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.


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Music Road: holiday gift list: American harvest
Music Road: Best Music, 2010

Road Trip Music in Wisconsin

As the Great American Road Trip winds through the landscapes of Wisconsin, from the big cities to the farmlands to the university towns to the watersides, listen to the music of two Wisconsin artists who, in different ways, each have the landscapes of their native state embedded in their music.


Bill Miller is a member of the Menomonee Nation. He’s a writer, a singer, a player of the flute and a gifted visual artist. Though he has lived in Nashville for some years, his songs and his melodies often hold elements of his Native heritage in the land of the wild rice people, and he has won several Native American music awards. One good introduction to Miller’s work is Spirit Rain.

John Smith has that most everyman of names. To set that apart a bit, professionally he writes it johnsmith, but really it is his lyrics and his skill at painting pictures of small town life that reach beyond the bounds of the town that set him apart. Gravity of Grace is a good place to meet johnsmith, who lives in a Wisconsin town on the banks of the Mississippi River.

you may also wish to see

Music Road: looking toward Christmas: Bill Miller

Music Road: Tish Hinojosa: Our Little Planet

Music Road: Road Trip Music in Mississippi

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. Stop by and see what the Library has in mind to inspire travels in Wisconsin.
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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looking toward Christmas: Bill Miller

Sacred Gift
Bill Miller, a Native musician of the Menomonee people of Wisconsin, brings his long immersion in country music and his deep faith, and his conviction that the Americas are as much holy lands as those which are usually called that, to this seasonal album. It’s a seasonal recording that would work well for any time of year, really, though the content is focused around Christmas. The quiet flute based title track serves as an invitation to the idea of preparation and quiet reflection. That is carried out in Miller’s approach to Joy to World, Silent Night and his own originals including I Saw the Star of Bethlehem. If you’re looking for music which invites contemplation while offering fresh melodic ideas, check this out.

you might also want to see

Music Road: Gretchen Peters: Northern Lights
Music Road: words and music, continued