Boston Celtic Music Festival: Song, Tune, Dance, and Friendship

Boston has long been a place where people from Ireland, Scotland, and Atlantic Canada traveled, sometimes settled, and often played music. These varied strands of music flourished in the Boston area. For a long time, though, despite what these Celtic strands had in common, these music scenes flourished but rarely interacted. That is until Shannon Heaton, who plays Irish music, and Laura Cortese, whose background is in the music of Scotland, were discussing this one day as they walked through Davis Square.

Maybe, they thought, they could do something about it.

“We thought, what if we had a session? a big party?” Heaton recalls. “Then, what if we had a big weekend? What if we had -- a festival?”

This year, the Boston Celtic Music Festival, BCMFest for short, marks year seventeen 16 through 19 January with workshops and concerts filling up venues around Harvard Square in Cambridge. World renown musicians and dancers from the New England area and beyond will take part.

The First Round concert kicks things off on Thursday evening at Club Passim. Fiddlers Leland Martin and Jake Brillhart along with pianist Janine Randal will present A Cape Breton Trip through Time: the quartet The Ivy Leaf brings song and tune from Ireland, England, Scotland, and America, and the Hanneke Cassel Trio, on this outing comprising Cassel, Keith Murphy, and Jenna Moynihan, will share music from Scotland, Newfoundland, and Cape Breton. There is sure to be original tune and song drawing from these Celtic traditions along with traditional material.

Once things wind down at the main concert, music keeps going with musical from across the weekend joining up in special collaborations. The Festival Club takes places on both Thursday and Friday nights.

Friday evening sees two longstanding favorites of the BCMFest annual schedule. Roots & Branches is a concert which showcases a range of styles from across Boston Celtic community, with performers including Louise Bichan and Yaniv Yacoby. The Boston Urban Ceilidh offers a chance for dancers of all experience levels or none to take the floor. Among those providing tunes for the dancers are Laura Cortese & Friends, with Hanneke Cassel as dance caller.

Saturday is time for Dayfest, a range of performances and sessions taking place at Club Passim, The Sinclair, and Harvard’s Smith Center.

Among the performers will be Sean Smith, who explores Irish, Scottish and English traditional song and tune on guitar. Rakish, who are the duo violinist Maura Shawn Scanlin and guitarist Conor Hearn will also take part. They perform Irish and Scottish music they grew up with and with, as their name suggests, their own slant.

Matt and Shannon Heaton make Irish music with their own distinct style and original tune and songwriting, too. Both are gifted singers and songwriters, with Matt playing guitar and bouzouki and Shannon playing flute and accordion. Coming down from Cape Breton, Gaelic singer Mary Jane Lamond and fiddler Wendy MacIsaac will take part in an in the round during Dayfest, as will top Irish dancer Kevin Doyle, who comes up from Rhode Island.

Dance performer, choreographer, and educator Kieran Jordan will return to the festival this year. “One of my favorite aspects of my life as a dancer is just to sit with a couple musicians around a kitchen table and map out a set list or brainstorm ideas — try out some tunes, fit some steps together, drink tea, see how it all unfolds. It’s the friendships and the shared love of music that really make the magic happen later on stage,” Jordan told the BCMFest blog. That sort of creativity, and appreciation for friendships formed and nurtured through music, are hallmarks of BCMFest that run through the performances each year.

Another BCMFest tradition, the Nightcap Finale Concert, ends the evening on Saturday. This year it takes place at The Sinclair, and will include performances from Kevin Doyle and Friends, The Treaty Trio, Laura Cortese and Friends, and Mary Jane Lamond and Wendy MacIsaac.

In another BCMFest tradition, that’s not quite the end, though. There’s almost always something going on on the Sunday of the festival weekend. This year, there’s the BCMFest Brunch at Club Passim, with music from Eamon Sefton and friends. In addition, Mary Jane Lamond will offer a workshop on Cape Breton Gaelic work songs and Wendy MacIssac will offer a workshop on putting Cape Breton tune sets together.

