Harry Potter, imagination, and music

Recently, I’ve been reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. In connection with a project I am working on, I’ve spent the last month or so reading through all seven of the Harry Potter books, actually. Quite a lot to take in there in the way of imagination, story, and character, not to mention parallels and suggestions of myth and history. Not long after I finished Deathly Hallows, I came across a television show on the making of the music and sound effects for the Harry Potter movies, and I thought I’d watch. But I didn’t stick with it.


That wasn't because of the the stories about the sound effects. I’ve worked in both music and television production, so I was familiar with how those were done. I thought the interviews with the composers and the actors were quite interesting too. But, when they started showing clips from the movies with the fantastical creatures -- I discovered I had my own ideas of how they looked and since I’d just read the books, I wasn’t at all ready to take in someone else’s versions of them.

That got me thinking about a conversation songwriter Jeff Talmadge and I had had a while back. Jeff, who is a poet and a lawyer in addition to being a musician, was thinking that one sort of unintended consequence of music videos is that now, when someone hears a song, he or she has the same pictures in mind as does the next person, whereas before each person created his or her own patchwork of visual ideas. He has a point.

Of course, you could regard that shared view as a shared connection. Most of the videos to go along with music I write about here are of artists in performance, which is another sort of thing entirely. Interesting to think about how imagination, music, and visual image connect to each other, though, and what we share and what we don't in those areas.


[is that a photograph of Hogwarts up on the left? no, but some say those buildings at the University of Glasgow were JK Rowling's inspiration for it. I find that quadrangle welcoming, myself, and appreciate your respect that the photograph is copyrighted]

you may also wish to see

Music Road: music and the unexpected
Music Road: Seven Stories

Fiddle Masters in action on dvd

There is nothing quite like the experience of being present in person for a concert of music, whether it be music you love, a musicians who is well known to you you, or a musical adventure into something you’ve not heard.

That said, high quality, thoughtfully shot, well recorded, and well edited taping of such concerts offer a quality experience too. That’s definitely what’s going on with Fiddle Masters Concert Series, Volume 3.

There are twenty four sets taken from five concert recorded at the Violin Shop in Nashville, Tennessee. Players who take center stage include Casey Driessen, whose eclectic style crosses bluegrass, folk, jazz, and other things of his own invention, Daniel Carwile, a multi instrumentalist and educator who shows off is contest winning style on a series of rags and a haunting take on Midnight on the Water, Gabe Witcher, who is also a contest veteran and a current member of the hot acoustic group The Punch Brothers, and
Hanneke Cassel, former Scottish style national fiddle champion who offers fiery Scottish tunes and her own inspired compositions. Cellist Natalie Haas adds her unique style of rhythm on the cello to accompany several of Cassel’s tunes, and teams up with her sister Brittany for a medley of tunes from Norway. Young player Tatiana Hargreaves adds a classy take on the folk standard Pretty Saro, and joins up with Alex Hargreaves for Dusty Miller.

The Violin Shop is a place where musicians often meet up, a place where they know they can find quality instruments and get work done on the ones they already treasure, too. So it was a natural thing when the shop’s owners added an small space for performance to the place. That’s where these concerts where shot, and well done they are. Whether you are a player yourself, a fan on one or more of these artists, or just enjoy fine acoustic music, Fiddle Masters Concert Series, Volume 3 is well worth your time.

you may also wish to see
Music Road: Three Fiddle CDs for Fall
Music Road: Highlander's Farewell: Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas

music for memory, and for dance

As the slant of light turns towards autumn across the northern hmeisphere, as the edge on the wind heralds the drawing in of colder weather to come, it is time to go on a musical journey, as Robin Spielberg takes fresh view of familiar classics, and Lissa Schneckenburger invites to the heart of history, and of dance.


Home on the Range, Aura Lee, Danny Boy, In the Good Old Summer Time: these are melodies and songs that cross generations and cultures and suggest a hand of comfort and connection from past to present. Robin Spielberg knew these songs growing up, and when she began teaching them to her daughter, she started to think of making an album of this music. Spielberg’s instrument is the piano. She’s known as a gifted composer with more than a dozen albums to her credit, sold out concerts at at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, and an extensive touring schedule in the United States and abroad.

Spielberg brings her gift for melody to the well known songs on Sea to Shining Sea: A Tapestry of American Music, creating and recreating memories and melodies, presenting them without words and giving space for listeners to add their own stories. There are twenty tracks on the disc, including three Spielberg originals, which stand up in good company with the well known pieces. Though she’s best known for her solo piano work, she heard these songs as ensemble pieces. She’s well supported by Catherine Bent on cello, Kate MacLeod on guitar, fiddle, and vocals, Nancy Rumbel on oboe, Paul Henle on percussion, and her daughter, Valerie, on marimba and bells. It’s a fine recording to just play through as it stands, but especially worth note are a lovely reinterpretation of The Water is Wide, the lively I’ve Been Working on the Railroad paired with the quiet Oh Shenandoah, and the original Circle of Life.

