Listening to Winter: Aine Minogue, Cara Dillon, Matt Heaton

Winter. It’s a time of gathering in, of reflection, a time for preparation and anticipation, a time for solitude and for community.

Music goes well with all these things.

Aine Minogue gathered musical friends to help with her new single, Winter, Fire, and Snow. The Tipperary born artist draws on her deep connection to the mystical aspects of Ireland, and of music, in her work. She has visited winter before in her work, in albums and dvds including Winter: A Meditation.. This, however is a new offering for this season, a song written by Brendan Graham. Minogue's instruments are harp and voice. Seamus Egan of Solas and Eugene Friesen of the Paul Winter Consort are among those who join Minogue on this mediation on the changes of winter.

Cara Dillon’s album Upon a Winter’s Night began with an idea that she and her husband and musical partner Sam Lakeman had to make a gift for their children. “As musicians and singers we thought it was important that our kids grow up knowing isn’t all about Santa,” Dillon told Belfast Live. When the couple first released the album, they booked a small Christmas tour – which has now become a well loved tradition, for their own family and for others. When people have spoken to Dillon after these shows many of them “have said it brings the magic back into Christmas a wee bit because it’s the more traditional reverent songs,” Dillon says. Those songs include O Come O Come Emmanuel, The Holly and the Ivy, The Darkest Midnight, and Infant Holy Infant Lowly.

On his recording Snow Day , Matt Heaton mixes songs that share the joy, the connection, and the fun of the holiday season, There are songs kids will enjoy and songs parents and other adults will like too. There’s a really good answer to that question of when you should say Happy Holidays, in the song with that name. Have you met The Sneak? Always good to know about during the holidays… There’s a song for Hanukkah, one that celebrates Christmas Movies, a funny and gentle lesson in Can’t Judge a Gift. There’s warmth and connection in Christmas Eve With You. Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer is around and so is Winter Wonderland. Original songs and traditional ones, Heaton has created a collection of music which should become a well loved part of the winter season.

You may also wish to see
Aine Minogue Winter Through a Musician’s Eyes
Cara Dillon Wanderer.
Matt and Shannon Heaton Another Fine Winter’s Night

-->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.

Second week in Advent

Advent: it is a season which holds both preparation and celebration, both reflection and creation. In the prayers said at mass when I was growing up, it was a time when we were advised read and reflect on the wisdom to be learned from the scriptures. I thought then and still do that there is much wisdom of the season to be gained in song and story, in poem and painting and looking up at the night and morning star, as well. Ideas which may illuminate scriptural aspects, and which may be illuminated by them.

Music to go along with these ideas, seasonal and otherwise --

Anticipation is one of the features of Advent. That’s an aspect Gretchen Peters expresses in two very different ways on her album Northern Lights in her songs Waitin’ on Mary and December Child. With people across the world thinking about or being refugees so much at this time, it’s a good time to take a listen to them both.

Carrie Newcomer’s music is always both reflective and thought provoking, and quite beautiful as well. On her album A Permeable Life the songs Light in the Window and Writing You a Letter speak to the aspects of travel and connection across distance that come with winter holidays. So, too, does the tile track of her European release The Slender Thread.

There’s joy in the anticipation and preparation as well as tenderness and reflection. Cherish the Ladies are great at expressing all these through their music. They have a new seasonal album out this year which they went to County Clare to record and have called Christmas in Ireland. Song, tune, and spoken word comprise the lively collection. If you might have a taste for seasonal music mostly in Irish, then check out the just released collection Amhráin Na Nollag: Favourite Christmas Songs in Irish from Róisín Elsafty and Ronan Browne with Tony Maher. In addition to spiritual classics including Don Oíche Úd I Mbeithil/ One Night on Bethlehem there are also seasonal favorites, among them that song about the reindeer, Rudolph Na Sróine Deirge.

Shannon Heaton recognized that she wasn’t a big fan of winter weather, but, having chosen to make her home in Boston, she decided to write a song that would help her remember the good things about deep winter. The result is Fine Winter's Night, in which she contrasts the beauty of cold night with its sparkling stars with warmth beckoning to fellowship and community within. It became the title track fro the seasonal album Shannon and her husband Matt made, which includes several fine originals in both song and tune, the Wexford Carol, which reaches back to twelfth century Ireland, and other fine songs new and old.

Take a listen to these musicians this Advent, and see how their perspectives might inform your celebrations and anticipations this season.

