Irish, Scottish, folk, and country music from many different neighbourhoods, and sometimes, from behind the scenes
Thursday, March 19, 2015
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
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Music is one of the strongest ways to connect: to connect across time, across space, with friends, and with strangers. At its best, music is conversation with listening, speaking, and silence all part of the mix. It holds the immediacy of the moment and the wisdom of memory as well as the possibilities of what is yet to be. At a time of year and in a world which now and again may seem rushed, music also holds a place of peace and silence, thought and reflection.
That is what each of these albums offers. You’ll find music with intricately created poetic words and music with no words at all, songs and tunes arising from heartfelt and soul felt connect to land and place, family and history, faith and hope.
In some cases, the links will take you to place where you may hear snippets of the music, and in others links will take you to an article about the album, with links within it which will let you hear the music. I would encourage you to explore these. The albums are not ranked in any order, each of them well worth you attention. Take a listen.
The spirit of the mountains fills Kathy Mattea’s recording Calling Me Home. It is a spirit which encompasses beauty of the natural world, hard life of making a home and a living in the mountains, faith, resilience, history, and unanswered questions. Country Grammy winner Mattea has in recent years been drawn to the songs of her native West Virginia and the surrounding coal country, and to finding her way in to helping these songs speak to a winder audience. She does that here, with notable tracks including Gone, Gonna Rise Again, Black Waters, and Now is the Cool of the Day.
As they have taken their music across the globe through three decades now, Altan have collaborated with artists ranging from Nashville’s country stars to Dublin’s classically trained musicians. For The Poison Glen/Gleann Nimhe though, they decided to bring the focus back home to Donegal, their home country in Ireland's far northwest. Led by fiery fiddling and graceful singing from Mairéad Ni Mhaonaigh, the members of Altan offer ensemble works by turns lively and thoughtful on music from the tradition, original compositions, and songs that have crossed the waters and back again from Ireland to North America. Look out especially for the New Rigged Ship set, Seolta Gala, and The Lily of the West.
For her album Through Wind and Rain Cathie Ryan brings music that both crosses bridges and creates them, bridges between Ireland and America, between past and present, through loss to resilience and hope. The daughter of parents who emigrated from Ireland to Michigan, Ryan has spent time as an adult living in both countries, and thinking about how their traditions connect and intertwine. For Through Wind and Rain she has chosen and written songs that contain touchstones from her own life, from finding the courage and a spark of humor to cary on after change and loss to encouraging a child to the lasting value of friendship. You will hear a thoughtful storyteller’s heart in Ryan's voice and in the music and arraignments she’s chosen. Look out especially for Mo Nion O, In the Wishing Well, and Fare Thee Well.
Carrie Newcomer is a storyteller with a gorgeous voice and and ear for a fine melody, as well. Her album Kindred Spirits is part retrospective and part new material. To choose the songs, Newcomer looked back over her work with a spiritual focus -- and as ever with Newcomer, spiritual means a broad idea of matters of faith. Even if you are well familiar with her songs, you will find her choices here and the way she has set them in context with each other illuminating. There are several new songs in the mix as well, including the opening track The Speed of Soul, in which Newcomer offers a mosaic of images forming a mediation on time and the spirit.
Rani Arbo and the men of daisy mayhem take matters of spirit into consideration for their recording Some Bright Morning too. “The wind in the trees is a mighty good teacher/ old mother earth she’s a mighty good teacher,” the four sing in Joe Craven’s updated take on the spiritual Hear Jerusalem Moan with which they open the album. Fiddle, percussion mostly on a collection of items including cookie tins and old suitcases known as Drumship Enterprise, guitars, bass, banjo, and ukulele are the instruments they bring along with their trading of well honed harmony and lead parts on songs including East Virginia, Bridges, and Will Your House Be Blessed?
Cape Breton, a land of mountain, forest, water, and music, is the source from which singer Mary Jane Lamond and fiddle player Wendy MacIsaac draw their musical ideas. On their recording Seinn they offer music which comes from the deep Scottish Gaelic tradition of the island and newly composed material which honors this as well. From lively dance sets to soulful ballads to quiet reflection in song and tune, you’ll hear the heart of Cape Breton in the work of these women, and hear why it reaches across boundaries of language and place as well. Look out especially for The Blue Mountain’s Lullaby and Keeping Up with Calum.
