Cathie Ryan: Songwriter

Of all the songs she has written one of Cathie Ryan’s own favorites is Carrick a Rede. The physical Carrick a Rede is a rope bridge, in County Antrim in Northern Ireland, a not lightly undertaken narrow walk that hangs eighty feet above the crashing waves of the North Sea. As that really deters casual visitors, it leads to a place where, in older times, couples often made their way for a bit of privacy. “I think the song works on a lot of levels, “ Ryan says, “How do you get across that bridge? You have to hold on and let go. And you do the same when you’re giving your heart -- how much to share, how much to hold back? and then some people just take it as a song about a couple going off to have a romp,” Ryan says, laughing, “and that’s fine too.”


Ryan is both Irish and American, born in the United States to parents who had emigrated from Ireland, and as an adult she has spent time living and performing in both countries. In the songs she chooses and those she writes, Ryan faces the hard and the joyous, the funny and the serious, in melody, image, and language drawn from both sides of her heritage and her own distinct ideas on all that . In The Farthest Wave, for example, she considers grief and the courage it takes to heal, creating a contemporary song which is yet framed in images of of sea and ancient story; In My Tribe finds her looking at connections of her heritage across time and space; in What’s Closest to the Heart she offers a swirling invitation to take a chance on the uncertainties of love set in vivid images suggested by nature and myth.

Ryan has been much praised and awarded for the quality of her singing and the way she connects with her listeners, and when she’s giving workshops, the way she encourages and uplifts her students. All of that is well deserved recognition. For me, though, Ryan’s musical intelligence as an interpreter of song, and her gifts as a writer remain most compelling. Below are links to help you learn more of her work.







Music Road: Cathie Ryan: Irish and American

The Farthest Wave

Cathie Ryan: An Evening in Belfast

Music Road: ceol chairlinn: sharing music in winter


2010 Songwriter's Market: Where & How to Market Your Songs in an article in this book, Ryan talks about her songwriting and gives a bit of the story behind creating several of her most loved songs

Irish music, Irish landscape

creative practice: music in silence

many ways to take that idea, music in silence. I am thinking about the music when I am photographing working musicians, being present in sounds, the silence, and for that conection. If I do that well you may begin to hear the music, and feel the connections,
through the silence of the images.







music to go along with this idea

Music Road: Gretchen Peters: Northern Lights

Music Road: ten songs

Music Road: now playing: Hanneke Cassel (video)




musicians photographed here are Hanneke Cassel, Cathie Ryan, Liz Carroll, John Doyle, Sarah-Jane Summers, and Mariead Ni Mhaonaigh






for a range of interesting photography, visit
Delicious Baby's Photo Friday

Perthshire Amber in the highlands of Scotland, and online

Perthshire Amber is the evocative name of a festival of music that begins on 30 October this year, and runs for ten days. Dougie MacLean, from Dunkeld in the heart of highland Perthshire, started the festival as a day long one off event several years ago. MacLean is a master composer, songwriter, and player, with musical friends the world over, so that idea soon became a festival. This year, performers will include Irish born singer Heidi Talbot, Scottish star Eddi Reader, the always lively band Malinky, highland fiddler and composer Duncan Chisholm, and many others. Venues will include a cathedral, a castle, a crannog -- and your computer. For the first time, this year the festival is offering live streaming of concerts as well as on demand interviews and other video features, for a one off fee which will allow a month's access to all the material.

Dougie MacLean is an internationally renowned songwriter, who began his career with the traditional band The Tannahill Weavers and soon set out on solo work. He is composer of the song Caledonia, which has become the unofficial anthem of Scots everywhere and was used in the advertisement promoting Homecoming Scotland this year. Its lyrics have even found their way on to T-shirts and whisky bottles. MacLean’s music was also used in the film The Last of the Mohicans, and he has an extensive catalog of songs. In fact, that’s one of the reasons the whole thing got started. “There are many of my songs that I don’t get to play often, when I only have two hours at a concert,” he says. This year he’ll be appearing across the ten days. The Festival kicks off with Dougie and Eddie Reader at Pitlochry Festival Theatre and finishes with a gala concert at Perth Concert Hall.