Lissa Schneckenburger offers an instrumental journey as well, into the heart of New England fiddling. She grew up in Maine, absorbing the mix of Irish, Scottish, Quebecois, Cape Breton, Appalachian, and other styles that swirl together there. Some of her earliest experiences were playing at contra dances - something she still enjoys -- and for her album Dance she has gathered a fine collection, featuring tunes both lyrical and lively. Her sure touch on the fiddle leads the way through the Huntsman’s Chorus, the Lamplighter's Hornpipe set, Eugenia’s Waltz, and seven more equally engaging tunes, well suited for listening and dancing. She brings along an ensemble of musical friends as well, several of whom you’ve met before along the music road. They include Bethany Waickman on guitar, Keith Murphy on guitar and piano, Eric Merrill on viola, and Corey DiMario on double bass.

you may also wish to see
Music Road: creative practice: early autumn
Music Road: Mother: music celebrating mothers and motherhood: McKeown, Ryan, Spielberg
Music Road: Music of Maine: Lissa Schneckenburger

Ghosts and stories

Halloween is coming up, and it is certainly a time of year when imagination, shared or individual, plays a part. Someone asked me the other day if I knew any songs about ghosts.

There are whole genres of ghost lover songs in folk traditions, no doubt at least in part a consequence of times not that long past when a person would set out on a journey -- down the road or across the sea -- and never be heard from again. The Bay of Biscay and She Moved Through The Fair come to mind. There are other ghosts in song too, usually of folk who have come to a bad end at some one else’s hand. There are ghost trains and ghost ships, not to mention ghost cattle herds. The spookiest song with ghosts in it, to me, is called Greenwood Side, also known as Cruel Mother. Details vary through the traditions and I'll let you seek out the story on your own if you've a mind to, but the last verse of the way I learned it always got to me as a kid because of the years of things the woman in the song had to face as punishment for murder (the ghosts of those she murdered were the ones who let her in on this stuff, too). As an adult I’ve thought, on a more hopeful note, that this woman has great faith in the power of forgiveness. The verse goes

...I’ll be seven years a bird in the wood
seven years a fish in the flood
seven years the tongue in the warning bell
and God save me from the flames of hell.

then there's the story told in Wind and Rain, in which the murdered one's bones turn into a fiddle. about those ghost cattle herds? Johnny Cash knew about those.

There are other ways to consider the unknown and scarier parts of life in song, though
To take a turn to another train of thought, take a look at

A song which came out of another sort of reflection in a graveyard, Audience of Souls from Emily Smith
another way to look at uncertainty, and to celebrate another season: Music Road: season of grace
a different thought about ghost trains



[the photograph, of a twelfth century ruin in Ireland, is copyrighted, and I thank you for respecting that]

Music of Healing: Arising from the Troubles from Tommy Sands

Musician Tommy Sands is a gentle man with a powerful message, a songwriter who talks of hurt and healing, division and reconnection in his songs. He has taken his songs of peace and justice from prisons in Nevada to community groups in the Middle East. The heart of his music, though, comes from his home country County Down in Northern Ireland

Down lies right along the border with the Republic, a borderland that has seen more than its share of bloodshed and division among folk who would otherwise be a community of neighbors. It is a beautiful place, a land of mountain and water, legend and story. From these wellsprings, Tommy Sands draws his music.

In Irish history and legend, there comes a time when leader Fionn MacCumhaill is talking with his people of music. “What is the most beautiful music in the world,?” he asks them, and they speak up for the songs of birds, the laughter of a girl, the baying of hounds. Fionn agrees that they are all good, but he says. “The most beautiful music of all is the music of what happens.”

“Growing up, I heard songs all around me, songs of emigration and things that were very meaningful to those who wrote them, traditional songs. Then there were things happening around me, and I felt, as a songwriter, that I wanted to write about what was going on around me. I don’t know how historical Fionn MacCumhaill was exactly, “ says Tommy Sands, “but sometimes mythology is truer than factual stuff.”

For his album Arising from the Troubles, Sands has gathered together eighteen songs, some of which he’s been singing live for years but has not before put on record. They come from and speak of the political and personal aspects of the troubled times of Northern Ireland, the history and the present day. As well as the hard times, anger, and pain, they speak too of the possibilities of hope and peace,

Sands is joined on the album by his son Fionan and his daughter Moya. Moya takes the lead in singing on A Stone’s Throw. In four verses, Sands and his daughter illuminate the idea of communities of people who grow up separately together, and the changes that have taken place from the time Sands went to school with that situation to the time his daughter did. If you are familiar with American songwriter Kate Campbell’s work, you may see parallels with her song about growing up separately together black and white in the American south, a song called A Cotton Field Away.