Tickets to individual events are available, most in the $10 to $25 rage, except the Sunday workshops, which are $40-$45. There are Irish and Scottish sessions at Harvard’s Smith Center on Saturday afternoon, which are free; reservations for a meal at the BCMFest Brunch are advisable but there’s no additional ticketing charge. For more information and ways to purchase tickets online, the BCMFest website is the place to go.

Photographs are, respectively, Hanneke Cassel, Sean Smith, Shannon and Matt Heaton, Wendy MacIsaac, and Mary Jane Lamond, with Corrina Hewat on harp in background; photo of Sean Smith courtesy of the artist. Other photos by Kerry Dexter. Thank you for respecting copyright.

You may also wish to see
Matt & Shannon Heaton: Fine Winter’s Night
Travels in Music, which includes Hanneke Cassel’s album Trip to Walden Pond
Sounds of Cape Breton from Mary Jane Lamond and Wendy MacIsaac
Canada in Music:3 Recordings to Explore, which includes Keith Murphy’s album Land of Fish and Seals
Winter’s Gifts: Music, which includes Jenna Moynihan’s album Woven

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Sounds of Cape Breton

Cape Breton, on the far north coast of the Maritimes in Canada, is a land of forest and sea, woodland and mountain, winding road and fishing port. It is also a land where many emigrants, especially those from Scotland, have found harbour. It is a place where the language, music, and culture of Scotland thrive and flourish and intertwine with landscape and in community with other peoples who have made Cape Breton home. All of these things make their way into the sounds of Cape Breton.

“I was drawn to the language first,” says Mary Jane Lamond. “ My grandparents were Gaelic speakers so I was always interested in the language and the song tradition, and began spending time with people who were interested in songs. It became a passion for me, and I think I really found my voice when I started singing Gaelic songs.” Lamond has carried that passion and understanding of Gaelic music across Canada and the world and back to Scotland as well with her appearances at concerts and festivals, as she has become one of the most renown artists of Gaelic song.

Her musical partner at many of these gigs has been Wendy MacIsaac, who plays fiddle and piano and has been known to step dance on stage as well. MacIsaac started out in step dancing, in fact.

“My mom used to teach step dancing lessons with Natalie MacMaster’s mother, actually. They’d go around to the dance halls in surrounding communities on Cape Breton and teach, and I’d go along with them and picked it up by getting into the circle. It was definitely my first bit of music -- and then when I did learn how to play the fiddle, I almost immediately began playing for dances. I have to say, that was my practice, really -- when you play for three hours a night several times a week, you have to know a lot of tunes, you learn tempo, you learn what people like to dance to.” MacIsaac had the rhythms of Gaelic on Cape Breton by heart, as well. “My grandparents were Gaelic speakers,” she says, “so although I don’t always understand everything that Mary Jane might be saying in a song, I understand it, you know.”

It is with a set of tunes which invite dancing that the album Seinn starts of. It winds through varied story and song, traditional and contemporary, of the sounds of Cape Breton of its landscape and people.

Nearly twenty years ago now Lamond and MacIsaac crossed paths in the music community on the island, and became friends. Though they’ve done many projects together and separately, Seinn is their first recording to focus on their sound as a duo.

“We were both overdue to put out an album,” says MacIsaac, “so it seemed like it was time. When we first sat down to figure out what we wanted to do, we didn’t have every track in mind. We probably had five songs where we knew what direction we were going. Then what Mary Jane would do is run songs by me, ones that she really liked, and what I would do a lot of times is pick a tune that would compliment the song.”

What draws Lamond to a song? “Melody,” she says, “I like to have different kinds of rhythms on a record, and of course the story in the lyrics, too, and a certain kind of, I guess, rootedness.” She finds that in songs from the tradition and from contemporary writers. For example, The Blue Mountain’s Lullaby is a contemporary song by Jeff MacDonald and Brian O’hEadhra, while The Soldier’s Song reaches back into the history of the isle of Skye.

MacIsaac often interweaves tradition and present day as well. That opening set, Yellow Coat, comprises two tunes from Scottish and Cape Breton tradition, a tune from Cape Breton musician Kinnon Beaton, and another from Irish fiddle player Tommy Peoples. Then there were times when MacIsaac wrote tunes for the project. “I haven’t written many tunes for my own albums, and I don't know why that is!” she says, laughing. “For a set called Boise Monsters, there’s a tune I wrote basically half way through the record - we were thinking we needed something in that spot maybe a little different from the traditional sound.” Another MacIsaac tune, called Keeping Up with Calum, got its name “ because while we were working on the record my one year old son was busy rearranging my house!”

