Three Fiddle CDs for Fall

The fiddle seems one of those instruments especially suited for the changing light and shadow of the autumn landscape. Take a listen to these three fiddlers as you travel the autumn roads and see what you may learn....

Harald Haugaard’s latest album is called Burning Fields. A solo outing this time, for a man who is most often found in bands and duos. Here he moves from the folk tinged opener. Morgen, through lively rock influenced tunes into The Burning Fields Suite, a composition which is classical in form yet draws in the folk roots of Haugaard's’ native Denmark.

Oliver Schroer took his fiddle with him in a backpack as he walked the pilgrimage route along northern Spain’s Camino de Santiago. The ideas he found there as well as the sounds, weave through his music on Camino. Take a look at the sleeve notes, too -- moving back and forth among five languages. they hold an aspect of music in the words, as well.


Hanneke Cassel most often plays and composes in Cape Breton and Scottish style. Teaming up with guitarist Christopher Lewis, she turned those ideas to making a recording of hymns from many traditions, with a contemporary one or two thrown in for good measure. The result is called Calm the Raging Sea.












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photographing music: hands

another way to think about music...

from gigs in Cambridge, Austin, Cape Breton, Glasgow, Newburyport

care to try putting names to any of the hands here?

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creative practice: instruments

creative practice: music in silence

work of autumn: music

Remembering Mary Travers

work of autumn: music

The angle of light has been turning toward autumn where I am in recent days. The shadows in evening are long, the rim of light around the leaves and the people walking down the road has a golden cast, and every so often there’s a cool edge to the breeze. Mist hangs longer over the lake as the natural world gathers in for harvest time.

Autumn is traditionally a time of harvest. It also marks a time of change, from the flourishing of summer to bringing that growth in and sorting it to savor. It’s a time of building bridges, too, between the open spaces of summer and the quiet, interior reflection which winter often brings. A lovely season, with many changes within itself, from these first bright days through rain and wind and gorgeous turning leaves to grey days and the peace and questions found along the paths of autumn. Here are three fine musical companions for these journeys:


The Return Journey is the latest solo album from guitarist and composer Bill Cooley. His Irish music loving side comes to the front on Gang Forward, and Morning Poem is a reflective solo guitar piece perfect for these autumn days. The whole album is, actually. The music contains references to folk, jazz, country, and bluegrass.

Claire Lynch just keeps on getting better and better. Through the music on her latest release, Whatcha Gonna Do, Lynch walks in the light and shadow of life with grace and thoughtfulness and dashes of humor - and she’s a singer with a lovely soprano who really knows how to serve whatever song she’s singing, be that based in bluegrass or swing, folk or country. She’s also building her skills as a writer. Two of my favorite songs here are Highway, which Lynch wrote with Irene Kelley, and Face to Face, which she wrote with Donna Ulisse. Every song on the record is a keeper, though.


There is light and shadow on Matt and Shannon Heaton’s recording Lovers' Well, too. They’ve looked into Irish tradition -- and a bit further -- for songs and tunes which invite listeners to consider the kaleidoscope of emotion that two people bring with them and go through as they learn to love each other. There are lovers parted, lovers just finding each other, lovers reunited and lovers' questions. Songs and tunes alike unfold these stories in music that makes a fine companion for the season of change and turning leaves.

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Music Road: now playing: Kathy Mattea: Coal you’ll find Bill Cooley’s work on this fine record, too

Music Road: season of change: music for autumn

autumn music: harvest home, crossing bridges

creative practice: travel and change

Over at Lonely Planet, they’ve an article on the question
Does travel change you?

Varied responses, along the lines of only if you let it, it makes you look at home differently, depends on where you go, and other ideas.

Change happens, whether you travel or not, whether you are ready for it or not. Travel may offer vivid anchors for thinking about change -- or not.

Across the world, and across the street, we are all both more connected and more diverse than we know.

Over to you...

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Music Road: listening through the changes

Music Road: creative practice: autumn to winter

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Remembering Mary Travers

In the Wind


There will be many remembrances of Mary Travers today -- and probably an equal number who say: who’s that, again? She was a singer of power, and amazing stage presence, and a woman committed to social justice all her life. Through the 1960s, Peter, Paul , and Mary were the most popular folk group in the United States. In later years some would ridicule their music for being too commercial. Whatever you may think about that, they opened doors for many writers and singers who came along with them.



If you look back at what the trio recorded in the sixties, you’ll find the work of the really great writers -- Bob Dylan, Gordon Lightfoot, Ian Tyson, Tom Paxton -- you’ll find funny stuff like The Marvelous Toy and I Dig Rock n Roll Music, gospel songs, Irish songs [The Rising of the Moon and Gilgarry Mountain for two] and always, always songs of peace, social justice, and connection. One of their great gifts was inviting people to sing along -- and getting us still, through the legacy of their recordings, to sing along to songs of truth, justice, peace, and hope.

Thanks for the grace, the courage and the music, Mary. Your ship has come in.