We’ll Sing It All Over and You Sold Us Down the River are both anthems of a sort, from differing perspectives. Sing It All Over is a forceful statement of principles of the civil right movement in Northern Ireland (part of the words you hear in the background are ‘one man one vote one one vote’), while Sold Us Down the River is a song Sands wrote after speaking with a Protestant neighbor and thinking about the man’s feelings of being expected to be loyal to the crown and then let down by the actions of the British government.

Sailing Through the Sky explores a poetic, thoughtful, and bittersweet idea about being in prison. Troubles recalls the uncertainty of years when a strange car coming down the road or a word spoken at the wrong time might lead to fear and even death.

The sadness, pain, anger, and fear is context, though, for hope and even humor. The Mixed Marriage, a duet with Dolores Keane, finds the two singers poking fun at differences. Pete Seeger joins in for The Music of Healing, a song which became the genesis of an annual event exploring and celebrating ways music can reach across troubled times. In the opening verse, Sands writes

Don’t beat the drum, that frightens the children
Don’t sing songs about winning and losing
Sit down beside me, the green fields are bleeding
Sing me the music of healing.

and in the chorus repeats

Ah, the heart’s a wonder
Stronger than the guns of thunder
Even when we’re torn asunder
Love will come again.

It is a song Sands has sung across the world, and in his hometown of Rostrevor in County Down. As Sands was growing up there, the violence and division of the Troubles was coming on, but he saw another side, too. “When my parents played music -- my father played the fiddle and my mother played accordion -- people would come into the house, and it didn't matter what religion you were, what politics, soon I’d see their feet tapping in time, all to the same tune,” he says.

With songs that put poetry in politics and politics into poetry, and music into both, Tommy Sands keeps carrying that idea on.

you may also wish to see
Music Road: Tommy Sands: Let the Circle Be Wide
Music Road: now playing: Radio Ballads: Northern Ireland
thoughts about the summer riots in Belfast, at Perceptive Travel,

music and intention

In her song Stones in the River, Carrie Newcomer sings


...today I’ll drop stones into the river.
And the current takes them out into forever.
And the truth is most of us will never know,
Where our best intentions go.
Still I’ll drop another stone.

Intention is always a subject for reflection and contemplation and question, in music and in other parts of life. Then there’s the whole aspect of the space between intention and action -- and the spaces around both of those. No accident, I think, that Newcomer chose to place this song on the album she named Before & After.

What does all this have to do with music? Ideas about that

Music is a handed on thing, a shared art, from composer to performer to those who listen -- even those at times that may be all the same person.

Every person who goes to a concert has a different experience. In part that holds because of what each brings to the time, and in part that is because of what each hears, and what each takes away.

What each remembers comes into it too. Songwriters -- any sort of writers, really -- know they cannot control how someone will take what they have written, how they will understand it, and what they will make of it. It is as Newcomer suggests in her song, a balance between creating and letting go. Leaving space for whoever receives your art make it part of his or her own life.

Try this: think of the last three songs (or if you prefer, other things you have read or heard) and write down one thing that you remember most from each. How has that become part of your life? What do you learn from thinking about that?

photograph of stones is copyrighted. thank you for respecting that.

here is a video of Newcomer singing Stones in the River



you may also wish to see
Music Road: India to Indiana: Everything Is Everywhere from Carrie Newcomer
Music Road: reflections with Adrienne Young
Music Road: Shadow and Light: Irish Music from John Doyle

holiday gift ideas: early edition

It is a time of year when travels, visits, and friends and family gatherings come along, as well as many holidays. Music is is always a good gift, and easy to carry along with you, great to share. As you may be beginning to choose gifts for those holiday visits here are suggestions to get you thinking. Follow the links in the titles of these albums to learn more about each of them.


If you’ve someone who enjoys quiet meditation in his or her music, Bill Miller’s Spirit Wind East could be just the thing. Miller is Native American, of the Stockbridge-Munsee-Mohican nation. He has worked with artists in many areas of music and created his own albums as well. For this one, he uses the breath of his flute to reflect on the spirit, landscape and lives of the tribes of the northeastern United States. Music includes Where Waters never Still, Eastern Woodland, Nighthawk, and Founding Brothers.

If you’ve a person on your list who enjoys songs which are like three minute movies, filled with character and story, then Matraca Berg’s album The Dreaming Fields is a good choice. Berg’s stories will make you think as well as entertain you, and she is a fine singer as well.

