Bluegrass to Bach to Blues: Savannah Music Festival

Swing jazz to Suor Angelica, Hot Club of Cowtown to Brooklyn Rider’s chamber music, Lunasa from Ireland, Lucinda Williams from Louisiana, Kayhan Kalor from Persia, ring shout, gospel, Brazilan soul, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Bach, Sor, blues to bluegrass to Borodin: all these are but a taste of wht is going on at the Savannah Music Festival, which runs this year from 19 March through 4 April, in historic venues across the city’s center and riverfront.

It is Georgia’s largest music festival, and has become one of the world’s most respected cross genre music festivals. There are ten world class chamber music concerts on this years schedule, a schedule which benefits from co-artistic director Daniel Hope’s world renown prowess as a player himself -- he’s a violinist -- as well as the festival’s record of presenting one of a kind collaborations in historic venues well suited for listening to the nuances of classical performance.

Those same venues, which include the Johnny Mercer Theatre, Temple Mickve Israel, the Charles H. Morris Center, the Lucas Theatre for the Arts, and the Ships of the Sea North Garden, are also welcoming platforms for the soul deep musical styles of the Heritage Blues Orchestra and the local Georgia traditions of gospel and ring shout from the McIntosh County Shouters. The rowdy, rootsy folk rock of the duo Shovels and Rope find a home in these places too, as does the Voice of Cuba Orchestra’s Latin Dance Party and the Atlanta symphony Orchestra’s program including Dvorak and Tchaikovsky. Always highly anticipated, too, are finale gigs from the festival’s two innovative music education seminars, Swing Central Jazz and Acoustic Music Seminar, both which see young musicians from around the country creating at the highest level.

Lunasa brings in pipes, whistles, fiddle and flutes from Ireland, while South Africa meets the American South in a bill pairing up songwriter and singer Vusi Mahasela’s songs of his homeland and its struggles with the Appalachian and old time background of Dirk Powell and Riley Baugus. Mavis Staples brings her six decades of experience in gospel and soul music, Jerry Douglas and the Earls of Leicester add their own spin to classic bluegrass, and Rosanne Cash weaves deft stories of life, love, and he American south in her poetic lyrics and graceful voice.

With that line up -- and it is only part of what takes place -- it is no wonder that audiences comes to Savannah from across the world to be present at these concerts. Bluegrass kicks things off this year, with the highly regarded Balsam Range making their Savannah Music Festival debut on the first evening and the closing day of the event offering an afternoon of classical piano, and evening gig by singer and songwriter Rosanne Cash, and a late night dance party hosted by DakhaBraka, a world music band from Ukraine know for their ability to engage audiences with their unexpected melodies and rhythms. In between, more than one hundred performances take place in intimate venues across Savannah’s historic district

At this writing, several concerts are sold out, but there are many good seats left for other gigs. Find out more at the festival’s web site.

Photographs: Kayhan Kalhor by Ali Boustan, Brooklyn Rider and Dirk Powell courtesy of the artists and the festival

You may also wish to see
American South in Song: Rosanne Cash
The festival’s radio show from Georgia Public Broadcasting
Celtic Connections: seeing music

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Best Music 2014

Music is about story, told through words and notes, rhythm and harmony and tone and timbre and all these things together. It is about journeys real and spiritual and imaginary. It is about connection, conversation, exploration, discovery, and trust. Take a listen to this music, the best music of 2014.

Music is conversation: conversation between artist and audience, between musicians, between those who listen and think and create music all along the way from early idea to performance to recording. Matt and Shannon Heaton decided to focus on conversation as dialogue in the songs they chose and created for the album Tell You in Earnest You will find songs from the Celtic tradition adjusted a bit, contemporary covers, a very funny original piece with an ideas from the tradition as its spark. There’s a song with a motorbike in it and a song from Thailand. Murder ballads to love songs, stories told in, well, conversation, it’s a fine project well worth your listening for the stories alone. You’ll also enjoy fine singing and great harmony work, as well as Matt’s skill on guitar and Shannon’s on flute.

Nicola Benedetti is a classical violinist, a musician in demand by concert halls across the world for her art. A musician who loves challenging herself, she is known for her mastery of music from Shostakovich to Taverner to film composer Korngold. Benendetti is also a Scot. While her musical path took her in a different direction than the jigs and reels and ballads and Burns songs of her native country, she’s always loved them.Homecoming, A Scottish Fantasy finds Benedetti pairing the Scottish Fantasy of Max Bruch -- a classical piece which draws on tunes of Scotland’s tradition and which gives the subtitle to the album -- with sets of music from Scotland’s national bard Robert Burns and tunes by iconic fiddle player James Scott Skinner along with a set of Gaelic puirt a beul and tunes, music by contemporary Scottish folk musician Phil Cunningham, a ballad from the Gaelic tradition, and to close things out, the Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond. Benedetti is not alone in her journey: for the Bruch and other sections she is joined by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. The folk music finds her joining up with talented players including Phil Cunningham on accordion, Aly Bain on fiddle, Eamon Doorley on bouzouki, Duncan Chisholm on fiddle, Tony Byrne on guitar, James Macintosh on percussion, Michael McGoldrick on flute, Ewan Vernal on double bass, and Julie Fowlis on vocals and whistles. Every bit of it is brilliantly done, a true exploration of the music and of musicians joining together to add colors and ideas in service of tradition and collaboration. “This album comes from a very deep. personal place,” Benedetti has said, and that passion shows through clearly in service to the music.