The tunes and songs flow naturally across Seinn from dance to air, from songs with the rhythm of work to tales told of love to stories of place. In Lamond’s graceful voice and MacIsaac’s fiery playing you hear the sounds and voice of Cape Breton present and past, and the sounds of connection and friendship. “Joy,” says Mary Jane Lamond. “That’s what I would like people to take away from this album - a sense of being joyful, being uplifted by this music. Because that’s how I feel about it!”

It took nearly a year for Lamond and MacIsaac to put the album together as they balanced creating it with their other commitments. One benefit of this, though, was that they were able to include -- in addition to their regular musical collaborators Seph Peters on guitar and Cathy Porter on percussion and other instruments -- several musical friends, including people you’ve met here along the music road before. Among the guests are the women of T with the Maggies from Ireland, and from Scotland Tim Edey, Corrina Hewat, and Dave Milligan, as well as Ashley MacIsaac and Patrick Gillis from Nova Scotia.

you may also wish to see
Cape Breton Music: Remembering Raylene Rankin
music of Canada
Scottish music a different way: The Unusual Suspects
from Donegal: T with the Maggies

photograph of Wendy MacIsaac at the Celtic Connections Festival in Glasgow, made with permission of the festival, the artist, and the venue. It is by Kerry Dexter and is copyrighted. Thank you for respecting this.

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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.

Autumn Celebrations: gift ideas

Autumn: with the turning of seasons come times for gathering with friends, family celebrations, planning for a celebrating holidays large and small, travels, time for quiet reflection -- and time for music.

Music makes a fine companion for any of these activities, whether you are looking for holiday gifts to give or music for yourself to listen to. Are you preparing for those big holidays -- Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice? It’s never too early. The small circumstances are just as worthy of celebration, as well. Gifts to give and gifts to receive: here are musical ideas for you to explore early in this holiday season:

Cathie Ryan’s recording Through Wind and Rain will make a fine gift for those who enjoy good stories thoughtfully told, as Ryan traces a journey through the dark and light of life with always thread of hope and resilience and faith weaving into the tales. She is first generation Irish American. She has spent time living in both countries, and makes music that respects and connects them, offered with voice and style which invite listeners in. Every song is a keeper, and sequenced in a journey worth the following. If you’ve just a short time to check out the music, though, standout tracks include Fare Thee Well, Mo Nion O, and In the Wishing Well.

Kathy Mattea knows a thing or two about storytelling, too. On Calling Me Home, the country Grammy winner and West Virginia native follows her calling to the heart of mountain music, songs sung in her own way which add to the tradition she respects. This, too, is an album where it is really worth following the sequence as it’s told. If you want to take a quick listen, though, try A Far Cry, The Wood Thrush’s Song, and Hello, My Name Is Coal.

Tim O’Brien is one of the guests on Mattea’s album, and he’s also teamed up with old friend Darrell Scott for a rockin; ramblin’ hot pickin’ set of of country blues, bluegrass, Americana songs. recorded live at the Grey Eagle in Asheville, North Carolina. In a nod to the duo’s wry humor, it’s called We're Usually A Lot Better Than This.Standout tracks include Mick Ryan’s Lament, Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning, and White Freightliner Blues.

Singer Mary Jane Lamond and fiddle player Wendy MacIsaac make a fine duo as well, joining forces to bring a collection of music from Cape Breton in Atlantic Canada on Seinn an album that shares the tang of salt spray and the mystery of Maritime forests, and honors the dance based fiddle music of the place along with its long heritage of Scottish Gaelic culture. Two standout cuts are Keeping Up with Calum and Seudan a’ Chuain/Jewels of the Ocean.

As the autumn and winter season unfolds, treat yourself to listening to these, and stay tuned here along the music road for holiday gift suggestions to come -- and check out our archives too!

you may also wish to see

Best Music, 2011

holiday gift list: Irish music

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