New parents as well as lovers of Celtic music on your list will enjoy Lullabies for Love. On it, musicians including to Irish band Altan and Scottish style composer and fiddle player Hanneke Cassel join up for a collection of songs for children and parents. Proceeds from the album go to help a project for children in Kenya, too.

Those Celtic music lovers will also like Shannon Heaton’s The Blue Dress, which comprises traditional and original Irish music on the flute. In fact, if you’ve someone with adventurous music tastes on your list, why not choose both
Miller’s and Heaton’s flute music for them. Perhaps add Fred Morrison’s Outlands for a taste of innovative music from Scotland on the bagpipes, too.You could add in Everything Is Everywhere from Carrie Newcomer, as well, an album in which Americana and the music of India meet.

How about seasonal music? Jennifer Cutting’s Ocean Orchestra has that covered, with Song of Solstice. Music for the light and dark of the holiday season and the turning of the year, quiet pieces and ones to sing along with are just a taste of the interesting and lively music on this disc. Perhaps you’ll get Song of Solstice for yourself as well, to get you in the festive mood as you prepare for the winter holidays.


you may also wish to see
Music Road: holiday gift list: American harvest
Music Road: Best Music, 2010

music and finding time

One of the interesting things about music is that it is both immediate and offers a long view. To play and to really become absorbed in listening to music, you have to be in the moment, with focus on what you are doing. Listening to and playing and sharing music also becomes a conversation with memory, across time, whether you are doing it in company or on your own, creating the music or creating the listening.




In a world which often seems to live at an ever increasing speed of technology, where gifts of solitude and contemplation, and connection at the natural pace of face to face conversation are at times challenging to find, music -- at least the sort of music we consider here along the music road -- is a way to make space for all those things, a threshold to them, if you will.


the photograph is of a view which has often struck me as a connection between present moment and ancient ones: winter winds kicking waves high in Carlingford Bay, with the mountains of Mourne as backdrop. the photo is copyrighted. thank you for respecting this.


On the American Public Media radio show Krista Tippett On Being, Tippett had a conversation with scholar Sherry Turkle with the two of them thinking about ways to integrate technology into living an examined life. You may listen to this conversation and read more about the background to it at the On Being web site.

music to go along with these ideas

Dancing Into Silence Carlos Nakai, William Easton, and Will Clipman use Native American flutes, harp guitars and other stringed instruments, and world percussion in exploration of Native American based sound and melody which they evolved in free form over recording session.

Music Road: Carrie Newcomer: Before & After other ways to look at being in the moment, recognizing that the next moment tings change. Newcomer has a new album coming out soon in which she explores her recent encounters with India. more on that to come. It will be called Everything Is Everywhere.

Close to Home on the Celtic side of things, Donal Clancy offers a meditative take on well known and lesser known Irish tunes. just the man and his guitar.

you may also wish to see

Delicious Baby's Photo Friday, where travelers offer new insights to the world each Friday.

Shadow and Light: Irish Music from John Doyle

A tale of an Irish American regiment during the American Civil War, an emigration from Ireland to America that never quite happened, a quiet reflection on the love of a child, the way a lost love drove a man into the American west: you could think all these songs come from Irish tradition, and in a way, they do: each is a song John Doyle composed for his latest album Shadow & Light.

John Doyle is a Irishman long resident in A,erica, a creative guitarist and composer who has worked with artists including Alison Brown, Michael Black, Tim O’Brien, Joan Baez, John McCusker, and Cathie Ryan, to mention just a few. He is a founding member of the landmark Irish American group Solas, worked with Susan McKeown in the band Chanting House and released a duo album with Karan Casey. So the man stays busy enough.

Though he’s written and co written songs for other artists, on his earlier solo albums Doyle has focused mainly on songs from the tradition, with deft and original guitar playing and arrangement which make them sound as fresh as though they’d been newly written. Here, he reverses the choices he made on his earlier projects: there’s one song from the tradition, Bound for Botany Bay, and nine originals, seven of them songs and two tunes in which his guitar work comes especially to the fore.

It’s all good stuff, strong material with stories well told, melodies creatively played, and words sung in a voice that well fits both. Doyle’s arrangements balance his voice and guitar just as they need to be to serve the stories and the music. Alison Brown on banjo, Stuart Duncan on fiddle, Todd Phillips on bass, and Kenny Malone on percussion are among the artists who sit in with Doyle on the project, which he produced himself. It’s all well worth your listening. Several cuts to take especial note of, though, are Little Sparrow, which Doyle wrote for his daughter, Liberty’s Sweet Shore, inspired by the Irish emigration experience at Grosse Ile in Quebec, and and the instrumental Killorgan’s Church/Swedishish.


you may also wish to see

Music Road: exiles return: karan casey & john doyle
Music Road: John Doyle: Wayward Son
Music Road: Liz Carroll & John Doyle: Double Play