The idea of being present to what moves you and calls your attention -- those things that led Benedetti to choose that sort of project -- are very present in Carrie Newcomer’s most recent recording A Permeable Life as well. Newcomer is a poet of the American heartland, drawing on the landscapes and stories of her native Indiana as well as what she brings of those to her world wide travels with her music. “Finding the sacred in the every day, that is one of the themes that draws me,” Newcomer says, “that, and being present, really present in each moment. On this album, too, there’s the idea of thresholds.” You will find those ideas spun out in the moment of bringing a cup of water to a friend, in the many meanings left by an empty chair, in thoughts on a rainy afternoon spent putting up dill beans and spiced peach jam, in a promise made on shifting light of an autumn morning, in connections and hope found in a night drive home through along a snowy road. Newcomer knows what she’s talking about; she knows how to ask good questions; she has a poet’s sense of image, and a thoughtful, beautiful way of singing as well.

Julie Fowlis also has the gift of telling story and making connection through the tools of music. I her case there’s an added element: she sings most often in Scottish Gaelic, a language that’s not widely spoken even in Scotland. Fowlis grew up with it the Outer Hebrides, and found herself increasingly drawn to learning the stories people who spoke this language told. Her interest and her passion, and her understanding come through on Gach Sgeul / Every Story. There are tunes for dance, stories of legend, work songs, traveling songs, songs of connection and kinship and place. You’ll understand, even if you do not understand the words. Fowlis is joined on the album by members of her regular touring band Eamon Doorley, Tony Byrne, and Duncan Chisholm, as well as guests including Donald Shaw and Sarah-Jane Summers.

Cara Dillon also knows well how to express story in song. Her album A Thousand Hearts includes a range of songs in English and Irish that consider aspects of love and connection. from sadness to laughter to romance to questions to trust. There are songs from the tradition -- Dillon is from Northern Ireland -- as well as contemporary pieces. Her voice anchors and guides a team of talented backing musicians to illuminate stories including The Shores of Lough Bran, My Donald, and Bright Morning Star.

Rosanne Cash has a story of journeys to tell on her recording The River & The Thread. A family connection -- the restoration of her father’s house by Arkansas State University -- drew Cash, long resident in New York, back to the south, to travels through Alabama, Mississippi, and back to Memphis where she was born. In her songs onThe River & The Thread there are people and places, stories and melodies, as haunting and as true, as real and as imagined as you may find along the deep back roads of the American south, in the past and yet today. The Long Way Home, Tell Heaven, Money Road: with titles like that, you know you have to listen. Along the way, Cash will take you on travels through words and through music, paying respect to the sources while adding her own visions. Listen...

It’s a hard road, but it fits your shoes
Son of rhythm, brother of the blues...

Lizzy Hoyt draws on landscape and family in her music, as well. In her case that’s the landscape of Alberta, in western Canada, and of Ireland, from whence her family came. An award winning songwriter, step dancer, and player of fiddle, harp, and mandolin, Hoyt focuses these talents in New Lady On the Prairie with a title song which honors the journey of emigration her great aunt made. There’s the fast paced song from French Canada, V’la l’bon vent, and from the Celtic tradition The , and original pieces which stand up alongside these. Hoyt is a singer of clarity and precision who brings these tunes to vibrant life, as she does with fiddle tunes including the original piece Jubilee Reel as well. She also takes on the often overworked song Danny Boy, giving it an understated treatment that well serves the song and adds her own stamp to it. Joining Hoyt are several musicians whose names will be familiar if you have walked the music road here before including John Reischman, Christine Hanson, and Jeremiah McDade.

The stories Christine Albert has to tell on Everything's Beautiful Now are ones of loss, change, hope, and resilience. The title track takes its words and them from things Christine’s mother in law spoke of to her in her last hours. Reflecting on this, and on other losses of friends and family in recent years. Albert has written and chosen a group of songs that recognizes pain in such changes as well as the joy and hope that come along the way through them. Austin, Texas based Albert has a a warm, inviting way with singing as well as writing: all these together make the recording one that reveals more to reflect on and enjoy with each listening.

Tony Duncan and Darrin Yazzie come from the west, too -- the southwest, of the United States. They are of the First Peoples, Apache and Navajo respectively. Tony plays flutes and Darrin is a guitarist. Drawing on Native stories and legends, the landscapes of the southwest, the rhythms and moves Tony experiences as a traditional hoop dancer, and the lives of their families for inspiration, for Singing Lights they have created a dozen pieces of instrumental music which invites both engagement and contemplation. Coyote, Dances, Singing Lights, Together We Danced, Sedona Sunrise, Nakai (Whippoorwill), Where the Wind Blows: the title themselves offer an invitation to enter this dialogue among flute, guitar, landscape, and spirit.

