Music of Winter: Hope, Faith, and Frames -- Songs from Emily Smith and Carrie Newcomer

Advent: it is a time of preparation, reflection, of turning of season. At times those things -- the silence, the stillness, the preparing of hearts and souls and minds for the miracle of Christmas -- is lost or at least pushed aside by the rush of day to day life and concerns.

Yet, one of the big lessons of Advent, and of winter, for that matter, is the persistence of hope. Faith and hope at times seem at odds. At other times it is clear they are interwoven. Whatever your faith, whether Advent on the calendar forms part of it or not, this is a season for seeing beyond the tinsel and the lights -- and for seeing the lights and the tinsel as pointers to and reminders of hope.

That is an idea Emily Smith explores in her song Find Hope. You may find it, and other excellent songs, on her album Songs for Christmas.

It is an opportunity to consider how we frame things, at Christmas and through the year, too. That is an idea Carrie Newcomer muses on in her song A Shovel is a Prayer.

You may find the song on her album called Live at the Burskirk Chumley Theater.

You may also wish to see
Emily Smith: Echoes
Candle in the Window
Songs of Hope
Music for the Heart of Winter: Cathie Ryan
Music and Mystery: Conversation with Carrie Newcomer

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First Week in Advent: music and quiet

As the month of November advances and as December comes in, news reports and essays start to appear about braving the holidays, overcoming the burdens, getting away from it all. In private conversations as well you begin to hear these ideas going around. But still...

Still. That’s a good word for it. In the Christian calendar, this begins the season of Advent, of preparation for Christmas. Certainly that sort of preparation can at times be as busy and as bothered and as burdensome as the sort things that seem to be expected in other areas of life.

Still...

In the midst of rush and hurry, burden and change and loneliness and misunderstanding that can seem to be magnified by this season that is meant to be wrapped around with goodness and light and joy, the goodness and the joy are there. Deep in the memory of carols played once to often, deep in the longings not yet met from the past, deep in the smiles of strangers, in in the snap of winter air, in the quiet of snowfall, in the turning and falling of leaves heavy with that snow, in stars flung across indigo sky, they are there. As advent begins, look for the stillness and the joy. Listen for the quiet, and the music.

It may seem a paradox to say listen for the quiet in the music. Silence, though, is the canvas on which music is painted. Music is often a doorway to two other things that are especially part of this season and which may at first seem at odds with each other: solitude and community.

Music to go along with these ideas:

Community is one of the highlights of life along Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way. The communities where people, the work they create, the roads that run along the west of Ireland coast, the remnants if those who lived there in the recent past and in time long gone, have been around themselves from time long before the idea of the Wild Atlantic Way came to be. It’s a designation that frames the place in all its diversity and commonalities, and one that draws people to it and helps them remember and explore things they might not have come to otherwise. You could say the same of the recording The Wild Atlantic Way. It is, as its subtitle promises, a journey in Irish music. In spare yet vivid language and instrument, Francie and Rory Conway’s title track tells a bit of of life along Ireland’s wild western edge and on its western waters. In the thirteen tracks which follow, some of Ireland’s best musicians call forth the fun and the dance and the humor, the wry wit, the sadness, the fellowship and the mystery of the Atlantic edge of Ireland.

There are tunes from the tradition, for instance John McSherry’s Atlantic Drive and The Rolling Wave from Dervish, tradition and contemporary song and melody in Samhradh from Lumiere, top class singers including John Spillane, who brings his own song Along the Wild Atlantic Way, and Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh and her bandmates in Altan, who offer the haunting song Far Beyond Carrickfin. From Donegal to Cork, in song in English and Irish, with tunes and melodies of the tradition and newly created, these artists bring to mind the friendship and the mystery that are also hallmarks of the way. It is a thoughtfully chosen and well sequenced collection (that part was done by Colm O’Siochain, whose work you have met before here along the music road) that will bear return listenings in any season.

Donald Shaw writes of a landscape no less wild and challenging in his series of instrumental pieces which make up Hebrides: Islands on the Edge. This music was composed originally as soundtrack for a BBC nature series of the same name. Individually and taken together they stand beautifully on their own, calling to mind wilderness and sea, history, and a Celtic sense of place. BBC nature shows aren’t always that peaceful, as nature itself isn’t. There is however a certain peace in the turn of day to night and spring to winter. These things, along with contemplation of the landscape itself and the fact that he comes fro Scotland’s west in Argyll perhaps help inform the sense of reflection, peace, and yes, quiet, in the music Shaw creates. He has many fine musicians along for the journey, too. In addition to his own top class accordion and piano skills, Michael McGoldrick adds flute and uillean pipes, Aidan O’Rourke and Patsy Reid are on fiddle, James Mackintosh and Signy Jacobsdottir are on percussion Catriona MacKay is on clarsach, and there a a number of other musicians as well. The music they have created is good for listening at any season. Its contemplative aspects make it an especially good companion as Advent begins.

You may also wish to see
Ireland's Music: Altan: The Widening Gyre
Music for the first week in Advent: candle in the window
Voices of the Wild Atlantic Way: Donegal and Derry at Wandering Educators
Ireland in Winter at Perceptive Travel
Cathie Ryan: Through Wind and Rain

Photographs by Kerry Dexter and by and courtesy of Joseph Mischyshyn and DJ McPherson

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first week in Advent: music and journey

Advent: a season of preparation, a season which calls us to reflect in the midst of what is often seen as a season of hurry, noise,and obligation, of difficult weather and difficult conversations. Yet, in the midst of all this, comes the call to reflection, to preparation, to celebration.

When I was growing up, we had a creche, figures for a Christmas manger scene. On the first Sunday in Advent, there was the tree branch and the evergreen sprigs by the fireplace. All across the house, from different directions in different places, those who would end up at that place on Christmas eve set out on their individual journeys.

Mary and Joseph and their donkey, the wise men, among them the white haired one whose feet had been dented in some past year, the red bearded one whose beard and hat had been touched up in different shades of red over the years, the stately man from Africa with his silver and cream robes. Closer by, in another corner of the room with the fireplace, shepherds kept watch over their flocks, flocks which included stone sheep with coats which had once been fuzzy but had been worn a bit thin by loving hands over time, plastic sheep with perky faces, and a couple of small metal cows. Out in the kitchen on top of the refrigerator, over by the advent wreath by the front window in the living room, and in the branches of the Christmas tree, a band of angels hung out, a motley crew of soulful looking ceramic ones of the same vintage as the stately wise men, a lively group of plastic musicians with harp, drum, fiddle, and trumpet, and silver ones with trumpets -- and now and then as the years went by a cowboy or two, who sometimes joined the shepherds and sometimes worked with the angels.

I still remember the sense of wonder and joy I felt when as a tiny child, I saw these people and animals arrive on the first Sunday in Advent-- and the next evening, when I found that each of them had moved! For quite some years I thought that Mary and Joseph and the donkey and the wise men and the camels and the angels and the shepherds and the sheep were moving by themselves. I found that there was just as much joy and wonder present for me when, as the years went on, I had the chance to be one of those who helped them on their journeys. Looking back across the years, I still see the season of Advent as a time of journey.

I still have that wise man in his silver robe, and the fiddling angel, one or two of the fuzzy sheep, and Mary and Joseph and the donkey. They are on their Advent journeys even now....

Music to go along with these ideas

trilogy: 2000 Years of Christmas

Gretchen Peters: Northern Lights

Narada presents the Best of Celtic Christmas

If you enjoyed this you could

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