Photographs by Kerry Dexter. Thank you for respecting copyright.

You may also wish to see

First Week in Advent: music and quiet
Advent reflections and music
Music for Winter Travels and Celebrations at Wandering Educators
Wreaths, Music, Legend at Perceptive Travel

-->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.

Ireland's music: Matt and Shannon Heaton: Tell You In Earnest

For their album Tell You in Earnest Matt and Shannon Heaton decided to choose songs framed in conversation between two people. The reason for that choice, Shannon says, was twofold. For one thing though Matt and Shannon both have been and continue to be involved in bands and side projects, for a good while now, “ and now maybe more than ever,” Shannon says -- the husband and wife have made their duo performances and recording their home base in music. The second reason, she explains, builds on that.

“It’s great to play with a whole band, it’s lovely,” she says, “ but there’s something just really intimate and spectacularly expressive about a conversation between two people. Maybe a third party wanders into the story in a song, maybe a cello wanders in, but ultimately it’s about the essence of two people and what they can say to each other and how they can listen to each other. So I think,” she continues, “ it was meant to be this overt demonstration, musically, of what a duo is, which is a bunch of different conversations in a bunch of different moods.”

Different moods and different sources, too.

To open the recording, there’s Cruel Salt Sea, a song which had its origins in the traditional ballad Outlandish Knight. Shannon describes the evolution of the song to the version on Tell Me in Earnest. “That song always grabbed me. I always thought it was the outlandish knight, like the craaazy knight! But he was from the northlands, the outlands,” Shannon says. From the traditional version she’s learned on a recording by Shirley Collins “I started changing the words around - of course -- first because I wanted to condense some of the verses. People aren’t going to listen to twenty five verses. So to condense, I have to rewrite a little bit, and then I always like to change any super weird vernacular stuff. But there were still a lot of verses, and so I felt like there had to be resting places, so I added the repeating lines, and then I added a bridge -- I really like the bridge -- and then before I knew it I’d taken away the words outlandish knight and added the words cruel salt sea. So I changed the title. Tinkering around, that’s what trad musicians do!”

Giving their own stamp and creativity to music from the tradition as well as creating their own music is indeed what the Heatons do. On Tell You in Earnest focusing on the idea of dialogue or conversation songs (“Each song is like a mini play,” Matt says), they also take on the Child ballad Gallant Hussar, following mostly traditional words and melody enhanced with original instrumental breaks. There’s Richard Thompson’s classic set of conversations between a guy and a girl about a bike -- and much more -- in Vincent Black Lightning 1952. There’s the dialogue between mother and son that creates a powerful anti war message, all the more powerful when you realize it was written some centuries back -- called Mrs. McGrath. There is a mostly traditional version of a song called The Demon Lover, framed in a conversation with the devil and its consequences, and on a happier note, an over the top Thai love song, Mon Rak Dawk Kam sung in Thai, blending the Heatons’ understanding of Irish traditional music with Shannon’s longtime connections with Thailand. That song, whose title translates as The Enchanted Flower of Kam Tai, proved to be a way into an aspect of this recording the Heatons had not expected. Shannon credits her time spent as an exchange student in Thailand with opening the door to her love of traditional music -- her own heritage tradition of Irish music -- by immersing her in another set of older traditions from another culture. In recent years, on occasion they have worked some of this in to their Irish music repertoire. “As we were thinking about conversation songs, Mon Rak Dawk Tam Kai is a beautiful conversation song, so we thought let’s try it. We were messing around with the idea of including a Thai song on the album and then it got a little deeper. We realized, you know what, that’s part of who I am. And Matt -- he loves electric guitar, he loves surf guitar, he’s played in rock bands since he was a kid.” Parts of that aspect of Matt’s music come out on his work on On Rak Dawk Tam Kai as well as his funny original Easy Come East Go and the well traveled traditional ballad Edwin of the Lowlands Low. In the past, they have included touches of these things here and there in their bedrock devotion to Irish traditional music. “But this time,” Shannon continues, having those touches in their music on this album “That’s really our authentic musical expression, that’s really who we are.”

Matt and Shannon Heaton met in Chicago, when flute player Shannon was called for a wedding gig and needed a guitar player to accompany her. Matt grew up in Pennsylvania, turing the pages for his father;s professional concerts before heading off into his own explorations of rock, surf, tango, and Irish guitar. Shannon’s parents took their kids with them as they lived in several different countries; it was as a young child in Nigeria that she first fund herself drawn to the flute. Later, she studied classical music and ethnomusicology in addition to spending that time in Thailand.