“We are delighted with this year’s line up for what looks to be the biggest and best Perthshire Amber yet.” MacLean says. “Our biggest step is that we are going to hold a major concert in Perth for the first time. The Caledonia Concert will feature wonderful musicians from five different countries who I have had a connection with over the years. I have been lucky enough to have had my songs recorded by some amazing artists and friends. The Caledonia Concert will feature some of these musicians.

“Perthshire Amber 2009 is one of the featured Homecoming Scotland events and the Caledonia Concert will be our key Homecoming contribution. I’m really looking forward to our Perth Concert Hall festival finale!

“I’m also looking forward to playing the Indigenous
album live for the first time,” he continued. ”Our live versions of The Search in the past two years have been real Festival highlights.”

Frances Black and the band Beoga are two who’ll bring an Irish touch to the festival, as will Kildare born Heidi Talbot, now based in Edinburgh. Talbot is known for her stint as lead singer with the top traditional band Cherish the Ladies, and she’s recently been backing up Eddi Reader on tour as well as selling out her own concerts in her native country. She’ll be giving a concert at the castle at Blair Atholl. It’s Talbot’s first time at Perthshire Amber. “I'm really looking forward to the festival. I'm a huge Dougie MacLean fan and I'm really chuffed to be a part of his festival. It's being held in a gorgeous part of the country too. I can't wait!” she says.

There will also be a musical bus tour of highland Perthshire featuring stories and songs from the always engaging Doris Rougvie, as well as workshops, talks, and sessions across the ten days. Festival goers will have a chance to give back, as well, by joining in Amber Harvest through bringing canned and boxed foodstuffs to be given to groups which aid Scotland’s homeless and others needing assistance, and by bidding on a blanket - possibly more than one -- that knitters around the world have contributed to in a project called The Big Knit. The proceeds of the blanket auction will also go to help those needing food and shelter.


you may also wish to see

the festival web site
Perthshire Amber Live! where you may learn about how to sign up for online viewing of the festival

Music Road: heidi talbot: in love +light

Homecoming Scotland: Caledonia

Music Road: Eddi Reader, Emily Smith, Robert Burns

Music Road: season of change: music for autumn where you may learn about recent music from Doris Rougvie, Duncan Chisholm, and others

Celtic Connections & images of Glasgow

Celtic Connections, which takes place each winter in Glasgow, has begun announcing its line up. This year’s festival will run from 14 through 31 January, and will include appearances by The Chieftains, Ry Cooder, Kate Rusby, Eddi Reader, Cherish the Ladies, Angelique Kidjo, and many more. Among the more than one hundred events, in celebration of BBC Radio’s naming 2010 the year of the song, two special concerts will be featured: The Scottish Songbook, curated by Karine Polwart and Brian McAlpine with a range of songs and singers from the serious to the hilarious, and Jewels of the Ocean, a celebration of Gaelic song hosted by the members of Capercaillie.

You’ve met many of these artists along the music road [and elsewhere in my work] and there is more to come about Celtic Connections here as well.

A friend commented that the music must be amazing, but that she hadn’t found Glasgow very inspiring whilst driving through it. From the motor way, it’s not that intriguing, I’d agree, but once you start going around on foot you'll see sights such as those shown here.




























you may also wish to see

the festival’s website

Celtic Connections 2009: images, continued

Songs of Homecoming, to Scotland and other places

Music Road: Voices: Cherish the Ladies

other photo blogs at Delicious Baby's Photo Friday

all photographs in this article taken by and copyright Kerry Dexter, as are all photographs at Music Road. this means you may not use elsewhere without permission. thank you

Celtic Connections 2010 on the way

Celtic Connections has begun announcing its lineup today. The festival itself, a gathering which takes place 14 to 31 January in Glasgow, is a premiere event not to be missed. Scottish Power returns as a major supporter of the festival this year, and artistic director Donald Shaw says the musical events will have the theme of celebrating Celtic influence across the world.

