Listening to Winter: Aine Minogue, Cara Dillon, Matt Heaton

Winter. It’s a time of gathering in, of reflection, a time for preparation and anticipation, a time for solitude and for community.

Music goes well with all these things.

Aine Minogue gathered musical friends to help with her new single, Winter, Fire, and Snow. The Tipperary born artist draws on her deep connection to the mystical aspects of Ireland, and of music, in her work. She has visited winter before in her work, in albums and dvds including Winter: A Meditation.. This, however is a new offering for this season, a song written by Brendan Graham. Minogue's instruments are harp and voice. Seamus Egan of Solas and Eugene Friesen of the Paul Winter Consort are among those who join Minogue on this mediation on the changes of winter.

Cara Dillon’s album Upon a Winter’s Night began with an idea that she and her husband and musical partner Sam Lakeman had to make a gift for their children. “As musicians and singers we thought it was important that our kids grow up knowing isn’t all about Santa,” Dillon told Belfast Live. When the couple first released the album, they booked a small Christmas tour – which has now become a well loved tradition, for their own family and for others. When people have spoken to Dillon after these shows many of them “have said it brings the magic back into Christmas a wee bit because it’s the more traditional reverent songs,” Dillon says. Those songs include O Come O Come Emmanuel, The Holly and the Ivy, The Darkest Midnight, and Infant Holy Infant Lowly.

On his recording Snow Day , Matt Heaton mixes songs that share the joy, the connection, and the fun of the holiday season, There are songs kids will enjoy and songs parents and other adults will like too. There’s a really good answer to that question of when you should say Happy Holidays, in the song with that name. Have you met The Sneak? Always good to know about during the holidays… There’s a song for Hanukkah, one that celebrates Christmas Movies, a funny and gentle lesson in Can’t Judge a Gift. There’s warmth and connection in Christmas Eve With You. Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer is around and so is Winter Wonderland. Original songs and traditional ones, Heaton has created a collection of music which should become a well loved part of the winter season.

You may also wish to see
Aine Minogue Winter Through a Musician’s Eyes
Cara Dillon Wanderer.
Matt and Shannon Heaton Another Fine Winter’s Night

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Ireland's Music: Aine Minogue: In the Name of Stillness

Music is framed in silence. There’s a saying that as a painter paints on canvas. so a musician paints on silence.

Silence and stillness often go together. They are not the same thing, though. In both silence and stillness, there is music.

Music partners often with dance, and with other sorts of movement -- clapping, stamping feet, and such. Yet music, in both creation and listening, may also be framed in stillness.

Aine Minogue has called her most recent album In the Name of Stillness.

Minogue’s instrument is the harp. She is from Ireland, born in County Tipperary and with a master’s degree in traditional Irish harp performance from the University of Limerick. She has been resident in the United Staes, in New England, for some time.

You may hear the landscapes of both places in the nine instrumental and one vocal track on the album. They are all original compositions. Titles include Sitting Pilgrimage, Quiet Absence, Chant of Eternity, and Home of Belonging. In the Name of Stillness, Minogue’s fourteenth recording, is the second in a series she is calling Celtic Meditation Music. “Whether it’s used in meditation or contemplation,” Minogue says, “stillness helps to open or create more space for ‘something else to come in’ … more peace, clarity, balance, serenity, perspective. For me, stillness says it all.” 

Each piece, and the album taken as a whole, does invite reflection, and coming to a place of stillness. Music and the spaces between the notes blend into each other and lead the listener on a journey of spirit, and indeed, hope. Minogue’s harp leads the way, in quiet conversation with. on occasion, guitar, cello, oboe, clarinet, and keyboards.

In the sleeve notes which accompany the recording, Minogue has chosen words to go along with each track, which, she says, may be helpful to think about in establishing the mood of each piece. These include ideas from sources ranging from Wendell Berry to Thomas Merton to Chief White Eagle.

In the series of videos created to go along with the music (one of them is below) images and these words offer additional material for reflection. Each composition, Minogue says, is a "combination of blessing, community, ritual, and intention,” all things that are integral to Celtic spirituality and tradition. Silence which frames lines and notes of music is a vital part of composition and communication of musical ideas; one might almost say that Minogue’s work leads to contemplation of silence within the notes as well. Take a listen.

You may find out more at Aine Minogue’s web site.

You may also wish to see
Music for Winter’s Changes at Wandering Educators, which includes a video of another track from In the Name of Stillness
Winter Through a Musician’s Eyes, at Perceptive Travel
Music and Mystery: A Conversation with Carrie Newcomer
Ireland’s Music: Cara Dillon: Wanderer

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winter meditation: aine minogue

Winter: a meditation

Aine Minogue has considered the light and dark of winter in her music, and she does so as well in the dvd she has created to extend those ideas.

Minogue is a harpist from County Tipperary in Ireland, now based in the Boston area, so it perhaps comes as no surprise that she includes both ancient and modern ideas and visual elements in her work on Winter Mediation.

There are forest scenes at sunset and at sunrise. There is a burning fire which may suggest yule logs or an even older ceremony. Dancers and other figures move in and out of landscapes, half seen as they suggest stories and ideas yet to be told. Children dance; snow falls, stone spirals seem to speak. The light changes, and snow falls again, all led by Minogue’s harp through eleven tracks of music both familiar and new. Visual elements and music together make thought provoking companion as winter begins.

stills and a bit of music from the dvd




you may also want to see

Music Road: winter music

Music Road: creative practice: winter thoughts

Music Road: ceol chairlinn: sharing music in winter

Music Road: disclosure policy

aine minogue: winter: a meditation

Winter: a meditation

There’s always a visual component to music, whether it’s the sight of musician at work, what’s going on around you, or some totally imagined landscape that the music suggests, or a combination of all that. Aine Minogue, who plays and composes Celtic music, decided to offer a set of visions to go along with and extend her musical ideas for the winter season.

The eleven tracks on her dvd range from dancers suggesting ancient myths to landscapes both contemporary and those seeming older than time. There are forest scenes at sunset and at sunrise, and scene of snow. There’s the burning fire of the Jezebel carol, which may suggest yule logs or an even older ceremony; there are half glimpsed dancers and half heard song on the journey too, and the familiar Christmas dance melody of Noelle Nouvelle.. All this is led by Minogue’s music on the harp. well supported by fiddle, whistle, cello, and percussion. the ideas and imagery leave space for winter holiday meditation, whatever holiday you may celebrate, and invitation to walk the paths of what you may learn from this season of darkness and season of light.

you may also want to see

Boston Celtic Music Festival , coming up 9 and 10 January

Wilderness Plots: the dvd

a short film about Julie Fowlis and sending good wishes to Julie, who is up for best folk singer of the year at the BBC 2 folk awards. the awards will be announced on 2 February