All that may not sound exactly like the background you would expect for two of the most highly regarded players, composers, singers, and teachers in contemporary Irish music. That is a the strong strand of their heritage, however, and they have spent time learning music in Ireland as well as immersed in the vibrant Irish music community of their home base in New England.

The characters in the songs on Tell You in Earnest come alive through the conversations in the lyrics, and through the conversations opened up through the Heatons’ lead and harmony singing, and through their thoughtful and well conceived melodies and intros and instrumental breaks as well. They offer a range of human experience, from the hauntingly poetic murder ballad Edwin of the Lowlands Low to Matt’s funny original song Easy Come Easy Go, in which he imagines what could happen if a bit of story often found in traditional songs went awry. There are grim conversations and supernatural elements, over the top love songs and funny ones, all told in conversations framed in the Heatons' always creative take on carrying tradition into the present.

Give a listen -- these are conversations you will want to return to again and again.

Photographs of Matt and Shannon Heaton (with guest Mike Block on cello in the top one) by Kerry Dexter. Thank you for respecting copyright.

You may also wish to see
Lovers' Well: Matt and Shannon Heaton
Another Fine Winter's Night: Matt and Shannon Heaton
Listening to Ireland: Patrick season

-->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.

Boston to Ireland to Thailand

Matt and Shannon Heaton make music where Ireland meets America, drawing from and respecting and creating with the traditions which arise from this. The Boston based musicians are recording their fifth album as a duo. It will be a collection of dialogue songs, songs where there is conversation in the lyrics. Based on their earlier albums and their concerts and their teaching, it’s bound to be filled with great music, and include a few surprises.

One of those surprises is that they are planning to do a CD release concert in Thailand.

Boston, Ireland --Thailand? How’s that again?

It’s come about because Shannon spent her first year of college as an exchange student in Suphanburi, Thailand. There, her experience with the traditional music of Thailand and the people who played it led her to look more deeply to the music of her own heritage -- Ireland -- and played a part in setting her on the path she’s followed since, as a professional working in Irish music. Several years back Shannon reconnected with her Thai friends, and was able to introduce Matt and later, their son, to the country which played such a part in her life.

Now, they want to give a free concert to the people of Suphanburi to launch their new CD -- and you can help them do so by contributing to their project at Indie GoGo.

Listen to Matt and Shannon tell their story about this and hear a bit of their music:

Certainly they have many nice rewards should you choose to contribute -- and they’ve decided to give ten per cent of what they raise to the charity Mercy Centre, too. At this writing they’ve raised about a third of their goal, and have just a bit over a month left to meet it.

One thing you could do to help which won’t cost you a thing is to invite people you know over to this story, so they can learn about the project as well.

photo by Kelly Lorenz

You may also wish to see
Lovers' Well: Matt and Shannon Heaton in which they include a Thai love song in with the Irish music, and make that work just fine
Another Fine Winter's Night: Matt and Shannon Heaton about their winter holiday concert
Shannon Heaton: Oil for the Chain Shannon's book on learning music -- not just for flute players.
my favorite Matt and Shannon Heaton album -- so far. click on the image to hear samples of the music.

-->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.

Listening to Christmas: Aoife Clancy, Tommy Sands, Matt Heaton

Those who make music for a living enjoy listening to music as well, and that’s especially true at Christmas time. A number of your favorite musicians chimed in with their ideas this season, and quite a varied lot they choose, from The Chipmunks to the monks of Glenstal Abbey, from surf music to American folk to Latin hymns. They had so many interesting things to say that this lively conversation will fill several posts.


To begin, here are Christmas favorites from Aoife Clancy, Tommy Sands, and Matt Heaton.

Aoife Clancy calls on memories of family this time of year:

"You’re not going to believe who I listen to during the holidays...The Clancy Brothers Christmas Album! I know, I know...I was almost going to say Bing Crosby, but that wouldn't really be the truth. That album brings back such lovely memories of Christmas day for me at home in Carrick-on-suir. I was always the one in the kitchen with my mother preparing dinner, while the rest of the family set the table or just hung out in the kitchen and chatted.

We'd always put on that CD because it wasn't the usual Christmas songs. It had some really lovely carols on there along with the Wren song, and Christmas in Carrick, written by a relative of mine, Seamus McGrath. Actually myself and Robbie use quite a few of those carols in our own Celtic Christmas show.