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Music Road: Ian Tyson: Yellowhead to Yellowstone

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thinking about Cape Breton: music and landscape

Thinking about Cape Breton and its music today...



have the leaves begun to turn there yet?

you really should hear the rest of the Barra MacNeils album, too. more about that

The Barra MacNeils: Album


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Connemara Suite

The Connemara Suite


Connemara is a part of the west of Ireland where land, sky, and and sea intertwine -- as they do all through the island, of course. The open spaces of this land in west Galway has a voice of its own, however, with singers such as the sean nos master Joe Heaney and the singers and musicians of the Keane family, to name but a few.

Bill Whelan, a man whose name you may know as the composer of music for the world wide sensation Riverdance, from his days playing with Planxty, or as producer for Kate Bush. also lives in Connemara. He’s composed a suite of music which has the land speak through the voices of both classical and traditional musicians, voices mainly without words, as these are instrumental compositions with just a bit of voice lilting in them.

The members of the Irish Chamber Orchestra under the direction of David Jones provide the string landscape background of sorts within which the soloists work. In the three movement of the opening piece, Inishlacken, Zoe Conway on traditional fiddle and Fionnuala Hunt on classical violin open up the composer's vision of first, rowing out to the island of Inishlacken, then the flight of birds along the water, and in the third section, idea which move from a quiet evening sunset to a community dance. It makes a lovely conversation among the the strings and evokes the landscapes, though you don’t need to know anything of Connemara to enjoy the visit.

The second section, Errisbeg, invites the listener to explore moods of a mountain near Whelan’s home, while the third section, Carna, is in three movements which travel in emotion and tone from dawn until evening, rounding off the evening with the connections and music shared in a community music session, bringing things in a bit of a circle with the ending of Inishlacken. Errisbeg features Conway again on fiddle, while Michelle Mulcahy joins in on harp. Conway is also the fiddler on Carna, and Colin Dunne adds dance percussion. All these are framed in the work of the string players of Irish Chamber Orchestra, a collaboration which adds dimension and depth to the ideas -- and it sounds as though all the musicians really enjoyed the challenges of fitting classical and traditional ideas together, as well. The music is at times lively, at times reflective, and always opening new doors in the connections of music and landscape.

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video of the Connemara coast at Bill Whelan’s web site

Music Road: now playing: Zoe Conway

Music Road: Sarah-Jane Summers: Nesta

Hanneke Cassel and Christopher Lewis: Calm the Raging Sea

Polkastra: Apolkalypse Now

Apolkalypse Now



Trumpet, fiddle, French horn, bassoon and contra bassoon, classical violin, digeridoo, electric bass, vibraphone, accordion, and other sorts of percussion, all together and all playing -- polka?

Yes, and the polkas they play come from ideas based in central Europe, Canada, the work of classical composers Beethoven and Johann Strauss, Israel, Hungary,and other points of the compass. So, okay, all that could be a mess or a mixup or what it is, an engaging collection by musicians who value collaboration, connection, and humor as highly as they do their razor sharp and always inventive musicianship. Lara St. John, the classical violinist and executive producer of the bunch, is the only one who knew all the other players as the idea of this improbable and very successful album emerged. She’s known for her recordings of Bach and Vivaldi as well as gypsy music. Daniel Lapp, who plays fiddle [yes, by the way, the violin and the fiddle are the same instrument....] and doubles on the trumpet, is a composer and performer who is always investigating some new turn in the musical road; Andy Doe is a classically trained horn player who has worked in a ska band; William Barton is Australia foremost digeridoo player, Mark Timmerman plays bassoon and contrabassoon with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Ronn Yedidia, who plays accordion, comes from Israel, and Jack Campbell, jack of all trades, plays electric bass.

If you’re thinking polka is a stuffy or dated music, think again -- it’s a vibrant dance style which began in central Europe, and as these players will show you, both took off around the world and is capable of endless invention. Here you will find the Romanian based Sibra to Light as a Feather Polka by Johann Strauss to Caribou Shuffle from British Columbia to Yedidia’s original Celtic Kalkadunga Polka and Lapp’s title track. The musicians put all this together with two days of rehearsal and one day of recording, and that energy comes through. It’s a recording that’s both really fun to listen to [and to dance to] and reveals new aspects with each listen. And they didn’t even get to Texas polka or Irish or Norweigian...yet. Given their individual careers, Polkastra is not exactly a regularly touring group, but let’s hope they have another recording session or two in their future to find out what other unexpected directions they’ll dance with the polka.


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creative practice: early autumn

The angle of light is changing a bit toward autumn now. Here are several images to go along with the idea of those changes, from places in Canada and Ireland.
Music to go along includes these albums.











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Bluebird Cafe: a story

The Bluebird Cafe in Nashville is a place where songs and songwriters are at the center of things, often quite literally, as musicians sit in the round and trade songs of an evening. Many you’ve already met here along the Music Road -- Gretchen Peters, Jeff Talmadge, Jon Vezner, Kathy Mattea, Beth Nielsen Chapman, Caroline Herring, Pierce Pettis, Carrie Newcomer, Andrea Zonn among them -- have played there.

I’ve a story about the experience of being at the Bluebird which was a semi finalist in a competition. It’s short piece, about a hundred words or so.

Still worth your time to take a look...


here is a link to the story