That said, some of the concerts I’m looking forward to feature
the festival’s celebration of the Gaelic language. There will be Jewels of the Ocean, featuring Capercaillie, Arthur Cormack, Na Seòid, Ishbel MacAskill, Seumas Begley and Altan’s Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh, top Gaelic singer Karen Matheson will appear with The Scottish Ensemble and Aly Bain. Other Gaelic acts performing in Glasgow this January include Alyth, The Poozies, Kathleen MacInnes, Katie Mackenzie, Rona Lightfoot, Kenna Campbell, Mary Ann and Wilma Kennedy, James Graham Trio, The Shee, Maggie MacInnes, Iain Morrison, Rachel Walker, Griogair Labhruidh and a Skipinnish 10th Anniversary show. The CCA will host a celebration of Gaelic arts over three days in association with Ceol ’s Craic, which if you’re around Glasgow at all has films, concerts, and talks well worth checking out.

One-off ensemble shows are also a big part of the festival each year. The schedule for this winter includes Indian percussion virtuoso Trilok Gurtu, joined by Scottish trio Lau, the acclaimed Norwegian jazz saxophonist Jan Garbarek and Shankar Mahadevan – the legendary Indian singer and composer, and one-third of the acclaimed Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy trio (whose music can be heard in major Bollywood productions as well as in Slumdog Millionaire) – for a show in the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall.

The Concert Hall will also host Fiddle Summit featuring an international cast; US star Darol Anger will appear in his longtime duo with multi-instrumentalist Mike Marshall, with Alasdair Fraser, Chris Stout, Natalie Haas and groundbreaking harpist Catriona McKay, Swedish trio Väsen, Martin Hayes accompanied by guitarist Dennis Cahill, and Liz Carroll and John Doyle.

There will be more to come here along the Music Road about the 2010 Celtic Connections Festival... stay tuned.

you may also want to see

the festival’s website

Music Road: Celtic Connections 2009 on the way
Celtic Connections 2009: images, continued
Songs of Homecoming, to Scotland and other places

Julie Fowlis: the making of a new album

Julie Fowlis faces an interesting situation when she’s giving concerts -- most of the time, even in her native Scotland, people don’t understand the language in which she sings. Not that she doesn’t like to sing in English or work with artists on projects in other languages, too “but this is just what I feel drawn to, the songs from home. When I’m singing for myself, that’s what I like to sing,” she says.

Home for Fowlis is North Uist in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, where she grew up listening as much to tradition bearers singing in Scots Gaelic as she did songs that topped the UK charts. She left the island to study classical music, but “once I finished my degree course, there just seemed to be more opportunities for me along traditional paths,” she says. Indeed there were, first as a whistle and pipe player and sometime singer with the group Dochas and then with a solo career. Last year, she was named Scotland’s first ambassador for Gaelic in recognition for her work bringing wider attention to the language, and she’s won many awards for her music.

Just now she’s releasing her third album, called Uam,
which means from me in Gaelic. Eddi Reader and Jerry Douglas are among the guests sitting in as Fowlis and her core road band add songs from Breton and Irish American tradition to their program. Here is a short film about the making of Uam.



you may also want to see

Dual: Julie Fowlis & Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh
Dochas: An Darna Umhail/ A Second Glance

photograph of Julie Fowlis at the Royal Glasgow Concert Hall, copyright Kerry Dexter

Heartland Irish, Canadian Klezmer, and Western Swing

An Spealadoir

Different regions in Ireland have their own ways of playing music, from east Clare to west Kerry to northern Donegal to the Oriel to mention only a few. Though it’s a much larger country in physical space, America sometimes has its own regional accents too, from Maine and Vermont to Texas, to Montana and Colorado and Boston. That region called the midwest, which among other places includes Minnesota, Missouri, Michigan, and Illinois, nurtures irish music with its own brand of grit, edge, and energy, formed both by the confluence of Irish communities there and the interaction with musics of other immigrants , the prairie landscape, the growing cities, and the weather.