It was kind of funny. If anyone saw us they'd think we were a bit mad, serving food while dancing and singing around the kitchen to the Clancy Brothers Christmas
album! Then it was off to my grandmother’s house in Ring, County Waterford where the rest of the relatives would congregate for a few drinks and sing songs till about three o clock in the morning...And believe me, everyone sang...that's why it didn't end till three AM.

Now my father has passed on, I live in the States and my other siblings have their own families to celebrate Christmas with. Ah well, at least I have my own copy of the Clancy Brothers Christmas CD to dance around to in my own kitchen this Christmas. Not quite the same...but it's still comforting to hear their voices, and I'll always have the memories, wherever I spend Christmas."

In his music, Tommy Sands considers ideas of peace and justice as often as those of love and of Irish history, and sometimes all in the same song. He has a seasonal album out called To Shorten the Winter. Here’s what he is thinking of just now about the holidays

"Christmas can rouse us around a common hearth of humanity so that the wintery elements, some of our own making, can be more easily chorused against. I tend to be drawn to songs that shield us from the onslaught of the jingle jangle commercialism and nudge us towards the warmth and needs of shared humanity.

I find inspiration in all sorts of songs, from John McCutcheon's Christmas In The Trenches to the Weavers line "Why can't we have Christmas the whole year around," from Patrick Kavanagh's Christmas Childhood to Louis Armstrong's Wonderful World.

Christmas can also gather us well beyond the borders of category and season to throw back our heads and sing whatever we feel like singing, like 'whack fol the daddio whack fol the daddio there's whiskey in the jar.'"


Matt Heaton often performs in a duo with his wife Shannon.Together with her he’s recorded a holiday album called Fine Winter's Night,which includes original songs and tunes of the season and traditional music they like for this time of year, as well. Matt says of his holiday choices

"Singing wise, it's all the stuff from Fine Winter's Night, which is always fun to bring out once a year. Recording wise, we have a box of Christmas cds. Favorites include:

Tuck Andress--Hymns Carols & Songs About Snow--genius solo guitar recording.
A Very Froggy Christmas--late 80s, kind of lo fi samples of frogs doing the hits. really tacky but we love it.
Dwight Yoakam--Come on Christmas--'cause there's nothing like a country Christmas record.

We also love listening to the service of Lessons & Carols from Kings College England. Best choral singing you'll ever hear.

and I'm putting the Los Straightjackets Christmas CD on my wish list for this year. Surf guitar versions of the classics!"


The Heatons and Tommy Sands have holiday albums out, and Aoife Clancy often does a series of holiday concerts in the New England area with her cousin, songwriter Robbie O’Connell. Sands and the Heatons tour at Christmas time as well. All worth hearing. Stay tuned here along the music road for more Christmas listening choices from your favorite artists, and other holiday music ideas to come.

you may also wish to see

Music Road: Another Fine Winter's Night: Matt & Shannon Heaton

Music Road: 6 of the best Christmas Songs

Kathy Mattea: Mary Did You Know?

-->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.

You can also

Shannon Heaton: The Blue Dress

The power of melody and love of story are two of the things which drew Shannon Heaton into a professional career in Irish music. Those are qualities which come through clearly on her album The Blue Dress. On this album, she carries the melodies and tells the stories through her flute. It is an excellent and engaging journey, with new compositions balanced well with fresh views of tunes from the tradition. Heart, creativity, skill, and imagination are all in evidence as she invites listeners in with a set of reels and continues with an creatively arranged take on a pair of polkas. You can hear many stories in The Blue Dress Waltz, a Heaton original that is gracious and thoughtful, and offers a fine connection to a quite different bit of music, the lively Dennis Watson’s set of reels. Heaton generally has a particular person in mind when she’s composing a tune. Nights on Caledonia Terrace is a gently reflective slow air written for restorative conversations with friends at a festival in Ontario, and Frost Place was written for two musical friends, as Heaton writes in her notes, for “their winning combination of stellar musicianship and good vibes to all those around them." Though the Boston based Heaton is well known as a fine songwriter and a gifted singer, on this recording she speaks through her flute, offering her melodies, and her stories without saying a word. She is well supported in imaginative arrangements by usual duo partner Matt Heaton on guitar, bouzouki, and bodhran, Long Time Courting band mate Liz Simmons on guitar, Maeve Gilchrist on harp, and Paddy League on bodhran. The power of connection to tradition, the quietness of reflection on slow pieces and the lively step of dance tunes, now and then a dash of humor and a bit of whimsy: these are all in the music Shannon Heaton offers here. Like the vintage satin and lace of the favorite dress which sparked her creative ideas for the project, it is music that will stand the test of time.