Engagement and contemplation are two aspects of what Hanneke Cassel offers on her album Dot the Dragons Eyes as well. Her instrument is the fiddle, and her style is that of Scotland with touches of Cape Breton and Americana now and then -- a thoroughly respectful and focused and original take on Scottish tradition, you might say. Time in China with her music led her to compose and name the title track; there’s a set of tunes from the tradition, a tunes dedicated to young people she met in Kenya, and all manner of other creative takes on the traditions of Scotland’s fiddle heritage, including The Captain, Jig for Christina, The Marathon (for Boston), and Lissa and Corey/The Sunrise.

You might guess from title of Claire Lynch’s album Holiday! that is has a seasonal winter theme. That is so, but odds are you’ll want to keep it playing at other times of year too. Lynch’s graceful, gentle yet strong soprano is a natural fit to give holiday chestnuts including Home for the Holidays, White Christmas, and Scarlet Ribbons a fresh sparkle, and this time out her band members step forward to sing lead on two songs as well, to good effect --check out Snow Day and the Hanukah song In the Window. Lynch is a gifted songwriter as well, and that talent plays in to Holiday! also. Rooted in bluegrass but equally at home in folk, swing, and country, Claire Lynch and her band offer a gathering of songs which may well become a seasonal classic.

Jerry Douglas delved deep into the roots of Americana, country, and folk with his project called Earls of Leicester. It is a tribute of sorts to bluegrass icons Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, done by a dream team band of American roots musicians comprising Tim O’Brien, Charlie Cushman, Shawn Camp, Barry Bales, and Douglas. “Flatt and Scruggs were the major influence on me when I was growing up,” Douglas says. “I was around seven year old when I first saw them... It had a huge impact on me. I remember the warmth of the auditorium, I remember the smell of the popcorn, I remember the outfits they were wearing. It’s all very vivid to me, and it’s still influencing me fifty years later.” The band takes on fourteen classics from the Flatt and Scruggs songbag, some well known, some a bit less well remembered, and infuse each of them with new energy and timeless respect for tradition. They also make a showcase as do Benedetti and friends, above, for the varied ways top notch musicians with their own careers can collaborate to brilliant effect.

Kyle Carey names the music she does Gaelic Americana. On her album North Star she draws on the American folk songbag for style with her song Casey Jones Whistle Blow, a song of dreams for a better day, and a slightly eerie song connecting Ireland and the American west and immigration called Wind Through Casper. Northern Lights, North Star, Winter Fever, June Day -- many of Carey’s original songs have to do with change, and coming to terms with that. She holds a storyteller’s line and gift in the singing of these as well as the writing, leaving space of the listener to make his or her own way into the stories. There’s also a fine cover of Across the Great Divide, and a lovely take on Sios Dhan an Abhainn/ Down to the River to Pray which Carey sings in Scottish Gaelic. Musicians who support Carey on the project include many whose names will be know if you walked along the music road before, among them Seamus Eagan, Katie McNally, and Natalie Haas.

Emily Smith is a musician who connects present day and tradition in her work as well. She is from the southwest of Scotland, and often chooses and writes songs with a connection to her home ground. Smith finds that this deep connection to landscape and history sparks ideas as she follows her career as an internationally touring musician, as well. For her album Echoes she has chosen songs ranging from the traditional ballads My Darling Boy and The Twa Sisters to the contemporary song John o’ Dreams. Jamie McClennan, Kris Drever, and Jerry Dougals are among those who sit in with Smith, whose warm, inviting voice and gift for phrasing draw the listener in to the journey.

The Alt is a project of John Doyle, Eamon O’Leary, and Nuala Kennedy each have more than enough to do with other musical involvements, but the three decided they really liked what they came up with when played together, too, and this recording is a result. It is quite a bit like sitting in on a session of an evening with three very talented and creative friends. Each of them sings, Doyle plays guitar, mandola, and bouzouki, O’Leary plays guitar and bouzouki, and Kennedy plays whistles and flutes. It’s an inviting combination of talents, well matched and met as they move among murder ballads, love songs, quiet tunes and lively ones, fine trading of lead voicing and graceful support on harmonies, through track including. The Geese in the Bog/Covering the Ground, One Morning in May, and Lovely Nancy.

Song and story, connection and conversation through music, have been part of Mary Black’s life since she was growing up in Dublin, long before she became internationally respected for her fine voice and fine song selection. You’ll find out more about that background should you read her memoir, for whichDown the Crooked Road (The Soundtrack) is, as it says a soundtrack -- of sorts. It’s a generous eighteen tracks, including many songs you may know well and several you may not have thought of for a time. As Black herself mentions it would not have been possible to include all the songs she mentioned in the book in one album, so if you know her work well, it is interesting to see what she did choose. If you are not familiar with Mary Black, this could be an excellent starting point, and certainly it makes a fine companion to reading the book. Among the songs included are Faith in Fate, Past the Point of Rescue, Colcannon (with the Black Family), Carolina Rua, I Live Not Where I Love, and Who Knows Where the Time Goes.

