Winter's gifts: Music

Winter: it’s a time for reflection, for contemplation, for spending time in solitude and for seeking out good company. Music is a part of all this, and it also makes a fine gift. Here are ideas as you plan your holiday listening and giving. Some of these albums and artists you have met here before along the music road, and for others, there’s more to come. Either way, follow the links to learn more of the music.

If you’ve someone on your list or if you yourself love the music of Scotland, then Karen Matheson’s solo album Urram< will fill a spot on your list. It is the first solo album Matheson has released in some time -- she’s often involved with her work as part of the band Capercaillie. She was working on an album of contemporary songs in English and Gaelic but found the deaths of her parents, and coming across family photographs from times past in the wake of that, turned her in another direction. The songs of Urram are in Gaelic, some Matheson would have known from her childhood, others that she searched out in song archives. Spare arrangements from longtime band mates as well as unexpected guests frame Matheson’s musical storytelling.

Jenna Moynihan draws on the music of Scotland as well, both music from the tradition and as source to frame her own compositions. Growing up in New York state, two years into studying violin at eight years of age Moynihan encountered the fiddle music of Scotland, and that set her on her musical path one she has followed thus far all the way up through a degree at Berklee College of Music and the release of her album Woven, It’s a fine collection, comprising music that shows both Moynihan’s lyrical touch as well as flashes of wit -- which you may also see in her descriptions of the tunes in her liner notes. It is a journey worth the taking al the way through the album as it’s been been sequenced by Moynihan and producer Maeve Gilchrist. For a hint of what’s in store, standout tracks include the Kendall Tavern set, Haven, and Dolina MacKay.

Oisin Mac Diarmada knows the fiddle, too. In his case the background is Ireland, and in his recording The Green Branch the music of the Sligo region. You’ll have met Mac Diarmada’s music though his work in the band Teada, in his duo recordings with Seamus Begley, and with his Irish Christmas in America projects. For The Green Branch his musical partner is Samantha Harvey, whose piano work proves a fine backing and at times rhythm section for the energy of Oisin’s fiddle as he makes his way through sets of jigs, reels, hornpipes, and flings, including Jacke Coleman’s paired with Mayor Harrison’s Fedora and Bright May Morning paired with Fowler on the Moor. Harvey’s first way into irish music (she is originally from America, now resident in Ireland) was through irish dance, and a particularly engaging set, Veronica McNamara’s/The Professor/Charlie Dolan’s, includes the sound of her dancing feet along with fiddle and piano.

Alison Brown’s instrument of choice is the banjo. In her mind and spirit and hands it’s an adventurous instrument, melodic more than percussive, part of an ensemble more often than claiming the sole spotlight. On her album Song of the Banjo her original pieces are most composed for an acoustic ensemble, with deft placing of the colors of instruments to tell the stories she has in mind. That’s true of the varied selection of covers as well including several in which she backs singers in re invented versions of songs from writers as varied as Michael Martin Murphey, Bacharach and David, and (on the deluxe edition of the album) Marvin Gaye. If you’ve heard Brown’s tone and an voice (so to speak) with the banjo you’ll recognize it through the tracks on Song of the Banjo; if you are new to her work, listen and follow it as the thread that pulls through.

There will be more to come on these recordings and artists here along the music road, but they are too good to have you miss out on them during this season of listening, sharing, and giving.

Season of giving, you say? What about some seasonal music? Of course...

With her Quartet, the aforementioned Alison Brown has a fine seasonal album called Evergreen. There’s a nice blending of Carol of the Bells with We Three Kings, and Two Santas comprises two Santa themed songs you’l recognize. There’s a livley reinvention of The Little Drummer Boy among the other gems.

For On Christmas Night from Cherish the Ladies Heidi Talbot handles lead singing for The Castle of Dromore, a song that always evokes winter for me. Talbot makes the often done over the top O Holy Night sound as welcoming as if it were done around the fireside. too. Excellent instrumentals led by Joanie Madden’s flute, among them the title track, Old Apples in Winter, and the Kerry Reel, weave in stories and sound of Ireland with the carols and songs of the season

Speaking of the flute...you will hear some fine flute playing from Shannon Heaton on the album Fine Winter's Night which she’s done with her husband, guitar player Matt Heaton. They each sing, too, and they each have original songs of the season, tunes and carols and contemporary pieces. Listen out especially for Matt’s original First Snow Fall of December, Shannon’s title song, and their takes on the Wexford Carol and It Came Upon the Midnight Clear.