You may also wish to see
Music Road: Another Fine Winter's Night: Matt & Shannon Heaton
Music Road: kickstart an Irish music recording
Music Road: Shannon Heaton: Oil for the Chain
Music Road: Lovers' Well: Matt & Shannon Heaton

-->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.

kickstart an Irish music recording

Shannon Heaton is a top class flute player, singer, composer, and performer. You’ve encountered her work in Irish music here along the music road before.

Shannon most often performs in a duo with her husband Matt, and with the quartet Long Time Courting. She also has a plan to record a solo flute album. Part of the way she’s financing this is through a Kickstarter project.

Kickstarter is an online method which allows artists of all sorts to raise funds for creative projects, with the stipulation that if the pledge goal set by the artist is not reached within a a short time (in Shannon’s case the deadline is 19 July) then that’s it: the backers who've pledged are not charged anything. So it is a challenge of sorts.

update: The challenge was met, and recording is underway. Stay tuned here along the music road for news about the album. further up date: the CD is out! follow this link for more: Music Road: Shannon Heaton: The Blue Dress




Shannon talks about the project

To learn more about the project, follow that link above. To hear Shannon's music, check out the video below.




you may also want to see
Music Road: Another Fine Winter's Night: Matt & Shannon Heaton

Music Road: Lovers' Well: Matt & Shannon Heaton

Music Road: holiday gift list: Irish music

over at Irish Fireside, Corey and Liam are raising funds for a trip around Ireland by rail this summer.

-->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.

Road Trip Music visits Pennsylvania

From Lake Erie to the Poconos, from the Alleghenies to the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is filled with variety and change. That’s part of what songwriter Anne Hills gets at on a song she calls, reasonably enough, Pennsylvania. It’s on her latest album, Points of View, which includes a dozen more songs filled with description and insight, some arising from Hills’ concern with social justice (she’s a social worker as well as a musician) and others from the lighter side of life.

You’ve met Matt Heaton along the music road before. A guitarist, singer, and songwriter, he plays contemporary and traditional Irish music in a duo with his wife, Shannon. He’s based in Massachusetts these days, but is originally from Pennsylvania, and got his start in music there.

Irene Kelley has moved away from her native Pennsylvania, too. She headed for Nashville, where she’s recorded several well respected albums which mix country and folk, and has seen her songs recorded by bluegrass award winner Claire Lynch and top country star Alan Jackson, among others. Her most recent album is called Thunderbird.



Then there’s Solas. That band is credited with bringing fresh energy and new ideas into Irish music when they started off in 1996. They’ve recorded almost all their albums in Philadelphia. One recording which gives a full flavor of the exciting music they make is Reunion: A Decade of Solas which also includes a dvd of a reunion concert they gave, in Philadelphia. They have a new release out, also, called Turning Tide.

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


you may also wish to see

Music Road: Long Time Courting: road trip visits New Hampshire

Music Road: winter turning to spring

-->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.

Now playing: Matt & Shannon Heaton: Blue Skies Above

It’s spring in many parts of the world, autumn in others. Those times of change, of moving from one season to another, make me think of the album Blue Skies Above, by Boston based musicians Matt and Shannon Heaton. Life, death, bicycles, redwoods, reels, jigs, and harvest time are all here, along with lots of other good stuff. They offer a fine mix of tunes and songs, traditional and original stuff. The breadth of Shannon’s flute and the depth of Matt’s guitar make for melodies that draw you right in on tunes like The Shady Spot and The Reel of Rio. Of the songs, Harvest Time, inspired by Shannon thinking about her great-grandparents' love story, and Giant of the Road, about the fun of riding a bike, are especially fine originals, carrying on Celtic style melody and tradition in modern day stories. That tradition is revisited and revised a bit in the song from which the title phrase comes. It is called If I Were a Blackbird, and if you’re thinking of the rather staid renditions this tune is often given, well, think again. And listen again. Matt and Shannon Heaton's web site Learn about Matt and Shannon's album Lovers' Well

-->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.