You could consider Chris Smither’s two disc set Still on the Levee a soundtrack of sorts, too: the twenty four track project is issued to celebrate Smither’s five decades of a life in music as a songwriters and touring musician. Long resident in New England, he returned to his native New Orleans to record new versions of some of his favorite songs. Fifty years on the road or not, Smither is in fine voice and guitar (and his trademark tapping foot) as he travels through Leave the Light On, Song About Rosalie, Another Way to Find You, and other selections that weave blues, folk, American, and country into stories that show why artists including Bonnie Raitt and Emmylou Harris have chosen to cover his songs and sing them nightly on the road. Smither does too: fifty years on, he can still be found playing his music from Portland to Boston, from Amsterdam to London. It’s a story well told, and still in the telling.

Note: some of these artists and albums you have met here before along the music road; others you will meet in future. Most of the links here take you Amazon US or UK, where, in most cases, you will be able to hear excerpts from the music. Music Road is an Amazon affiliate: if you purchase anything on your visit after following one of these links, your price does not increase but Music Road will receive a small commission, which helps keep this small business going. Thank you for that!

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Music, connection, education: Nicola Benedetti

“Your sound is what you speak through. It should be like telling a story. Be as present as you can be -- and make it sound like you’re making things up as you go, like a painter painting a story.” That's classical violinist Nicola Benedetti speaking, during a master class she taught for students at Florida State University. As with any such class, quite a bit of the time was devoted to specific and detailed comment and explanation on technique. As a natural part of this part of things, though, Benedetti continued to remind students that techniques -- and understanding of techniques -- are tools, at the service of the spirit and ideas of music.

“It’s up to you,” she continued, “it’s up to your imagination to dig deep into the music and come up with a story the way you want to tell it. People can suggest things, but it is completely up to you.” That may involve as much reflection as it does time with instrument in hand, she added. “ If you were to listen outside my practice room, what you’d hear is a lot of silence. You have to slow your thought processes down...”

Benedetti is passionately convinced of the power of music, as a means of expression, a means of connection, and a way of centering, and a way of learning about one’s self in the world. She began finding all these thing early in her own life. At the age of four, growing up in Ayrshire in Scotland, she followed her older sister into studying the violin. A dozen or so years later, on winning the BBC Young Musician of the Year Award, she found many opportunities offered her. Some of them, it turned out, were not leading her in ways she felt honored the music she was called to make. She went more deeply into the music she was called to play to renew and refresh her perspective, to guide her focus as she made decisions going forward.

Benedetti speaks about this, and directions resulting from her choices

Part of her calling is going deep into the heart of music, and part of it is sharing her passion for the importance of music -- not classical music alone -- in life and education. On the education side, she is Big Sister with Sistema Scotland, which helps bring music to children, especially those who might not otherwise have a chance to encounter it, she gives master classes as her concert schedule takes her across the world, and she’s recently begun and another educational initiative called The Benedetti Sessions, which allows children to work together in a concentrated period of time of learning what it’s like to play music, about the value of practice and focus, and about working together and alone to make music.

Then there’s that concert and recording schedule. Benedetti has a clear-- and it’s apparent from her choices -- adventurous focus on what sort of music she’s called upon to create and share, and a clear view too of the fact that interpretation is as creative and demanding a music practice as is composition.

In addition to classical repertoire including Tchaikovsky, Tavener, and Vivaldi, she has recorded an album of film music, The Silver Violin (you may find the piece she plays in the video above included there) and, honoring her native land, an album called Homecoming - A Scottish Fantasy, in which Max Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy appears alongside music from contemporary Scottish composer Phil Cunningham, songs from the Gaelic tradition with Julie Fowlis as singer, melodies from Scotland’s national bard Robert Burns, and a fresh and graceful take on the well loved piece The Banks of Loch Lomond. A beautiful and creative joining of musical talents from the classical nd folk traditions, Homecoming is a project which is likely to open both to new audiences -- and indeed at present is in the top twenty and climbing in pop charts in the UK, an unusual feat for a classical album.

A gifted and creative musician, an artist with passion for sharing her own creativity and opening doors for others to experience their own gifts: that is Nicola Benedetti.

In an interview with The Spectator she said: “I’m absolutely convinced – and I want the world to know what I know – that there is something in the music itself that can bring you to a place of substance. And from that place, I truly believe that anything is possible.”

photograph of Nicola Benedetti and Phil Cunningham at Celtic Connections is by Kerry Dexter, and is copyrighted. It was made with permission of the artists, the festival, and the venue..

