Sunday, October 14, 2007, Barcelona, Spain
Dancing on the Edges
Ah the best laid plans…nine weeks in Europe has just been shortened to six…on October 24 I will depart Malaga, Spain and then London, England for northwest North America (Seattle, USA and the BC, Canada interior) …and home. There is still much that I would and could do and see in Spain, but various personal and professional needs began to assert themselves a few days ago, coincidentally (or not!) as I was preparing to leave Ireland, and I so changed course to return ahead of schedule.
Thus the journey will continue on board the MSC Cruise ship Melody for a week in the western Mediterranean (leaving Barcelona tomorrow with ports of call in Ibiza, Tunis, Palermo, Napoli..and oops, I don’t remember the route!) but I will only be able to take the pictures, I will not be able to share them, that is until we dock. But perhaps I’ll take advantage of a week of life incommunicado…what will that be like???
At the end of that week, I have two more days of intense adventure to get to Malaga by overnight train, fly to London, wait overnight there, and then fly to Seattle. Isn’t it a grand thing to have a travel agent for a daughter!!!
Safe adventures to you all, dear ones who have traveled this marvelous route with me to this point…I will pick up the thread in a week.
Oh! And from December 1 – January 15, we have a 6 week jaunt through Baja Mexico and the Yucatan, Mexico, so don’t stay away long, I’ll keep the blog going until it goes…so to speak!
Love
Linda
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Gulf Stream
October 9, 2007, Dublin, Ireland
Gulf Stream
It’s a balmy day, misty and nearly raining, following last night’s hard rain as we came into the Dublin airport area. But early this morning as we drove to the airport to drop off Debra for her flight home to Chicago, and as Ted then took off in his new rental car for a couple of more days of travel in wonderland, there was a lightening and blue coloring to the sky in the west…the pattern here, we have found, and so the sun may find me yet today.
But this prompts my thoughts about the Atlantic Ocean current known as the Gulf Stream, and the World Ocean Project I have set up for my on-line Oceanography students: to investigate the Gulf Stream, to investigate the issue of global warming, and to put those together to investigate the possibility of a cooling trend in northern Europe if global warming causes changes to the Gulf Stream flow. So if this topic is of interest to you, please see the first comment to this post for the project assignment...
Gulf Stream
It’s a balmy day, misty and nearly raining, following last night’s hard rain as we came into the Dublin airport area. But early this morning as we drove to the airport to drop off Debra for her flight home to Chicago, and as Ted then took off in his new rental car for a couple of more days of travel in wonderland, there was a lightening and blue coloring to the sky in the west…the pattern here, we have found, and so the sun may find me yet today.
But this prompts my thoughts about the Atlantic Ocean current known as the Gulf Stream, and the World Ocean Project I have set up for my on-line Oceanography students: to investigate the Gulf Stream, to investigate the issue of global warming, and to put those together to investigate the possibility of a cooling trend in northern Europe if global warming causes changes to the Gulf Stream flow. So if this topic is of interest to you, please see the first comment to this post for the project assignment...
Awakening the Stones
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Barcelona, Spain
Awakening the Stones: playing harps in Ireland’s stone circles
I’ve been off Ireland’s soil for a little less than 24 hours now and I’ve wanted to express my experience playing the harp, or even just letting it sing in the wind, in the stone circles we’ve visited. Debra and I brought harps into 4 circles: 2 near the Co. Kerry town of Kenmare a couple of weeks ago, and 2 more on Monday, as we left Culdaff and the Inishowen Peninsula in Co. Donegal. Each time we found an ideal recording wind, not a coincidence as the circles we’ve visited are all sited on mounds or low hills, surrounded by a circular depression or set of valleys, which in turn are ringed by higher hills or mountains. Of the four circles and winds, I hope that the 2nd one yields a good windharp recording.
As I walk toward and then around a circle, the first thing I’m aware of is the silence…again, no coincidence as the setting has been rural, open, either pasture or hill slope. But the silence is the first thing that registers. Then the wind. There may be sheep or cattle nearby and there may be occasional birds. But these soft and subtle sounds of another presence complete the silence; they do not break or intrude upon it.