If you enjoy what you’ve been reading here, another way to support more of it:

The Boston Celtic Music Festival, 11 and 12 January

The Boston Celtic Music Festival is coming up on the 11th and 12th of January, with venues around Harvard Square and a Friday night ceilidh in Medford. Performers this year will include Matt and Shannon Heaton, Kieran Jordan, Emerald Rae, Laura Cortese, and Flynn Cohen. It's a gathering which intended to showcase, celebrate, and share Irish, Scots, and Cape Breton traditions through the work of musicisian based in the Boston area. There's more about all of this at the festival's website, where you may find ticket information (hint: it's a real bargain), a schedule of performers, and notes about the places the concerts will be held.

Meanwhile, here's a taste of what things are like at BCM fest, through a look back at the events of 2005. Photos above are of Hanneke Cassel and Shannon Heaton, below, Hanneke Cassel, Flynn Cohen, and Matt Heaton. Matt and Flynn will team up for a really unusual gig at this year's festival...



 Hot Celtic music heats up Boston winter days and nights at BCM Fest
 
"Totally snowing!" one musician exclaimed, laughing, as she held her harp under one arm and lifted her free hand to cup snowflakes while stepping out of the Winter Hill Bank Building near Davis Square in Somerville. She was right. Winter weather had come to decorate the streets of Somerville and Cambridge for the Boston Celtic Music Festival, not an unexpected event when you plan concerts for early January in Massachusetts. Though it caused a few schedule changes among the players and some snow covered dashes along the streets for performers and listeners alike, spirits were high as packed crowds enjoyed music from and by many of Boston's finest Celtic-based players. FolkWax readers will know the music of singer Aoife Clancy, flute/guitar duo Matthew and Shannon Heaton, and fiddler Hanneke Cassel; pianist Jacqueline Schwab, whose work is heard to memorable effect on many of Ken Burns' projects, esteemed singer and songwriter and former member of the Clancy Brothers, Robbie O'Connell. Traditional uilleann piper Phil Ferguson, the many fiddlers who make up the ever-changing cast of Childsplay, renown Cape Breton fiddler Joe Cormier, and Americana/Celtic fusion banjo player and guitarist Eric Merrill were also among the more than one hundred artists who shared their music during the two days of the festival.
 
 
The Hanneke Cassel Band (Cassel on fiddle, Christopher Lewis on guitar, and Rushad Eggleston on cello) started things off with a combination of impeccable, passionate playing and off the wall humor that immediately connected with the sold out crowd at Club Passim just off Harvard Square. They invited their listeners on a lively journey through a handful of Cassel's original tunes and a fine selection of traditional material, including the crowd pleasing "Strathspeys o' Death," a medley of "Running Around the Tree" and "Colonel Thornton," and a slip jig, with Eggleston helpfully demonstrating the finer points which define slip jigs by dancing and then falling down to introduce the tune. It's a measure of the musicianship and stage presence of the trio that they were able to carry off this, as well as a good bit of other joking, keeping things in good fun without being silly -- or at least, not too silly for the circumstances. Cassel switched things up a bit with a lovely, lyrical slow piece called "Jasmine Flower," which she explained she'd learned on a recent trip to China, "and I think it must be the Chinese equivalent 'Danny Boy,' because everywhere I play it where there's anyone with any Chinese connection they get very emotional." The three closed out their well-received set with "a blast of reels," including one which Cassel had composed for another festival event which was just getting started, the Boston Urban Ceilidh.
 





 
 That high energy event, which fiddler and festival organizer Laura Cortese described -- accurately-- as "contra dance meets mosh pit," was cranking up over at the Canadian American Club's dance hall in Watertown. While the callers were getting dancers to try out new steps (when things slowed down enough for them to be heard, that is) at the dance hall, singers from across the range of Celtic tradition were keeping things equally lively back at Club Passim. Michael O'Leary invoked both the season and reflections on the passing of time with "January Man" and Caera Aislingeach did a rewrite of the familiar "Shule Aroon" with the twist that the lovers actually get together in the story. Renown Irish songster Bridget Fitzgerald taught the crowd some choruses to the songs she was singing in Irish, and Kyte MacKillop and his student Jennifer offered a variety of songs in English and Gaelic from Cape Breton. As music circled round and round again, the singers joined in duos and trios and got many of the crowd singing along in a fine take on the traditional song swap. The singing session was followed by another excursion into traditional, original, and rambunctious music from Noel Scott on accordion, Chris McGrath on fiddle, and Ted Davis on guitar.
 