If you’d like to hear what all this sounds like translated into traditional Irish music, give a listen to the latest recording from the group Bua. It’s called An Spealadoir, or the Harvester. The five men who comprise the band offer fifteen tracks that give you the idea you could just be sitting in at a really good session with them of an evening. Crisp playing, drive, energy, collaboration, really well done musicianship. Each of these men -- Jackie Moran, Chris Bain, Sean Gavin, Brian OhAirt, and Brian Miller -- has worked with top musicians including Liz Carroll, Martin Hayes, Cathie Ryan, Aoife Clancy, and others. To keep company like that you have to be very good indeed , and hearing all five men make music together is good stuff. Tracks of note include The Shepherd/The Boyne Water, Dobbin's Flowery Vale, and the Casey’s Pig set.

It’s not really quite such a stretch to move from that lively Irish session to the idea a Texas dance hall with Hot Club of Cowtown and their latest release, Wishful Thinking.. This trio’s music is based in western swing. and gypsy music. It’s the first time Elana James, Whit Smith, and Jake Irwin have gotten together to record in five years, and time has only made them better at what they do, which is bring life and sparkle to a tried and true style, keeping it both fresh and at the same time true to its history. They’ve added drums for this for this trip, too, courtesy of Damien Llanes. Tracks include The Long Way Home, Columbus Stockade Blues, and Reunion.

While we’re on the subject of adventurous bands with new releases, Postcards from Beyond the Pale is worth your listening too. They are based in Toronto and their music is based in the traditions of Eastern Europe. Klezmer music could be said to be the root from which they branch out in Eastern, North American, Yiddish and Israeli directions here. Much their music is composed by members of the band, who hail from various points around the globe. The six men have worked together for more than ten years, and one has the feeling that they are still having a great time exploring the possibilities of the music they’re creating. Notable cuts include Katarina, Anthem, and Turkish Delight.

you may also want to see

Crooked Still: Still Crooked

Danu: One Night Stand

malinky: flower & iron

creative practice: autumn: spaces between

As the world moves through autumn here in the northern hemisphere, there is sometimes a standing at the threshold aspect of work, life, and relationships. Gathering in and savoring and celebrating the summer’s gifts, preparing for winter and wondering what it may bring, and savoring the moments of being in those places and spaces between.




music to go along with these ideas

Music Road: Gretchen Peters: One to the Heart, One to the Head

Music Road: season of change: music for autumn

Lauren MacColl strewn with ribbons

photos taken in Tallahassee, Florida [tree], Cambridge, Massachusetts [doorstep]. and County Down, Northern Ireland [mountains], all good places to spend time in autumn

you may also want to see

other photo blogs at Delicious Baby's Photo Friday

Music and Landscape: Blog Action Day 2009

Much of the music we walk with here along the Music Road is grounded in connection with and thoughts about place and landscape.

Erica Wheeler sends musical postcards from her stops along the American way. Julie Fowlis sings old songs about the sea that she learned from tradition bearers as she grew up in North Uist. Emily Smith likes to source songs from the tradition of her native Dumfriesshire and when she writes songs, that place and its people are what she draws from as well. Jeff Talmadge sees rain clouds in Atlanta and it reminds him of how rainstorms looked where he used to live in Texas. Duncan Chisholm and Sara-Jane Summers translate the landscapes of the Scottish highlands into fiddle tunes. Ian Tyson writes of the disappearing cowboy culture in western Canada, and the Barra MacNeils sing of immigrants coming to the island of Cape Breton, while Cathie Ryan sees a Navajo woman sweeping a dirt floor in the American southwest and thinks of her grandmother in Ireland, who did the same. Kathy Mattea searches out songs from in the coal country of the Appalachians where she grew up, and Tish Hinojosa writes of having her life planned by the Rio Grande. Carrie Newcomer throws geodes in her garden in Indiana, and sees the history of when that landscape was the edge of the frontier. There are many more.

It’s a tapestry of connection and inspiration between land and artist. I’m asking you to think about all this because today is Blog Action Day, a day when thousands of bloggers across the world speak to their readers to get them thinking about one subject. This year, that subject is climate change.