You may also wish to see
Julie Fowlis: Every Story
Scotland's Music: Nicola Benedetti: Homecoming -- A Scottish Fantasy
Celtic and classical: Tony McManus

Homecoming: A Scottish Fantasy [US link]

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Scotland's Music: Nicola Benedetti: Homecoming -- A Scottish Fantasy

Folk music and classical music: both traditions go back long into the work and life of Scotland, yet rarely are they heard together. That happened at the opening concert of the Celtic Connections Festival in Glasgow in 2014, when top classical violinist Nicola Benedetti and top folk musicians including Phil Cunningham, Julie Fowlis, Duncan Chisholm, Aly Bain, and Eamon Doorley shared parts of a project they had been working on, a project which has become Benedetti’s recording Homecoming - A Scottish Fantasy.

Though she’s a native Scot, from West Kilbride in Ayrshire, Benedetti’s gift and passion for classical music took her away from the west of Scotland to study in London by the age of ten. Her music training took her in other directions than traditional jigs and reels, too, but Benedetti has always had Scotland in the back of her mind. She’s recorded top albums of classical music from Taverner to Tchaikovsky to Vivaldi as well as an album of film music which made pop as well as classical charts, and played her music with orchestras, in recitals, and in chamber music configurations from India to Hong Kong to South America -- and often back in her native Scotland.

Benedetti always receives a warm welcome when she plays in Scotland, whether she is appearing in concert or following another aspect of her musical passion, sharing her work with younger players as part of the program Sistema Scotland and in other educational settings, including her emerging program of master classes called the Benedetti Sessions

It was time to for her to bring classical and traditional music of her native land together. Drawing on emerging friendships in the traditional music scene in Scotland (“I think the sense of togetherness that traditional musicians have is one things I’ll take away from this, and hope to repeat,” she says) she came up with a program which deftly intertwines the classical (Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy, part of which is based on four Scottish folk tunes), well known and loved traditional music of Scotland with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra as backing band (the Robert Burns tune My Love is Like a Red Red Rose, Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond), and traditional and contemporary folk music including tunes composed by Phil Cunningham (Aberlady, The Gentle Light that Wakes Me), a traditional hornpipe, a set of tunes from Scottish folk icon James Scott Skinner, variations on Auld Lang Syne, and a Gaelic song from the Hebrides with Julie Fowlis as vocalist.

Whatever your taste in music, it’s worth the cost of the disc just to hear these musicians, all at the very top of their game and from very differing points of the musical compass, collaborate on music they all hold as vibrant and important. They bring thoughtful, powerful, and fresh interpretations to the well known and often played pieces and weave them gracefully with the ideas and sounds of those less widely known.

You will feel the mist rising off the water at Loch Lomond in Benedetti’s interpretation, and hear the connections, as well, among the sounds of Gaelic as Julie Fowlis sings it, the classical forms of Bruch compositions, and the melody of another Burns song, Ae Fond Kiss. Homecoming - A Scottish Fantasy is a well done, beautifully thought out and brilliantly played collaboration. If you love Scotland you’ll certainly want it, and if you don’t know Scotland, Homecoming might just inspire a visit.

“I have a constant yearning for Scotland,” Nicola Benedetti told an interviewer for the Telegraph newspaper. “The music on this album comes from a very deep, emotional place. Recording it was a very moving experience.”

Photograph of Nicola Benedetti at Celtic Connections is by Kerry Dexter, and was made with permission of the festival, the artist, and the venue.

Stay tuned here at Music Road for more on each of the musicians mentioned in this story

You may also wish to see
Julie Fowlis: Every Story
Celtic Connections 2014
Phil Cunningham and Scott-Land at Celtic Connections
Scotland's Highlands in music: Duncan Chisholm
Alterum from Julie Fowlis

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You could

Celtic and classical: Tony McManus

“It was a left turn at the traffic lights, I think,” says Tony McManus, laughing. McManus, a top notch guitarist known for his ability to bring light and life into traditional Celtic music both with his treatments of traditional melodies and his original work, is speaking of his album Mysterious Boundaries. It is a collection of classical music, comprising works from J.S.Bach, Couperin, Granados, and others. It had its beginnings as a challenge from a friend.

McManus and Mike Marshall were playing at a music festival in Italy. “Mike has gotten involved in just about every genre of music you can image from bluegrass to newgrass to folk to jazz to new age, and for his piece he played the Bach E Major Prelude, which is a piece I’d always loved -- it’s just such a relentless torrent of notes that so inventive and creative. He nailed it, on mandolin, four nights in a row, and when I complimented him on it, he said, learn it!”

It wasn’t a challenge McManus took up right away. “I’ve no training, in either music theory or guitar, so I didn’t think it was even possible,” he says. Marshall kept nudging him, though and so learn it McManus did. Marshall challenged him to learn another Bach piece the Chaconne from Partita #2 for solo violin in D Minor, which is about four times longer than the Prelude. With those two pieces and one by Satie that he’d arranged for a project where it had not been used, McManus began to think about an album.