You may also wish to see
Another Fine Winter's Night: Matt & Shannon Heaton
6 of the best Christmas Songs
Music for the first week in Advent: candle in the window

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bluegrass: Claire Lynch

Love songs, songs of the road, vivid tales from history, stories of family, of change, of choice: you’ll find all of those things in the music of Claire Lynch. Lynch bases her work in bluegrass, and does that so well that she’s received a number of awards in the genre. In that high lonesome sound Lynch finds inspiration rather than limitation, though, branching out from that base to explore aspects of country, Celtic, swing and folk ideas in the songs she chooses and the songs she writes -- and she does that so well that she’s recently been honored with a prestigious United States Artist Fellowship . Before all that recognition, though, her peers knew Lynch was worth paying attention to. Kathy Mattea, Patty Loveless, and The Seldom Scene are among those who have been drawn to record Lynch’s songs. Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, and Jesse Winchester are among those who’ve asked her to add her voice to their projects.

Take a listen for a moment to the song Kennesaw Line and you’ll readily hear why this is so

Co writer Louisa Branscomb’s three times great aunt saved letters her brothers had written to her during the Civil War, letters which provided the spark for the title track of Lynch’s most recent recording, Dear Sister.. There’s a country blues tinge to the story of loves ups and downs in How Many Moons, and full on bluegrass rules Buttermilk Road/The Arbours. Lynch’s cover of That Kind of Love, written by Pierce Pettis, adds new dimension to an already reflective song. Through the album, Lynch’s clear soprano and thoughtful phrasing are well supported by her regular band mates Mark Schatz on bass, Matt Wingate on guitar and mandolin, and Bryan McDowell on fiddle. Musical guests include Tim O'Brien vocals nd bouzouki and Alison Brown on banjo. It is Claire Lynch’s voice which defines the music on Dear Sister, though.

you may also wish to see
Claire Lynch: Crowd Favorites
Alison Brown: The Company You Keep
Cathie Ryan: Through Wind and Rain

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Music and journey

Music has many roles along life’s roads. At times it a companion, at other times a historian, sometimes music is a connector. At times music is immediate and of the moment, and at still other times it calls back memories. Whichever of these roles music fills at a given moment. it takes us on a journey.

That’s as true whether you are listening to a song, a dance tune, a chamber music piece, or an orchestra movement. Music tells a story -- may stories, really -- and invites us along.

When musicians are creating albums, they think of that aspect too, in the way they sequence the pieces on an album. Now that it is possible for listeners to pick and choose in purchasing and listening to tracks rather than having whole albums, this experience of following a sequence is one that many people choose to bypass.

That can be a mistake. Hearing how an artist chooses to set one song alongside another, listening to what sort of connection there may be across pieces that open an album and that close it, hearing how songs interact with each other melodically and lyrically and in all the ways musicians choose to present them -- those are things which help make the journey of listening to music one of discovery.

Kathy Mattea, Cathie Ryan, and Nuala Kennedy each take quite different journeys on their new albums. Mattea, who has said that her doorway into country music was through folk music, has been walking back through that door since her album Coal, and that she continues with Calling Me Home, an album that begins with a traveler far from home and ends with Requiem for a Mountain. Cathie Ryan draws on her background and experiences in both Ireland and America to create a wide ranging yet clearly focused journey through the joys and sorrows of life on her recording Through Wind and Rain.
Nuala Kennedy brings in her heritage of Celtic tradition and her work in the contemporary world in a collection that looks to past and present for its inspiration on her recording Noble Stranger. You will be hearing more of each of these recordings in days to come.

following up on that, you may want to see the article Cathie Ryan: Through Wind and Rain for more on that album


It is also possible to lead this sort of journey through music without words. Two recordings you may want to check out to hear fine examples of this are Hanneke Cassel’s For Reasons Unseen and Alison Brown’s
The Company You Keep.

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Road Trip Music: southern California

Southern California: a land of movie stars, palm trees, borders with Mexico, beaches, sprawling cities and small towns, sunshine and wind. As the great American road trip, heads to southern California, on the music side of things I’m taking note of the fact that southern California is also a land of bluegrass.

Vince Gill, Chris Thile, Stuart Duncan, Sweethearts of the Rodeo: bluegrass and country greats who have all spent time in the southern California bluegrass scene. So has Alison Brown, from whom comes the soundtrack for this section of our trip.

Brown is a much awarded banjo player and composer, and cofounder of the independent record company Compass Records. For her own music, she includes a healthy helping of bluegrass, and adds in confident work in jazz and in Celtic music as well -- sometimes all in the same piece. All of this comes into play in the album I recommend for your listening on this part of the trip, The Company You Keep.

It is always good to see Brown at work, too. You can do that on her recent dvd Alison Brown Quartet - Live at Blair with Joe Craven. That’s a concert recorded at the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Several tunes from The Company You Keep are part of the concert, and there are several of Brown's earlier pieces as well, including The Wonderful Sea Voyage of Holy Saint Brendan and Goin’ to Glasgow.