None of those artists mentioned above writes specifically about climate change, but they all know and love how land and people shape each other. The song in this video is not about climate change either, but as you listen to the lyrics, I think you will see why I include it here.






UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Blog Action Day post, which is not about music

Music Road: Thinking about music: Blog Action Day 2008

Music Road: now playing: The Environment, on Blog Action Day 2007

reflections with Maura O'Connell

"There are all kinds of passages in life, and this is the one where we have to wake up and be grown up, we're not kids any more, we've children to raise, countries to run -- or mis run --responsibilities in all areas of our lives. I think for me it was preparing myself for adulthood at this late stage of my life," says Maura O'Connell about the song choices and mood of her album Don't I Know The song titles bear her out: Hold On, Love You in the Middle, When Being Who You Are Is not Enough, Spinning Wheel, and No Good Day for Dying are among them.

"As I now know from talking about it, because you never know when you're putting them together what the forces are," she says, "the kernel of this record was the song Time to Learn, the Tim O'Brien song that's on the very end of the record. I first heard that song twelve or more years ago, just after my mum died. My reaction to the song for many years was when I'd hear it I'd cry, and I have to wait a while and get over it it before I can do something like that. Then there were a couple of other songs I was listening to, but usually it comes together as picture and I'm not even aware it's there," she says. "This one seemed to be about lessons you've learned, letting things go -- but I don"t make concept albums. They just happen to be a picture of where I am."

In the midst of life, and life's changes, would seem to be where the singer is happiest. She's been based in Nashville for some years, and though some of her work would fit country playlists one wouldn't call her a country singer; she grew up in the west of Ireland, in a family that loved music -- but what was heard in the O'Connell household was not traditional Irish music but parlor songs and light opera. Yet when she made her first major splash on the music scene in the early 1980s, it was as lead singer with a traditional band, De Dannan. '

She didn't even want to be a professional musician at first. "I grew up in the usual west of Ireland household, in Ennis, in County Clare," O'Connell says. "My sisters sang, my mother sang, and our friends sang, that was how you entertained yourself and your friends in those days. Eventually I teamed up with a guitar player and we went around as a duo for a while, and he left to join another band and asked me to join too, and I said no. But I found I missed it." Still. O'Connell thought she'd go into the family business, a fish shop in Ennis. One day while she was working there, she got a call from the band De Dannan, an internationally known traditional band, wanting to know if she'd come and do a six week tour with them in the United States. At first she still thought no, but decided to give it a shot, "and then when we came back they'd booked another tour, and they said oh, come on and do this one --- and I've been at it ever since!" she says. She didn't really see herself as a traditional singer, though, and despite top charting success with the band's albums in Ireland, she found herself more and more drawn to the new grass and bluegrass music coming out of Nashville, though her listening tastes then, as now, ranged from pop songs to jazz, to folk, to country. In the 1980s she moved to Music City to begin a solo career. Along the way she's dipped back into Irish tradition ("you just grow up with it all around in Ireland, you can't help it"she says). most notably in recent years as part of the internationally respected collection A Woman's Heart: a decade on.

At her solo concerts, O'Connell reveals a singer who really inhabits a song and takes her listeners along with her wherever she decides to go. That trip might range from a traditional Irish song to a Mary Chapin Carpenter ballad, to something from rising singer songwriter Mindy Smith to a bluegrass flavored Tim O'Brien piece. In performance she's relaxed, lively, and funny, often lacing the serious reflections she offers in music with a dry sense of humor about life's foibles and her own. One of those turns, she explained to a packed out house in the Strathclyde Suite of Glasgow's Royal Concert Hall at the Celtic Connections Festival two Januarys ago, is the realization the she's a folk singer. "I didn't like that, for along time," she said. "I was never into that, you know people handing flowers around and singing old songs." O'Connell says she has found that there's beauty in the old songs, but also "I realized that folk music isn't all that, isn't only that. Folk music is a living breathing thing, and there's a space for singers in it. It freed me up to sing anything I wanted, really, because if a song is doing its job, taking a snapshot of real life, then it's a folk song. The pop songs of the past that are really good are the folk songs of the future -- somewhere in there I've decided I'm part of making that connection."