The snowy skies over Boston had taken a break for the evening's ceilidh and concert, but as musicians and audiences gathered around Davis Square in Somerville next morning, the snow returned to blanket sidewalks and steps to the Winter Hill Bank Building, a part of which belonged to a local VFW post, was turned into a Celtic music club as well as festival ticket sales headquarters for the day. Scottish and Cape Breton dancing performances opened the day, for those who still had energy left from the ceilidh the previous night.  Many members of the ever changing cast of players who make up the fiddle group Childsplay took the stage next at the VFW, to be followed by combinations of traditional flute and fiddle, then pipes and electronica, traditional Irish fiddle, and not so traditional Celtic fiddle Rock.
 
Down the street, two other venues hosted BCMFest events as well. At Johnny Tingle's Off Broadway, a cabaret style theater became an Anglo Irish jam session in the hands of Eric Merrill and the Western Star, then a fiddle and dance hot spot with the music of Laura Cortese followed by Highland Dance Boston. Shannon Heaton offered original and traditional tunes on her flute with Ten Speed Trad, and fiddlers from Irish, Cape Breton, and Scottish backgrounds got together in the round later in the day. At The Burren, a lively Irish pub a few doors down, the front room hosted a continuing flow of acoustic jam sessions, while the back room was the spot for festival goers to enjoy music from a range of main acts. Fiddle player and singer Lissa Schenkenburger, accompanied by Matt Heaton on guitar, offered songs and tunes both Celtic and Appalachian from her upcoming CD release. Galway native guitarist and raconteur Fabian Joyce shared his dry wit along with music, while Scottish style fiddler Lindsay Turner drew a packed crowd. The guitar/fiddle duo Five Mile Chase, who is based in Minnesota, stepped in when weather problems interfered with scheduling and proved an unexpected delight both in musicianship and good humor. Well known solo singer and former Cherish the Ladies member Aoife Clancy closed things out at the Burren with a mix of contemporary and traditional songs, among them the Appalachian ballad "Across the Blue Mountains" and a song of contemporary Ireland written by Robbie O'Connell, "There is Hope."

 
O'Connell himself was one of the players who performed-when festival action resumed later in the evening-for  a finale concert at First Parish at Harvard Square. The historic church building rang with fiddle, pipes, piano, guitar, voice, and dance steps as nine musicians and two dancers celebrated "music written by Boston area composers, about Boston, based on Celtic themes," said emcee Marilyn Rae Byer. Fiddler Ellery Klein, who had suggested the idea for that theme, played a set of tunes by Matt Heaton, Shannon Heaton, Barbara McGowan, and others, after welcoming the audience to "A weekend of wonderful weather and even better tunes!" Cape Breton dancer Christine Morrison and Irish style dancer Kieran Jordan added their energetic and creative interpretations, as they'd do several times through the concert. Robbie O'Connell sang a song he wrote after a visit to the Blasket Islands, and Laura Risk played a medley of three pieces, including one, "Laura et Marc," which Hanneke Cassel had written for Risk and her husband. Mairin Ui Cheide offered a song in Irish, in sean nos style. She prefaced it by telling that it was a song of two mothers, who each had sons at war on different sides of a conflict, and then revealed that her own son was serving a second tour of duty in Iraq. Pianist Jacqueline Schwab, who'd added innovative accompaniment to others' works, took the spotlight to offer passionate renditions of tunes by Peter Barnes and Larry Unger. Accordionist Susie Petrov, who directed the concert, highland piper Phil Ferguson, who opened the proceedings, Cape Breton fiddler Brendan Carey Block, and uilleann piper Patrick Murray were among the others who added their talents through the evening and to the finale with all joining in a selection of songs and reels to close the celebration of the second annual Boston Celtic Music Festival.
 
 
It's a festival run for and by the musicians, about the sharing and connecting of musical styles of the Celtic lands. A conversation between Cortese and Heaton sparked the idea of a gathering which would included artists from Boston and from the Celtic traditions of Scotland, Ireland, and Cape Breton, which flourish in the city but often in parallel rather than connected music scenes. This second year built on the first, seeing increased attendance, more public notice, and more artists participating. There's a compilation CD available containing tracks from the recordings of many of the artists mentioned above, and more information about other ways to support and participate in the next Boston Celtic Music festival may be found at www.bcmfest.com.
 

-->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.