music and time

Time slows down when you practice being present is one of the many ideas which Krista Tippett, host of the radio program Speaking of Faith, and Michel Martin, who reports on religion for NPR, spoke about in this conversation, recorded recently in Washington, DC.

They were speaking primarily in the context of science and scientists, as that's the main focus of Tippett's latest book Einstein's God: Conversations About Science and the Human Spirit.



I was listening. however, in the context of the arts. I have known more than one musician to say that the time of being on stage is like that for them, a time of clarity and connection, when time slows down whether they are thinking about happening or not. Other aspects of the creative process have that effect as well, I find. What do you think?

Lots of thought provoking ideas for creative practice in that conversation between Tippett and Martin; it'll likely come up for discussion again here. If you're thinking of going to check it out, you might want to know that it lasts for about an hour and half.

Speaking of slowing down time... the singer in stone is at Saint Catherine's Church in Newry, County Down, Northern Ireland. A place worth checking out too.

you may also wish to see

Music Road: Carrie Newcomer: Before & After
Music Road: sean nos, days of awe, and tradition
a selection of songwriter cds I recommend

Delicious Baby's Photo Friday, where each Friday photographers share insights about the world

Mary Black & Emmylou Harris on a hillside journey

The Appalachian mountains have always reminded me of the mountains in Donegal, and Derry, and Cooley, and those Irish hills have reminded me of Appalachian landscapes as well. Mary Black, from Ireland, and Emmylou Harris, from the United States, sing The Green Rolling Hills of West Virginia. Take a listen.






In a few weeks, the Great American Road Trip will get to West Virginia, where there will be more powerful music of the hills to share with you.

There's also more music ahead here along the music road, from Ireland, and from America, and from places where they intersect. Stay with us.

you may also wish to see

Music Road: Reflections with Mary Black
Music Road: now playing: Emmylou Harris: Songbird: disc three
Music Road: Altan: 25th Anniversary Collection
Music Road's Irish music store at Amazon

Road trip music in the district: Washington DC

Before the city of Washington and the District of Columbia came into being, the area around the shore of the Potomac River was a crossroads. It has remained so as the city, and the country, have changed over the years.

The many programs of the Kennedy Center are places where the arts cross and intertwine. Kim and Reggie Harris are part of the Kennedy Center’s workshop program where they offer teachers training in ways music and the arts can help them connect with their students.

African American heritage music is part of what they teach, and they've recorded several albums on music related to the underground railroad of slavery times. On Steal Away they focus on songs such as Go Down Moses, and Follow the Drinking Gourd, which often had dual meanings of spiritual uplift and practical direction as slaves made their way to freedom. On Get on Board! they continue this and continue into songs of the civil rights era, with guest appearances from Guy Davis, Bernice Johnson Reagon (you’ll learn more about her music as the road trip travels to Georgia), Danny Glover, and others.

you may also wish to see


Listening to Irish and Scottish music in Old Town Alexandria
Music Road: Billy McComiskey: Outside the Box
Lonely Planet's Washington DC Encounter guidebook

This is part of The Great American Road Trip, in which I’m partnering up with A Traveler’s Library to add musical ideas to the book and film suggestions for journeys through the regions of the United States which you’ll find there. see the suggestions for films and books on Washington DC. For more about the road trip (and a look at some great road songs) see Great American Road Trip: Music begins

Jim Malcolm and Robert Burns

Acquaintance



Jim Malcolm is one of Scotland’s most inventive writers in the realm of traditional folk. He’s the writer behind Lochinside, among other folk classics, and was named Scots Traditional Male Vocalist of the Year several years back.

On the American side of the waters, he's especially well known for his work with top Scots folk band The Old Blind Dogs. He’s been back on the solo road now for some years, and offers a very fine set from another Scottish poet, Robert Burns. It’s always a danger, on both sides of the Atlantic, that Burns may be dismissed as over familiar or over sentimental. Eddi Reader and Emily Smith, among others, have proved that contemporary folk artists are able to move beyond those obstacles, and Malcolm, with his own distinct interpretations, does too.