O'Connell again draws together connections of her life in music in her most recent release. The songs are all done unaccompanied, which among other things is an ancient traditon in Irish music. The music she's chosen ranges across older and contemporary song. It is called Naked with Friends.

you may also want to see

Music Road: Cathie Ryan: Irish and American

Music Road: now playing: Emily Smith: Too Long Away

Music Road: heidi talbot: in love + light

photographing music: Celtic Colours

The music of Cape Breton is a unique mix of Scottish and Irish music with dashes of other cultures added in, shaped by wind and water, landscape, and mountains, seasoned with the laughter, tears, history, and welcoming spirits of the islanders. It’s engaging music, wherever you happen to hear it, especially so the island itself.


The Celtic Colours Festival includes more than one hundred events in venues ranging from The Big Fiddle concert hall in Sydney [okay, it has a more formal name, but once you’ve seen the giant sized fiddle out front...] to the firehouse in Judique, from school rooms to churches, from one end of the island to the other, and this year's festival begins today. Artists from all over the Celtic world as well as many Cape Breton musicians will be there. I’ll not be making it back to the island for the festival this year, but these are a few of my favorite images from years past.



























photographs taken in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, copyright Kerry Dexter

you may also want to see

Music Road: thinking about Cape Breton: music and landscape

Music Road: Celtic Colours 2009 on the way

Music Road: now playing: Cape Breton Radio Live take 02

other photo blogs at Delicious Baby's Photo Friday

Scotland: National Poetry Day, and music

Today is national poetry day in Scotland.

Caledonia is a country where the national bard -- Robert Burns -- is well known outside his homeland as well as within its borders. It is the 250th anniversary of his birth, this year, too, so there’s been a bit more than the usual of his work around. There are many other fine Scottish poets, too, many of them expressing their work through music, sung or played. Celebrate the day and find out more about all this by following the links below.


tuning up for Burns Night: four Scots musicians

intersections: words, music, and Robert Burns

Eddi Reader sings more of the songs of Robert Burns

Songs of Homecoming, to Scotland and other places

Homecoming Scotland: music

Potato Music

photograph of Glasgow, copyright Kerry Dexter

Caroline Herring: Golden Apples of the Sun

Golden Apples of the Sun


Listening to Caroline Herring’s latest album is a bit like having a good conversation with a friend, one that spins long into the night as you share stories, talk over old times, think about questions you’ve asked, questions you’ve answered, and those you still have, catch up up on what may be next, and encourage each other along the way.

There is a lot going on in this album, anchored musically by Herring’s natural storyteller’s voice and phrasing, and by sparse production featuring playing by just Herring and producer David Goodrich. The twelve tracks unfold a journey guided by Herrings questing and questioning spirit, something which will come as no surprise to those who have met Herring through her earlier albums Twilight, Wellspring, and Lantana. In the opening cut, Tales of the Islander, you meet the powerful presence of Gulf Coast artist Walter Anderson amidst memories of hurricanes, and in another Herring original, Abuelita, there’s a grandmother who might be yours, might be mine, or might be the woman by the road whose glance holds many stories.

True Colors, which was made popular by rocker Cindy Lauper, is stripped down and reimagined in Herring’s version and emerges as a country tinged love song -- or maybe a gospel one. Either way, it works as true to the essence of the song. So does her take on Long Black Veil, which actually is a contemporary country song although it’s often taken for an ancient folk ballad. She puts her own stamp on the blues song See See Rider, too, subtly recasting it as a song of freedom rather than one of escape.

A Little Bit of Mercy, another one of the originals, offers the chance and invitation to forgive, both one’s own self, and others. Song of the Wandering Aengus, from which the tile comes, is a WB Yeats poem set to music. It’s been recorded before, too, but again Herring is unafraid to strike her own balance with the ideas of the song and add to the understanding of it. The Wild Rose is a mosaic of sorts, with pieces from Herring, Neruda, and Berry, all working together to make a pattern where the ideas turn and dance with each other. It's a song that bears repeated listening.