Not that he was thinking about changing directions in his musical life: he’s still very much grounded in Celtic and folk music, and regularly intersperses these classical pieces with his Celtic repertoire in concert. As is turned out, he found the process he uses for learning Celtic traditional music worked with classical pieces as well. “I have a very acute ear. I find I’m able to listen very intently, and to hold the big picture of a piece in my mind as I’m listening to different arrangements and interpretations, and to absorb bits and pieces I like, and then distill them into something that’s my own,” he says. He also points out that the guitar isn’t an instrument with a long history in traditional Celtic music, “so I’m already listening to music played on and arranged for fiddle, or pipe music, and making that translation.

“The instrument, at the end of the day, is not that important,” he says. “it’s an exercise in trying to convey musical ideas.” Which may be part of the reason that none of pieces on Mysterious Boundaries would be part of a classical guitarist’s usual repertoire, and ties in with one of the things McManus takes away from his immersion in classical music. “ A soloist, even in classical music, has the scope to put their individual stamp on a piece of music. You tend to think all they do is interpret dots on a page, but -- “ he draws a parallel with traditional music “ --if you listen to a song from Donegal sung by Mairéad ni Mhaonaigh of Altan, and then listen to the same song sung by Maighread ni Dhomhnaill, it’d be very different. But it’d be the same song. The same thing is true in classical music.”

McManus follows this path as well, naturally putting his own touch and dynamics and detail into the eleven tracks on Mysterious Boundaries. It is a path you’d do well to follow also, allowing the music to unfold as it is sequenced before you. That said, that fourteen minute Chaconne is there, and so is the Bach Prelude. Other standout cuts include Spanish Dance #4 from Enrique Granados, and the medieval Latin hymn Pange Lingua. “A Celtic guitarist, a folk guitarist, playing a classical repertoire, recorded by a rock and roll engineer -- we were quite new to the process, but we worked very well as a team, and I think the sound of the guitar is beautiful on this album,” McManus says.

As for what's next, McManus, who is from Scotland and now based in Canada, will continue to incorporate these pieces with his Celtic set lists, and to work in Celtic and folk genres. “ You know, I haven’t changed identities as a musician,” McManus says. “This is very much a Celtic acoustic musician’s look at this repertoire.”

photographs courtesy of Compass Records Group

you may also wish to see
music of Donegal: Altan: The Poison Glen -Gleann Nimhe
from Donegal: T with the Maggies
Another Fine Winter's Night: Matt & Shannon Heaton

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Song of Solstice: music for changing seasons

What is the sound of seasons changing? It could be what you hear as you listen to Song of Solstice from Jennifer Cutting’s Ocean Orchestra.

With a gathering of music from Celtic traditions along with songs she’s written, Cutting offers a vision of that which invites contemplation and celebration, consideration of darkness and light in both spiritual and natural realms that accompanies the turn of earth’s time from autumn through winter and back to spring again. To do this, she weaves in strands of musical ideas from Celtic to classical to steampunk, and creates a sound that’s immediately inviting.

Drawing on the gifts of artists from her own Ocean Orchestra as well as a range of guests, many of them from the thriving Washington DC area music scene, Cutting offers complex and layered arrangements which serve the music and open new ways of hearing it. Complex does not mean stuffy or hard to understand: there’s a very good chance you’ll be singing along with several of the pieces, and that the music will stay in your mind long after you've played the recording.

Song of Solstice, the title track, offers a rousing take on celebrating the joys of the colder seasons of the year, and gives a nod to wisdom to be gained from contemplation and patience in the calendar’s darker seasons. As well there's an affirmation of the joys of friendship, whose gifts are often strengthened by winter’s connections. Christmas Day in the Morning, a traditional tune from Shetland set as a quiet instrumental with harp from Sue Richards and bodhran from Myron Bretholz, leads into Song of Solstice, a paring which enhances both.

Green Man is another piece you’ll not forget, a lively song whose origins Cutting drew from ancient Celtic tales as well as ideas that appear in the story of King Arthur. You do not have to know anything about either of those, though, to enjoy Steve Winnick’s cheerful and inviting lead vocal. He is backed by Highland bagpipes, bouzouki, electric guitar, fiddle, bodhran, other percussion instruments, and vocal harmony. Turning of seasons, death and rebirth, and the vibrancy of nature in the midst of winter are just a few of the things touched upon in the song, which offers a fine mood and beat for dancing and drumming as well as for singing.

Time to Remember the Poor suggests a different avenue for contemplation. Gothic steam punk psychedelia fusion is what Cutting had in mind. The words are from a Victorian era broadside, set to a haunting soundscape of voice, guitar, keyboard, samples, bass, and drums, It all seems quite contemporary yet evokes the the atmosphere of Victorian times and the thoughts in the lyrics as well. Lisa Mosciatello is the voice, Al Petteway plays electric and acoustic guitars, Juan Dudley is the drummer, Rico Petrocelli plays bass, and Cutting provides the samples and plays keyboards on the piece.