You may also wish to see

The Last Star: Heidi Talbot
Shannon Heaton: The Blue Dress
Carrie Newcomer: Before & After


This is part of The Great American Road Trip, in which I originally partnered 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’d find there. The Library is closed now, but I think you will still find the journeys through music interesting.
For more about the road trip (and a look at some great road songs) see Great American Road Trip: Music begins

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Grada: Natural Angle

Natural Angle


A song from bluesman Mississippi John Hurt, an original piece which references tigers, cormorants, and Panama, traditional Irish reels and original ones as well, a song by bluegrass award winner Tim O’Brien and Texas tune smith Guy Clark about an Irish immigrant to the United States who fought in the Mexican War --Natural Angle is just the right name for Grada’s latest recording. Well known as a top Irish traditional band, they are also known as world travelers, and as a band whose members have lived in many parts of Ireland as well as New Zealand and Canada. So they offer straight up Irish musical ideas, but Irish music which has shaken hands with other traditions and other landscapes.

That’s not an entirely new approach for Grada, but with this latest recording they are maturing into it, taking more chances and building on what was already a fine ability for balanced song selection and terrrific ensemble work. They came to Nashville to record this album, with Tim O’Brien producing, Erick Jaskowiak engineering, and Alison Brown and O’Brien sitting in on several tracks. So has Grada gone bluegrass? No, but the music here will make you think once or twice about the vibrant connections between the high lonesome approach to melody making and how much of that came over from Ireland. It’s a study in how musicians with a clear view of what they want to say and how they want to say that are able to take adventures with the material they choose. It’s all good stuff, and best listened to straight through, but if you’ve time only for a couple of tracks to get started, Nicola Joyce’s singing on No Linen No Lace and John Riley and the instrumental sets Abe’s Axe and Dotsy’s are great places to begin.

you may also want to see

Grada : Cloudy Day Navigation

Aoife Clancy: Silvery Moon

malinky: flower & iron

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Music for Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving time in the United States. Musical ideas to explore for the holiday

Hanneke Cassel and Christopher Lewis: Calm the Raging Sea Top Scottish style fiddler and guitarist turn their attention to a set of hymns

Jay Ungar and Molly Mason Harvest Home
fiddle and guitar on lively and reflective music of the American landscape


Mark O'Connor: Americana Symphony
classical and Americana meet in the hands of a composer who is master of both


Donal Clancy Close to Home Irish music, on guitar, close to home


bluegrass, jazz, Celtic, and folk keep good company on this recording from Alison Brown
The Company You Keep


you may also wish to see

Music Road: Daisycutter: Sara Milonovich

Music Road: holiday gift list: American harvest

Music Road: harvest time: Native American music

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Photographing music, again

Continuing on the exploration of music into images. Listen for the music in the silence.

Photographs from gigs in Glasgow, Cambridge, Austin, Nashville.



































check out other photo blogs at Delicious Baby's Photo Friday


you may also want to see

Music Road: ceol chairlinn: sharing music in winter

Music Road: Celtic Connections 2009: images, continued

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here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this.Thank you.

Alison Brown: The Company You Keep

The Company You Keep

The thing about listening to Alison Brown play is that she paints whole landscapes and holds whole conversations without saying a word. Brown plays banjo, and sometimes guitar. Her preferred company to keep while doing that include bassist Garry West, piano player John R. Burr, and fiddler/mandolinist/crazy man Joe Craven. There’s also usually a percussionist along, in this case bluegrass drummer Larry Atamanuik and drummer of all trades Kenny Malone. Top Irish guitarist and producer John Doyle joins in as well.

It’s Brown’s playing and imagination which center this good company, however,
leading them through music that brings in sounds of bluegrass, folk, jazz, swing, and Celtic music, without ever losing focus -- creating focus rather, with a music that moves like a fresh breeze from the composer’s imagination to yours.

There are ten tracks on this album, one written by Burr, one written by ace Irish box player Mairtin O’Connor, one a folk tune, and seven composed by Brown with input from West, Doyle, and Burr on various cuts. The titles of the tracks themselves suggest an interesting story, all the way from Crazy Ivan to Rocket Summer, The Road West, Drawing Down the Moon, and Under the (Five) Wire through Rain or Shine, Over Nine Waves, Forky on the Water, The Clean Plate Club, and Waltz for Mr. B Brown regards composing music as both an individual and a collaborative act, starting with the composer's idea and shaped by the ideas of those who play the music. That process is in full and lively force here. That’s something you can see clearly if you get the limited edition ‘Two Makes Company’ version, which includes a dvd of a concert the group played at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Watching or listening , it’s fine and original music played with grace and creativity, well worth repeated visits.