Opening with Rantin’ Rovin’ Robin, Malcolm sets a conversational tone which well serves Burns funny stuff such as Deil’s Away wi the Exciseman (good riddance to the tax collector, if you need a bit of brush on your Scots), the narrative and gentle humor of The Ploughman, and the fine love songs such as Ae Fond Kiss and Auld Lang Syne. Understatement serves Malcolm well, and allows him room to move into the stories and the sentiment. His wife Susie, herself a fine singer in her own right, joins for that Ploughman song and the dry humor of the The Shepherd’s Wife. Fourteen cuts in all, and each one is a keeper.


This year, Scotland is celebrating a year of song. Look for more on the singers and songs of Scotland ahead here along the music road. Thanks for traveling with us.

you may also wish to see

Music Road: Eddi Reader sings more of the songs of Robert Burns
Music Road: Emily Smith, Jamie McClennan, and Robert Burns
our Scottish music store at Amazon

composer and player: a conversation

Take a listen to this conversation between violinist Hilary Hahn and composer Jennifer Higdon. They are classical musicians, but whatever sort of music you play or listen to, it's worth your time for the insights on collaboration, co operation, and creativity.

Higdon was recently named winner of a Pulitzer prize for the piece they are talking of here, in a conversation which took place in Indianapolis right after the premier performance of the work.



you may also wish to see


Music Road:Alasdair Fraser & Natalie Haas: In the Moment
Music Road: Hanneke Cassel and Christopher Lewis: Calm the Raging Sea
Music Road: Oceans & Journeys: Road Trip in Maryland




you might also enjoy visiting our musical instrument store at Amazon.com

Oceans & Journeys: Road Trip in Maryland

The sea and the mountains are both constants in the life of Maryland. Both of those elements, and journeys between them come into play in Maryland based composer Jennifer Cutting’s album Ocean: Songs for the Night Sea Journey.

Voyages to love and away from it, into time and out of it, moved by the waters and on the waters, are shown in words and melody, voice and the voices of instruments. Cutting, who plays keyboards, organ, and accordion on the album, does indeed create a journey. Musically, she draws on elements of American folk melody, classical music, the music of Ireland, and a sea green indefinable ground in between.

There’s excitement in the journey starting out, and sensuality of the sea. As the voyage continues, this turns to loss, grief, and change. There's searching and time between, learning to wait, and reconciliations and recognitions and returning, all brought in through songs and tunes with tiles including The Gladdest Breeze, Dissolving King Neptune, Sleep (on the Deep) and Forgiveness. Most are Cutting’s own compositions, and she weaves music from Steve Morse, Gustave Holst, J.S.. Bach, and the Irish tradition, as well. For this project she drew on the gifts of a host musical friends in the United States and Europe, including Dave Mattacks on drums, vocals from Grace Griffith, Lisa Moscatiello, and Maddy Prior, John Jennings on guitar, and Zan McLeod on bouzouki, in an endeavor which took the composer seven years and likely seven crossings of the seas to complete.


Though does not fit easily into any category except perhaps original music, there’s much here to please and intrigue those who like classical, new age, Celtic, and folk genres -- and the spaces between. It's also a recording which invites contemplation as well as conversation, and repeated listenings.