The geography of Scotland itself is shaped by its islands, and it is to them that Fiona J MacKenzie turned to draw inspiration for her album Archipelago. Through gathering contemporary and traditional material and writing songs and melodies herself, MacKenzie visits Scottish islands from Shetland to to St. Kilda to Ailsa Craig in songs that evoke the relationship of land and sea known by island people.
Caroline Herring well knows how to evoke landscape and history with her songs, as well. In her album Camiila it is the American south which is her focus, from stories of the civil rights days in the title track to a visit to Washington DC in Maiden Voyage to the land as frame and companion for hard times in Summer Song.
Alistair Ogilvy tells the stories of his people and his home place with his music, too. He is a native speaker of Scots (think Robert Burns poems if you are wondering what that is) and like Herring -- indeed like all the musicians you see here -- he brings a storyteller’s gift to his work on his debut album, Leaves Sae Green.Irish musician Caitlin Nic Gabhann tells her stories through the steps of her feet in the dance and through her concertina. On her album Caitlin she offers sets from the tradition as well as tunes she has made herself. A touch both clear and melodic leads the way through reels including the Flying Column set and the Leeside Sessions set, the waltz Sunday’s Well and the air Cill Dheaglain.
Sarah McQuaid draws on her time spent growing up in the United States, living in Ireland, and her current home base in England to find sources for her songs on The Plum Tree and the Rose. It’s a varied collection, ranging from songs of love and change to a tale inspired by a moment of reflection in Derby Cathedral to another sparked by a visit to Hardwick Hall to a round on gratitude arising from recalling the American holiday of Thanksgiving while living elsewhere.
Nuala Kennedy brings a varied geography to her music as well. The flute player and singer is native to Louth, that land of legend in the east of Ireland. She’s lived long in Edinburgh and recently spent time in New York and in the north of Spain. All of these come into play in the songs as tunes and arrangements she creates on Noble Stranger. She offers intriguing takes on traditional songs as well. Look out for her versions of My Bonnie Labouring Boy and The Banks of the Roses.
Every year in October, the people of Cape Breton Island invite the world home to share their music and to explore the ties that twine that music with the traditions which it neighbors and those from across the oceans from which it springs. The brothers and sisters who make up The Barra MacNeils created ten days of musical collaboration that resulted in ten tracks on The Celtic Colours Sessions.This finds the Barras in their first French language song as they join up with Acadian singer Ron Bourgeois, celebrating the origins of Cape Breton and their family name as they partner with traditional singer Cathy-Ann MacPhee who grew up on the isle of Barra in Scotland’s Western Isles, tracing an Americana and banjo based connections with fellow Nova Scotian Old Man Luedecke, and making fine harmonies with members of another well known family band as they sing with Shay, Michael, Mary, and Frances Black from Ireland.
Take your time to explore this music, let the words and the melodies move you as they will, and listen from the resonances and connections and stories which run through the work of these diverse artists.. Explore other work of these musicians, as well, perhaps here along the Music Road for starters. There’s more to be learned and enjoyed from each of those whose names you see here.
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Threads of hope, the nature of change both violent and gentle, the present as history and history as the present and always, always, the stories that connect all these things: these are what Caroline Herring offers through the songs on her album Camilla.
Images of a young girl catching fireflies and the flames of buildings burning intertwine in Fireflies. The title track, Camilla, takes its name from a Georgia town, and the story of a pregnant woman there who was beaten during the civil rights days, and went on to become a lawyer. Herring's gift for telling a story and making character ring true in just a few well chosen lines comes through clearly in these songs. White Dress is another song grounded in a moment during the civil rights days, when a young white girl gave a young black woman glass of water.
Until You Go, Flee as a Bird, and Joy Never Ends (Auld Lang Syne) make a trilogy on the depths of grief and the nature of healing, as well as the persistence of connection. Summer Song finds hope in the midst of images of a hard summer in the south. The center piece of the album, though, may well be Maiden Voyage, a story that arose out of Herring’s trip with her then four year old daughter to see the inauguration of President Obama -- which, in fact, they did not get to see -- with connections to history and hope and the long story of America all the same.