As does the whole album. There are more facets to this gem each time around.


photograph of Caroline Herring at Celtic Connections Festival, copyright Kerry Dexter

you may also want to see

Music Road: ten songs

caroline herring: lantana

Wilderness Plots: the dvd

Tish Hinojosa: Our Little Planet

Remembering Amy Farris

Amy Farris was a jack of all instruments, teacher of many, fine arranger and committed Texan, though she lived the last years of her life in California. Word comes that she has died. Recently she had been touring with Dave Alvin and the Guilty Women, and several years ago put out an interesting and eclectic solo album called Anyway.
,

I remember Amy best from her days in Austin, though, playing fiddle with Tish Hinojosa as dancers swirled across the floor at The Broken Spoke, being what Bruce Robison jokingly called the musical quarter back for Bruce and his wife Kelly Willis at the Cactus so many nights, backing up Kelly on a hot summer evening outdoors at Stubbs’ with the scent of Texas barbecue in the air, playing a Christmas season concert with Bruce and Kelly at Hyde Park Methodist Church with holiday decorations and evergreens for backdrop.

Playing fiddle in the heavenly choir now, Amy. Not forgotten you.


you may also want to see
Tish Hinojosa: Our Little Planet

listening to Christmas

Painter of Music: Thomas Hart Benton at the Frist

Thomas Hart Benton in Story and Song is the name of an exhibit that just opened at the Frist Center in Nashville, Tennessee. It’s a good title, and a good place for Benton’s works to be shown. Much of his work had to do with American music and with the people, landscapes, and day to day history that frames much of what we know as folk, country, and bluegrass music.

Have you seen Benton’s work? Probably so. It’s widely used in books and shown in art history texts as an example of what’s called regionalist painting, the region in this case being the American midwest. Benton's last work was The Sources of County Music, which hangs today in The Country Music Hall of Fame, just down the Street and around the corner from the Frist. He also illustrated three of Mark Twain’s works, including Life on the Mississippi.

Whether he was following story or song, Benton was known for getting down to the basics, and for wanting to tell the whole story -- commissioned to do a series of murals on Indiana’s history, he included reference to the Ku Klux Klan, which did not sit well with many; likewise, his southern pieces often contain images from slavery times.

Whatever he has as subject, one thing you get from Benton is a vibrant sense of people living their lives, and that as straightforward as his work may sometimes appear, there’s a lot more going on than what you take in at first glance. Music is often part of that, whether as a direct subject or as part of the day to day goings on and rhythms of life he painted. Benton himself loved music and was an accomplished harmonica player

The exhibit at the Frist has two sections, one about Benton’s work illustrating stories, and the other about his music related work. Benton, who was born in Missouri and studied in Chicago and Paris, was known as a leader of the American regionalist movement. He was also a teacher, and one of his students was Jackson Rollock, who took painting in a very different direction -- abstract expressionism.

The intersections between the visual and the musical often come up along the music road. If you’re anywhere near Nashville in the next few months, drop in and see what you think of Benton's take on music and story. The exhibit opens today and will be up through 31 January, 2010.

While you’re there, take in the other always intriguing exhibits at the Frist -- it’s an exhibiting rather than a collecting gallery, so things are always changing. Another one going now features the work of Georgia O’Keeffe, another painter involved with place, in her case the American south west.

From the Frist Center, information about The Thomas Hart Benton Exhibit. It's part of the Nashville Public Library's city wide celebration of Mark Twain, as well


music to go along with these ideas
Wilderness Plots: the dvd

Songs of Homecoming, to Scotland and other places

songs of place: Canada

creative practice: angle of light

Often seeing things in a different light is a way to inspire creativity, in music and in other areas of life. This time of year, a change of season from summer to autumn, or the reverse, is a time when changes in the quality of light are all around us. Take a look.

photo: early autumn light in Louth, Ireland

music to go along with these ideas

Voices: Carrie Newcomer: faith and laughter

work of autumn: music

Music Road: Gretchen Peters: Northern Lights

Music Road: heidi talbot: in love +light

you may also want to see

other photo blogs at Delicious Baby's Photo Friday