It’s worth hearing Cutting and friends live, too. She’s worked much of the music into a thoughtful acoustic performance that requires only three or four musicians to present clearly and gracefully. You may find out more about live performances of the Ocean Quartet and Cutting’s other projects at her web site.


you may also wish to see
Music Road: Cathie Ryan: Songwriter
Music Road: Voices: Carrie Newcomer: faith and laughter
Music Road: creative practice: autumn: spaces between

This is part of The Great American Road Trip, in which I’m partnering up with A Traveler’s Library to add musical ideas to the book and film suggestions for journeys through the regions of the United States which you’ll find there. On tap at A Traveler's Library for this visit to Maryland is a novel set in a Maryland seacoast town. For more about the road trip (and a look at some great road songs) see Great American Road Trip: Music begins

you might also like to visit our Irish Music store at Amazon.com

Scotland: A Year of Song

Two and half centuries ago, the battle of Culloden in the Scottish highlands marked what seemed to be the end of the highland way of life. As bleak as things seemed at the time, though, the people and the ways of life, the clans, the stories, and the language stayed alive. At times around the edges and at the fringes, at times across the ocean. They stayed alive.

So did the music. This year Scotland is marking A Year of Song, in English, Scots, and Scottish Gaelic. You’ve met many musicians from Scotland along the music road, and there’s more to come on the music of Scotland as the year unfolds. Here is a look back at several singers with ties to the Western Isles. The links will take you to deeper information about these artists and their music.


Mary Ann Kennedy and the men of Na Seoid bring traditions from all parts of the highlands together in a work that celebrates a rising generation of men who carry on the tradition of singing in Scottish Gaelic.

Julie Fowlis has taken her singing in Scottish Gaelic around the world, and for her work was named the country’s first ambassador for Gaelic.

Kathleen MacInnes has worked as an actor and in broadcasting, but it is as a singer that the ideas of her native place in the Outer Hebrides come across most passionately.

There is more on Scottish music and Scotland's year of song to come here along the music road. Stay tuned.

you may also wish to see

Music Road: Emily Smith: Too Long Away

Music Road: Songs of Homecoming, to Scotland and other places

Music Road: Music road trip: Cape Breton

our Scottish music store at Amazon

National Music Day Ireland

This is a day marked out to celebrate live music all across Ireland.
It's also the actual date of the anniversary of the Easter Rising in 1916.
With both those ideas in mind, here are images of Irish musicians at work, and a few suggestions of music to go along.








Music Road: Altan: 25th Anniversary Collection
Music Road: exiles return: karan casey & john doyle

Music Road: Cathie Ryan: Songwriter
Music Road: Lovers' Well: Matt & Shannon Heaton




you may also want to visit Delicious Baby's Photo Friday, where travelers offer insights to the world through photographs each Friday

and
our Irish Music store at Amazon.com



a reminder: these and all images on Music Road are copyrighted, and may only be reproduced on the web and elsewhere with specific permission to do so.

Music road trip: Cape Breton

Sea, forest, heritage, and home -- those things are strongly present in the music of Cape Breton. So strongly present that musicians from this island in northern Nova Scotia have taken their unique brand of Celtic music around the world, taught old dances they remember to Scots who’d forgotten the ancestral steps, and delighted audiences from New England to the mid Atlantic, to Vancouver, to Calgary, to Tokyo, to Istanbul and beyond.

The fiddle is a mainstay of Cape Breton music. It's a fiddle style born in the percussive playing of the west of Scotland and carried across the sea, where it met with influences and partners from other parts of the world, and with the landscape and lives on the forested places of Nova Scotia. Natalie MacMaster brings both tradition and originality to her work. One place to hear that mix clearly is on her album Blueprint

The Barra MacNeils have been making music in the family for as long as they can remember, and making music the family business for more than two decades, with fine singing, playing, and composing that express the heart of Cape Breton’s music. They celebrate this on their album 20th Anniversary Collection



Cape Breton music is deep and varied -- and it is a presence in the music of New England and the mid Atlantic states . That is why this is part of The Great American Road Trip, in which I’m partnering up with A Traveler’s Library to add musical ideas to the book and film suggestions for journeys through the regions of the United States which you’ll find there.