Herring, who grew up in Mississippi, has lived in the Washington DC area and in Texas, and is now based in Georgia. All those aspects of the American south, as well as her immersion in southern literature and southern folk tradition find their places in Herring’s work and lend depth to her own unique and compelling perspective and sound. Her graceful alto anchors that sound here, in melody and style that is based in that southern folk music and draws in flavors of country and blues and Appalachian sound.
Artists you’ve met here before along the music road support Herring on this project, too. Andrea Zonn adds violin and viola to Joy Never Ends. Bryn Davies brings in her always tasteful chops on bass through the album, while Claire Holley, Aoife O’Donovan, Kathryn Roberts, Jackie Oates, and Mary Chapin Carpenter sit in for harmonies at various points on the project, which was produced by Erick Jaskowiack.
Vivid storytelling, a unique point of view, a graceful lead voice and fine support, a sense of place that illuminates ideas beyond it boundaries, wisdom in the words and in the music: Caroline Herring offers all of these in Camilla.
If you enjoy what you are reading here, I've recently begun publishing an occasional newsletter at Substack with more stories about music, the people who make it, and the places which inspire it. Come visit and check it out!
The deep south is a varied as the turn of a kaleidoscope, in landscape, in people, in accents, in food, and in music. South Carolina native Dulcie Taylor gets at all that in several ways on her album Mirrors & Windows. She offers songs with elements of blues, folk, r&b, and rock, and makes it all work well. The subjects are conversational and thought provoking. Especially check out one of the folk tinged stories, Blackberry Winter, a fine marriage of melody and lyric.
Josh Turner is a rising country star, who got his start singing in church in Hanna, South Carolina. His breakthrough hit to the country charts was a sort of twenty first century gospel song he thought nobody would ever want to hear, called Long Black Train. Give a listen.
Bernice Johnson Reagon has been an activist, a college professor, a museum curator, an author, and the founder of the much awarded singing group Sweet Honey in the Rock. She got her start, though, singing first in her church and then during the civil rights days of western Georgia. and on Give Your Hands to Struggle she brings in parts of both those things.
These are sound tracks for your road trip through South Carolina and Georgia.
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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Another way to support: you could
If you enjoy what you are reading here, check out my newsletter at Substack for more stories about music, the people who make it and the places which inspire it.
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 wayMusic Road: Songs of Homecoming, to Scotland and other placesMusic 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.
Caroline Herring sees her native ground of the American south with a poet’s eye and a seeker’s heart. Through ten cuts on her latest release, Lantana, she draws her listeners into reflections on marriage, family, faith, and finding one’s place in an ever shifting and changing world, a world that is framed as much in the dust of red clay roads as it is in the sometimes strange and powerful paths of the people who travel them. As gifted a singer as she a writer, Herring knows how to tell these stories and when to get out of their way. She grew up in Mississippi, and that experience infuses her work, as does the time she’s spent living in Austin, the Washington DC area, and her current home, Georgia.
In the tradition of folk murder ballads, Herring takes on the story of Susan Smith, who drowned her children in search of other loves. Lay My Burden down is a contemporary yet timeless take on the southern gospel sound. In Heartbreak Tonight Herring tells of a woman that any who’ve grown up in the south will know, as will any who’ve seen their dreams change and reflected on that. In a very different view of that journey, there’s States of Grace. Herring also shines on the well chosen covers she’s included, especially Midnight on the Water.
She’s been compared to Joni Mitchell. That comparison stands, both for the quality of her writing and singing, and her ability to convey a unique perspective.
you may also want to see this post which has comment on one of Herring’s songs from an earlier album
She offers songs with elements of blues, folk, r&b, and rock, and makes it all work well. The subjects are conversational and thought provoking. Especially check out one of the folk tinged stories, Blackberry Winter, a fine marriage of melody and lyric.
Give a listen.
she brings in parts of both those things.
she draws her listeners into reflections on marriage, family, faith, and finding one’s place in an ever shifting and changing world, a world that is framed as much in the dust of red clay roads as it is in the sometimes strange and powerful paths of the people who travel them. As gifted a singer as she a writer, Herring knows how to tell these stories and when to get out of their way. She grew up in Mississippi, and that experience infuses her work, as does the time she’s spent living in Austin, the Washington DC area, and her current home, Georgia. 
