old and new, working--as they have for 36 years--to, in Moloney’s words, “let the music speak for itself.”

* The Chieftains play tonight at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, 12700 Center Court Drive. 8 p.m. Also 7 p.m. Sunday. $32-$52. (800) 300-4345.