This time, the Library is visits Delaware, to learn about a book that is both historical and visual. If you love gardens, this one may be for you, too.
For more about the road trip (and a look at some great road songs) see Great American Road Trip: Music begins

you may also wish to see

Music Road: thinking about Cape Breton: music and landscape

video on Gaelic culture on Cape Breton

Music Road: Cape Breton Radio Live take 02

Music Road: holiday gift list: music of Canada

Tune In: Nuala Kennedy

When Nuala Kennedy came upon an old radio in a shop in her street in Edinburgh, she began to imagine what it would be like to turn the dial and hear the passing and unexpected sounds of the world, from opera to country swing to late night talk shows, sometimes crystal clear and sometimes fading away, Given that Kennedy is a musician, this soon provided the idea for an album. She's called it Tune in.

It ‘s a framework which invites, even requires, invention and adventure. Kennedy, a composer, singer, and flute player, takes to it all with good result, and a bit like the radio station tuning in different frequencies, she brings in musical friends to add their own notes and ideas in support, as well. Her companions on the trip include Norman Blake, Julian Sutton, Donald Hay, and Sua Lee, just to name a few.

Kennedy is an Irishwoman, now living in Scotland, who has traveled many places through her music. She draws on Irish traditional music for several tracks, including the Donegal Song Down by the Strand and the Fermanagh one The Blooming Star of Belle Isle. She adds in songs and tunes she’s learned on other parts of her musical journeys, and music she has written herself, often inspired by those travels. Especially notable among Kennedy’s own work here are All of These Days and and the Footsteps/Julian and Iwona’s set.


you may also wish to see

Music Road: Shannon Heaton: Oil for the Chain

Music Road: Saturday Sessions: Brian Finnegan on writing tunes

a hundred years ago

A hundred years ago, most of the music people heard was live. They made it themselves, or their neighbors did, in parlor or front porch or church or kitchen. They went out to see someone play music, they listened and sang and played in pub or club or school room, as they worked and at home. A recent study shows that now, less than one per cent of the music most people hear is heard live. That may be unlikely to apply to many who travel here along the music road. Still, it’s an idea to think about.


Music to go along with this

Music Road: darwin song project
Music Road: wilderness plots
Music Road: ceol chairlinn: sharing music in winter

Music Road trip in New Jersey

From the pine barrens to the Jersey shore to the big cities, New Jersey has been a state of immigrants, and of working class heroes. You’re probably already thinking of several musicians whose work fits those definitions. As the Great American Road Trip visits New Jersey, here are two you may be less familiar with.

Buddy Connolly is first generation Irish American. He’s traveled the United States and the world as a band member and side musician with Tim O’Brien, Kathy Mattea, Ceili Rain, Jo-el Sonnier, and others, and you can hear his work on accordion, keyboards, and backing vocals on their recordings, as well. Most recently, he’s been working with fiddle player and composer Eileen Ivers. One of their recent projects has been the Beyond the Bog Road tour. The music, both original and traditional, traces Irish history from the famine times to the crossings to America, through the happy and sad times of immigrant life up until the vibrant interactions of Irish music with urban energy today.

“I loved hearing comments after the show, that people learned something, maybe a fact about Irish history, or maybe about the similarities we share with African American, or Cajun folks, or other immigrants,” Ivers said. Connolly’s musical experiences in the melting pots of New Jersey and Nashville made him well suited for the project. A recording of the music is in the works, and you may also get an idea of what the band’s music is like on Eileen Ivers and Immigrant Soul.


John Gorka takes a rather wry view of things in his home state. One of his signature songs begins “I’m from New Jersey, I don’t expect too much.” He’s been making his living as a musician and well respected songwriter for several decades now, though, with songs that have both lighter and darker sides to them, so even if still he doesn’t expect it things could be going right.
There are more of his reflections on New Jersey life in his album Pure John Gorka.