Putting classic, folk -- especially Celtic -- and rock ideas in conversation and collaboration with each other is a a way of approaching music which has long interested Cutting. For ten years she was bandleader for the award winning Washington DC area based British folk rock group The New Saint George. Later, Jennifer founded The Ocean Orchestra, which has allowed her to take her composing, arranging, and performing ideas of creating music drawing on varied genres in a more Celtic direction, and to invite in the talents of changing casts of musicians in the United States and overseas. “Celtic music for ancient moderns” is how she describes her work.

“I think of myself as a soundscape architect -- I try to get the structures and textures from my imagination out onto the recorded sound canvas, with the help of many amazingly gifted people who all add their own genius into the mix, “ Cutting says. “Creating a song or an arrangement is a lot like putting up a building or designing a landscape, except that my materials are instruments and voices. Hearing it build layer by layer is the ultimate thrill.”

Listening to the result is fascinating, too. Song of Solstice includes six originals by Jennifer Cutting, and varied other works, among them pieces from Celtic tradition including music from France and from Shetland. As with a well designed building or landscape, all the elements enhance each other and invite repeated exploration.

Listen to excerpts from Song of Solstice


photograph of Jennifer Cutting by Irene Young

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Music Road: Another Fine Winter's Night: Matt & Shannon Heaton
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Autumn & Thanksgiving listening, continued

In the second half of autumn. there’s gathering in of harvest and looking back toward summer, while heading into the work of winter.

Autumn is a very fine season all on its own, though, with work of transition, and work of connection, work of creation and work of preparation.


As you walk through the season, good musical companions are Hanneke Cassel’s For Reasons Unseen and Jay Ungar and Molly Mason’s Harvest Home.

Harvest Home comprises an orchestral piece of that same name, done in collaboration with the Nashville Chamber Orchestra (now known as Orchestra Nashville), and a selection of tunes crossing landscapes of place and musical geography of the United States. . Ungar plays the fiddle, Mason is a guitarist, and other musicians you’ve met here along the music road sit in, among them Christine Balfa, John Kirk, Keith Murphy, and Paul Gambill, who conducts the Nashville Chamber orchestra for this outing. It’s a fine collection all around. Haymaker’s Hoedown, Prairie Spring, and Bound for Another Harvest Home are good ways to get an idea of the spirit of things, and you may very likely recognize another original tune, Ashokan Farewell.

Cassel’s album wasn’t designed especially for the harvest time of year, but the music she chooses for it holds a reflective idea, even in the fast paced pieces, that works well with the season. Cassel is a fiddle player, pianist, and composer whose work is grounded in Scottish tradition with dashes of Americana and Irish flavor , and in this case, music she learned while traveling in China, as well. Musicians you’ve crossed paths with along the music road sit in with Cassel too, among them Natalie Haas, Alasdair Fraser, and Lissa Schneckenburger. As is Harvest Home, For Reasons Unseen is an album to listen to all the way through, and with especial note of the Blackberry Meadow Footrace set, The Goat Whisperer, and the Dusky Meadow set.

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Music Road: harvest time
Music Road: autumn skies

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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

-->If you'd like to support my creative work,
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.

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.


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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

-->Your support for Music Road is welcome and needed. If you are able to chip in, 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.

Music Road trip in New York state

The Hudson River Valley and the Adirondack mountain area of New York state have long been a places where people of different cultures traded, traveled, and settled. That’s an idea that Dan Berggren, Chris Shaw, and John Kirk draw on for their recording North River, North Woods. Their traditional and original music includes French Canadian, Irish, Swedish, Danish, and old time music among its sources and subjects. It’s a lively mix that includes and connects the many musics which have met in the area.

Sara Milonovich’s music has taken her to many places, but she calls the Hudson River Valley home, and her solo album, Daisycutter, reflects that. Milonovich is a fiddle player and a singer. Daisy cutter is a fine Americana album, and there’s more about it here.

Milonovich has worked with folk icon Pete Seeger. Top notch blues woman Rory Block guests on North River North Woods. They call the Hudson Valley home, too, and their legendary work is well worth your time.



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.

A tip of the hat to some of my favorite musicians of western New York is in order, too : The Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra

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

Music Road: pride of new york

Music Road: Music of Maine: Lissa Schneckenburger

-->If you'd like to support my creative work at Music Road and elsewhere,
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.

