WHEN I catch up with Irish singer Noriana Kennedy by phone in Wellington, NZ, I know I’m in for some good old-fashioned Irish talking.

She’s busy doing a dry-run for the debut tour by the four singers calling themselves Celtic Divas, master-minded by musical director Gerry Paul, in which she joins vocalists Eilis Kennedy, Pauline Scanlon and Nicola Joyce, all backed by a four-piece band.

They’re staying together in Wellington’s Newtown, home to Pacific Islanders and many other immigrant communities, and where “the Paddies are fittin’ in” and “feelin’ at home”.

So, how did the four singers get together in the first place?

“There’s loads of tendrils in this connection,” she says, but it really comes down to the drive of Paul, born in Ireland but raised in NZ and founder of the Irish band Gráda. Paul is also a children’s author and songwriter whose 2010 “Hank the Wrestling Shark” won him the Grand Prize in the John Lennon Songwriting Contest.

Now he more or less calls the west coast Irish city of Galway home. The Dublin-born Kennedy now also lives in Galway, which she says is “an amazing place for musicians, foodies, theatre people and artists”. Smaller even than Wellington, “it feels like a village – on the street you meet everyone you know”. And that’s usually good.

The commonality of all four “divas” is “the typically Irish tradition of people who love socialising and singing”.

Eilis Kennedy and Pauline Scanlon are from County Kerry. Together they make up the singing duo Lumiere and are known for their quick wit. Nicola Joyce, the lead singer of Gráda, has played in 30 countries and also plays drums, bodhrán and mandolin, as well as singing harmonies.

As for Noriana Kennedy, she is not only a singer, but also the new, multicultural kind of Irish woman, with a mother from the Filipino immigrant community, one now over 20,000-strong in Ireland, most of them in nursing, “which is nice,” as she says.

Personally, Kennedy loves singing, good food and talking. Her musical interests stretch to Appalachian American folk music, which she combines with an age-old Irish singing tradition that has seen her compared with singers Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch and Mary Black. Her debut album “Ebb n Flow” seems to be going well.

All the divas have been busy with their own careers, but are enjoying this first-time collaboration, in which they boast that they can combine their usual intimacy with the large-scale performance style suitable for venues like the Canberra Theatre.

“There’ll be no personas on stage,” Kennedy says, “we’ll all be ourselves.”

Celtic Divas, Canberra Theatre, Saturday, June 2, bookings to 6275 2700.

PHOTO: The Celtic Divas… Noriana Kennedy, left, Nicola Joyce, Eilis Kennedy and Pauline Scanlon.