This is part of The Great American Road Trip, in which I’m partnering up with A Traveler’s Library to add musical ideas to the book and film suggestions for journeys through the regions of the United States which you’ll find there. Check out what's on tap at A Traveler's Library for this visit to New Jersey. For more about the road trip (and a look at some great road songs) see Great American Road Trip: Music begins

you may also wish to see

Music Road: now playing: Eileen Ivers: An Nollaig

Music Road: Music road trip New York City: Irish Musicians

Music Road: Voices: Cherish the Ladies

The Clancy Legacy

The Clancy Legacy


There's both an openness and connection that lives through the music when Irish music is shared with friends and family. Those are gifts that cousins Robbie O’Connell, Aoife Clancy, and Donal Clancy have translated well in the recording of their first album together as a group.

They’ve chosen songs and tunes from the tradition, both familiar and lesser known ones. Robbie takes the lead voice on the opener, the happy story of man and maid and reminiscence told in Jug of Punch. Aoife steps to the fore with a gorgeous job on the lament Ho Re Ho Ro, and Donal’s guitar leads the way through a set including Breton Tune, Lillies in the Field, and The Limestone Rock. Love songs, story songs, songs with a twist of humour, and additional tunes comprise the rest of the set on the recording. Top notch singing, very fine playing, and well chosen songs and tunes, and the warmth of that family connection, mark this as a collection that rises to the top of current traditional recordings.

Not that you’d expect any less, really, from O’Connell, Clancy, and Clancy. Each of them has excellent solo albums out. Robbie is well respected for his songwriting, Aoife is known as a top notch singer, and Donal is rated as one of the best guitarists working in Irish music. In their individual careers, they’ve worked with top artists and bands in traditional music, symphony orchestras, heritage centers, television programs, and festivals across the world. They are also each part of one of the best known families in Irish music.

It has been nearly five decades since the Clancy Brothers, white sweaters, theatrical humour, Irish ballads and all, burst upon the world stage. They brought Irish music into the folk music revival in the United States. Their work influenced folk revival superstars including Bob Dylan and Carolyn Hester, and brought Irish music out of the pubs and back rooms and in to the festivals and arts centers. Robbie was for a time part of the group with his uncles. Aoife and Donal at one time or another shared stages with their famous fathers (Bobby and Liam, respectively) as well.

Several years ago, the three musicians were invited to get together for a show called The Clancy Legacy. It was meant to be a one off thing, but it went over so well that there was demand for more gigs, and over time, calls of “when are the three of you going to record an album together?” The recording is well worth the time it took for them to get to it.


Side note: the production is just enough to frame the three artists’ music gracefully. Those who sit in include George Keith on fiddle, Erik Wendelken on bass, Derek Pisano on keyboards, and two artists you’ve met before here along the music road, Oisin McAuley on fiddle and Shannon Heaton on whistles and flute.

you may also wish to see

Music Road: Aoife Clancy: Silvery Moon
Music Road: Voices: Donal Clancy
Music Road: The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem at Carnegie Hall
Music Road: Another Fine Winter's Night: Matt & Shannon Heaton

trust and music

There’s a lot of trust involved in making music. Musicians launching their ideas out into the deep, as it were, and listeners following on to see and hear what happens next, what they take in and make own. Each side of the equation learning what may be learned.

Trust goes into creating music, as well. Songwriter Gretchen Peters commented on one aspect of that. “I’m a big believer that there’s an internal mechanism, a gut, a truth bone -- call it what you want -- and your job as a writer is listening to it when it tells you this song or this line or this melody needs to be this way, this is the way this goes. If it needs to be changed, you know what needs to be changed. That comes from within.”

Cathie Ryan has a vivid analogy on the idea of trust in one of her songs, which she talks about here.

Emotion, logic, or something else altogether, trust is perhaps a good aspect of creative work to consider this Good Friday and Easter Eve.

Music to go along with these ideas
Music Road: easter eve: rani arbo & daisy mayhem: house be blessed
Music Road: Gretchen Peters: Northern Lights
The comment above is from a story I did on Peters’ work for 2010 Songwriter's Market
Music Road: Songs for an Easter weekend