Brian Bigley’s lifetime obsession with Irish music and dance began at his neighbors’ house in Cleveland.

“Our neighbors across the street would host these two old fellas from Ireland — from the west coast of Ireland — called Tom Byrne and Tom McCaffrey, and Tom McCaffrey played the fiddle and Tom Byrne played the flute,” Bigley said recently from Omaha, where he and a group of musicians were set to perform with the Omaha Symphony as part of the touring Celtic Journey show.

“Periodically they would have these sessions, as they would call them, at the house. I didn’t know it then, but I had my first experience of an Irish rambling house on those nights. There would be musicians filling the house; there would be Irish tea and scones, and it was just — it was one of the most joyous occasions that I remember as a kid. It would make sense that I would stick with it from then on out.”

Stick with it he did. At age 6, he was involved in a local production of the musical “Finian’s Rainbow” and “fell in love with the dancing.” He would go on to do competitive dancing in Ireland, winning the Irish Dancing World Championships in 2002 and 2003. After starting piano lessons with his neighbor, he switched to uilleann pipes — a kind of Irish bagpipe — after seeing the instrument in action at Cleveland’s West Side Irish American Club, and has played professionally ever since.

Since 2006, Bigley has performed as part of Irish storyteller Tomáseen Foley’s A Celtic Christmas shows, which celebrate 25 years this year. With this group of performers, Bigley wanted to revisit the excitement he felt at his neighbors’ gatherings as a kid, and roughly two years ago launched the Irish Rambling House touring show, which plays the Tower Theatre on Monday.

“After touring with Tom for many years, I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to do something in Cleveland that — we can bring some talented people — bring Tom and Bill (Coulter, guitarist and musical director) and then mix those people with some people from Cleveland and put on something that’s just as genuine as his Christmas show, but with a little bit different twist?’” Bigley, who is Irish-American, said. “What we tried to do is bring some of the sophistication and discipline that goes into baroque music into the Irish music.”

The show advertises a blend of Celtic and American folk traditions with baroque music — three styles that have historical connections. Bigley cited Irish harpist and composer Turlough O’Carolan, whose work in the 1600s and 1700s combined Celtic folk and classical, as well as the instrumental influence classical music had on Celtic music.

The music, performed on pipes, fiddles and acoustic guitar by Irish and American musicians, will be accompanied by dancing and Foley’s storytelling. Born and raised on a small farm in western Ireland, Foley experienced the centuries-old rambling house tradition — community gatherings featuring song, dance and storytelling that would move from house to house in the neighborhood — up close.

“For some, I don’t know, magical, mysterious reason, people would go to the same house every night for a month,” Foley said, “and then without anybody making any real decision or anything, people would start going to some other house after a certain period of time. And over a period of a couple of years, everyone’s house would be included as a rambling house. And it was just a place where people gathered.”

Foley, who first came to the U.S. about 35 years ago, balances U.S. and Irish cultural differences in his storytelling. Take mourning for example.

“If somebody had lived a full life and died of old age at the age of 80 or 90 or whatever, wakes would be very lighthearted events,” he said. “For example, the body would be laid out in a room and the wake would be held around the dead person, and their favorite songs would be sung, their favorite stories would be told. … That’s kind of in some ways the center of what we’re doing in Bend, is that tradition, and there are some great songs about that tradition as well that we’ll be singing.”

Recreating the intimate feel of a rambling house in multi-hundred-seat theaters provided a different challenge for Foley and the musicians.

“People have their pick of whatever entertains them,” Bigley said, “and so trying to sell a show that is based on one guy onstage telling a story can be — some people might think it’s old-fashioned or it’s something for kids. But really it’s entertaining for the whole family.”

For Foley, the appeal of in-person storytelling comes back to how “the raw, real, original approach of just the human voice in the dark makes its own magic.”

“I come from a small farm, and all my neighbors were small farmers,” he said. “It was just something you did for fun with the neighbors. If they knew then that I’m doing it professionally now, they would be absolutely flabbergasted. It’s almost incomprehensible.”

What: Irish Rambling House

When: 7:30 p.m. Monday

Where: Tower Theatre, 835 NW Wall St., Bend

Cost: $27. $37 or $47 plus theater preservation fee

Contact: towertheatre.org or 541-317-0700