For a taste of what the album and the dvd are like, here’s some video:


update, December 2009 ***congratulations to Alison and all involved on the Grammy nomination for the track Under the (Five) Wire on this album***


you may also want to see

Music Road: Alison Brown Quartet: Evergreen

Music Road: Liz Carroll & John Doyle: Double Play

Music Road: now playing: Athena Tergis: Letter Home

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Alison Brown Quartet: Evergreen

Evergreen



Alison Brown likes to make music that doesn’t fit any precise categories. That’s what she and her fellow players in the Alison Brown Quartet do with seasonal materrial for the winter holidays, too. The result is music that’s both familiar and new, welcoming and challenging, and is likely to have listeners both enjoying it with quiet thouhgtfulness and laughing in surprise and delight.

Brown’s chosen instrument is the banjo, and here she brings that in conversation with bass from Garry West, fiddle and mandolin from Joe Craven, drums from Davisd Heyer, and piano from John R. Burr.

They take on both sacred and secular tunes.On the jazzy side, there’s Skating form Vince Guaraldi paired with a rockin’ version of Feliz Navidad, while a Celtic tune first written for the harp meets Dr.Seuss at O’Carolan’s/Welcome Christmas. You can almost see the snow sparkle as the quartet has fun with Sleigh Ride, and Christmas Time Is Here shows another side of how they think about the season, joined by the voices of students from the university School of Nashville’s Middle School Chorale. The ABQ rounds out the set with The Little Drummer. It’s a fine wintery mix that needn’t be put away when holiday celebrations are done.

you may also like

Music Road: now playing: NewGrange: Christmas Heritage

Music Road: Gretchen Peters: Northern Lights

Music Road: listening to Christmas

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Now playing: road music

Musicians spend a lot of time on the road, and so they often write about it. That experience often forms both direct subject and metaphor for life’s twists and turns. Here are three I like:



Muireann nic Amhlaoibh knows whereof she speaks in singing Gerry O’Beirne’s song Western Highway. Not only does she spend much time on the road, as the lead singer of the irish band Danu, in support of her solo projects, and working with Scottish singer Julie Fowlis, she grew up in the far western most part of Ireland, Dunquin in County Kerry. This song is a fine evocation of travels, changes, and landscape.

Alison Brown doesn’t sing a word on Chicken Road; she speaks with her banjo, leading a high stepping journey that yet has elements of looking back as well as looking forward.


Roads and journeys often find their way into Tish Hinojosa’s music, nowhere more vividly than in By the Rio Grande. Hinojosa is from the southwest, and has traveled all over the world with her music, taking the southwestern landscapes of her imagination, and her understanding won by living across Mexican and American cultures, down many roads.

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Now playing: NewGrange: Christmas Heritage

The music on A Christmas Heritage from Newgrange plays out like an evening among friends during a quiet winter snowfall -- rising and falling, dark and light, laughter and silences, ideas reflecting the spirit of Christmas, the changes of solstice, the promise of spring, and the connections of conversation.

The players who made this are in fact friends, though they don’t often get the chance to play together. There’s Philip Aaberg on piano, Mike Marshall on mandolin, Darol Anger on fiddle, Todd Phillips on bass, Alison Brown on banjo, and Tim O’Brien on vocal and mandolin. Doesn’t matter if you know these musicians’ work, really. They are all A list players, creators and innovators in acoustic music, and here, while doing that, they are also friends together sharing holiday music. Tracks include Greensleeves, It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, Gypsy Winter, On a Quiet Night, and Go Tell It on the Mountain.

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Creative practice: curragh, storms

Several posts back, we started talking about the curragh, that Celitc v ersion of the hero's journey, where one sets out with only the smallest of boats to cross the sea. Any sea journey runs into storms, of all sorts, and their aftermaths. As does, when you think of it, any creative project.

Alison Brown has a tune inspired by legendary small boat sailor St. Brendan on her album Replay

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Now playing: alison brown

Alison Brown

Stolen Moments

acoustic adventures from all points of the compass

Bluegrass, jazz, newgrass, Celtic , country: whatever she’s playing, Alison Brown shows a gift for melody, a gift most often expressed on the banjo.

She brings all those aspects of her searching music spirit together in the eleven tracks here.

Top cuts include Celtic tinged original instrumental “Carrowkeel,” Brown picking up her guitar to collaborate with John Doyle in supporting the graceful lead vocals of Andrea Zonn on the trad piece “One Morning in May.” Jimi Hendrix’ “Angel” with Beth Nielsen Chapman on lead vocals. The Indigo Girls, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Kenny Malone and Stuart Duncan also sit in.

this is a post from the early days of Music Road at. Learn more about Alison Bown's work in these more recent stories

Alison Borwn: Song of the Banjo at Wandering Educators

The Company You Keep, another album from Alison

Alison is teaching banjo online at ArtistWorks...

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