Savannah Music Festival begins

Savannah, Georgia, is a port city, a place where old south meets new, where world cultures converge and intertwine. The Savannah Music Festival both celebrates the world of Savannah and its connections to places and music around the world, with more than one hundred concerts across the city. The events begin on 18 March and continue through 3 April. If you’re not able to make it in person, the festival’s web site offers access to some events through web radio broadcast. Artists you’ve met before along the music road will be there. along with many others. Mark O’Connor, whose eclectic background in country, classical, and jazz makes him a perfect fit of the festival’s focus, will bring his Hot Swing Trio to town. Joe Craven will teach in the education program that open doors to the arts to hundreds of area schoolchildren. Kathy Mattea will offer her folk inspired country and the flavor of her West Virginia heritage, on a double bill with another outstanding singer who grew up in the southern mountains, Patty Loveless. Lang Lang, who has been engaging classical audiences around the world, will appear in a program with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. There will be a concert of ‘Forbidden Music’ featuring pre holocaust compositions, staged in Temple Mickve Israel, Georgia’s oldest temple, with players including festival associate artistic director Daniel Hope, Jeffrey Kahane, and others. Ruthie Foster will bring her Texas based brand of blues, funk, and soul to town, in a bill with Savannah blues singer Kristina Train. Marcus Roberts, also an associate artistic director of the festival, will helm jazz programs featuring concert on the Riverfront and presentations from some of the country’s finest jazz educators, and will appear himself in a piano showdown with Henry Butler and others. There will be a double bill with Bill Frisell and Bassekou Kouyate, while up and comers Canadian Sierra Noble and Texan Sarah Jarosz hold up the bluegrass side of things, along with veteran Del McCoury. There’s quite a bit more: school programs, a competition with singers choosing classic American songs, a New orleans Blues party, a gospel workshop, one off events and continuing collaborations. There’s more about it all at the festival’s web site. you may also want to see Music Road: Boston Celtic Music Festival on the way Music Road: Songs of Homecoming, to Scotland and other places Music Road: photographing music: Celtic Colours

-->Your support for Music Road is welcome and needed. If you are able to chip in, 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.

Polkastra: Apolkalypse Now

Apolkalypse Now



Trumpet, fiddle, French horn, bassoon and contra bassoon, classical violin, digeridoo, electric bass, vibraphone, accordion, and other sorts of percussion, all together and all playing -- polka?

Yes, and the polkas they play come from ideas based in central Europe, Canada, the work of classical composers Beethoven and Johann Strauss, Israel, Hungary,and other points of the compass. So, okay, all that could be a mess or a mixup or what it is, an engaging collection by musicians who value collaboration, connection, and humor as highly as they do their razor sharp and always inventive musicianship. Lara St. John, the classical violinist and executive producer of the bunch, is the only one who knew all the other players as the idea of this improbable and very successful album emerged. She’s known for her recordings of Bach and Vivaldi as well as gypsy music. Daniel Lapp, who plays fiddle [yes, by the way, the violin and the fiddle are the same instrument....] and doubles on the trumpet, is a composer and performer who is always investigating some new turn in the musical road; Andy Doe is a classically trained horn player who has worked in a ska band; William Barton is Australia foremost digeridoo player, Mark Timmerman plays bassoon and contrabassoon with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Ronn Yedidia, who plays accordion, comes from Israel, and Jack Campbell, jack of all trades, plays electric bass.

If you’re thinking polka is a stuffy or dated music, think again -- it’s a vibrant dance style which began in central Europe, and as these players will show you, both took off around the world and is capable of endless invention. Here you will find the Romanian based Sibra to Light as a Feather Polka by Johann Strauss to Caribou Shuffle from British Columbia to Yedidia’s original Celtic Kalkadunga Polka and Lapp’s title track. The musicians put all this together with two days of rehearsal and one day of recording, and that energy comes through. It’s a recording that’s both really fun to listen to [and to dance to] and reveals new aspects with each listen. And they didn’t even get to Texas polka or Irish or Norweigian...yet. Given their individual careers, Polkastra is not exactly a regularly touring group, but let’s hope they have another recording session or two in their future to find out what other unexpected directions they’ll dance with the polka.


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Ashley Cleveland and The Celtic Tenors: Making Music Their Own

God Don't Never Change

Hard Times



Ashley Cleveland and the Celtic Tenors are not singing together on the same recording -- though it’d be an interesting project if they decided to try that some day. What they are each doing on new recordings is stepping out of what’s expected of them, of what’s familiar, and further taking on the challenges of offering fresh interpretations of familiar music. The classically trained Irish tenors get into classics of another sort, music from the canon of North American folk music, from Stephen Foster to Bob Dylan to Ian Tyson. Christian rock Grammy winner Cleveland turns her talents to the highlights of Black gospel, music from the Reverend Gary Davis, The Fairfield Four, and the Edwin Hawkins singers, among others.

The Tenors are, as you might expect, smooth and clear and crisp in their interpretations; Cleveland is raunch and sass and edge. Each collection has its own power, power achieved by the artists’ staying true to the spirit of the music they offer, and true to their own individual understanding of and respect for that -- and conveying that truth with passion. Maybe you won’t fall in love with their interpretations of these songs; then again, maybe you will. It’s a safe bet, though, that listening to how they approach the music, what they offer on these recordings, will expand your understanding of how to make music real.

If you’d like to check out just one cut, on The Celtic Tenors album Hard Times
I’d suggest Shenandoah, and on Ashley Cleveland’s God Don't Never Change My God Called Me This Morning. Odds are, though, that you won’t want to stop listening at just one song.

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Music Road: Songs for an Easter weekend

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