We tend not to talk to each other at first. We each take our own path around or into a circle. I don’t fantasize an awareness, but I do sense a presence, if only of time…these are human artifacts still standing in landscape as much as 5000 years after they were placed here. I touch the occasional stone, wondering where it came from, and what it signifies in its location. I lean into its warmth if the day has soaked a little sun into its surface.
Once we pull out the harps and they start responding to the wind, we let that be the substance and foundation of the sound. In an “improvisational tuning” the harps give the most resonant quality of sound, and we also have an easier time improvising both with the wind and with each other. The combination of wind, harps, and stone circles becomes its own iterative or self-perpetuating experience, where one exists within and because of the other.
There is much more beneath this quick summation, but time runs along and I must catch up…but to finish with this:
At the last circle I did not take my harp, it was packed and inaccessible for the short time we had. This was the Beltany Stone Circle near Strabane, and we were en route south and off the island. I began to walk around the outside of the circle as Debra unpacked her harp. I heard its instant windsong over my right shoulder as I progressed and suddenly the notion of “wakening the stones” came to me…as always with me, this was a set of words and images that bubbled up from within, I couldn’t and wouldn’t go so far as to say it came from anywhere “out there”. So with that careful (science-based!) caveat, I maintain that the idea of “wakening the stones” was a valid one, and so I let it be…the stones were wakening with the presence and sound of harps in their midst. And when was the last time that happened?
Go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ng97et2PWME for visual and a bit of sound at the Uragh circle near Kenmare, Co. Kerry, shot by a woman on a Celtic mystery tour.
Barcelona, Spain
Awakening the Stones: playing harps in Ireland’s stone circles
I’ve been off Ireland’s soil for a little less than 24 hours now and I’ve wanted to express my experience playing the harp, or even just letting it sing in the wind, in the stone circles we’ve visited. Debra and I brought harps into 4 circles: 2 near the Co. Kerry town of Kenmare a couple of weeks ago, and 2 more on Monday, as we left Culdaff and the Inishowen Peninsula in Co. Donegal. Each time we found an ideal recording wind, not a coincidence as the circles we’ve visited are all sited on mounds or low hills, surrounded by a circular depression or set of valleys, which in turn are ringed by higher hills or mountains. Of the four circles and winds, I hope that the 2nd one yields a good windharp recording.
As I walk toward and then around a circle, the first thing I’m aware of is the silence…again, no coincidence as the setting has been rural, open, either pasture or hill slope. But the silence is the first thing that registers. Then the wind. There may be sheep or cattle nearby and there may be occasional birds. But these soft and subtle sounds of another presence complete the silence; they do not break or intrude upon it.
We tend not to talk to each other at first. We each take our own path around or into a circle. I don’t fantasize an awareness, but I do sense a presence, if only of time…these are human artifacts still standing in landscape as much as 5000 years after they were placed here. I touch the occasional stone, wondering where it came from, and what it signifies in its location. I lean into its warmth if the day has soaked a little sun into its surface.
Once we pull out the harps and they start responding to the wind, we let that be the substance and foundation of the sound. In an “improvisational tuning” the harps give the most resonant quality of sound, and we also have an easier time improvising both with the wind and with each other. The combination of wind, harps, and stone circles becomes its own iterative or self-perpetuating experience, where one exists within and because of the other.
There is much more beneath this quick summation, but time runs along and I must catch up…but to finish with this:
At the last circle I did not take my harp, it was packed and inaccessible for the short time we had. This was the Beltany Stone Circle near Strabane, and we were en route south and off the island. I began to walk around the outside of the circle as Debra unpacked her harp. I heard its instant windsong over my right shoulder as I progressed and suddenly the notion of “wakening the stones” came to me…as always with me, this was a set of words and images that bubbled up from within, I couldn’t and wouldn’t go so far as to say it came from anywhere “out there”. So with that careful (science-based!) caveat, I maintain that the idea of “wakening the stones” was a valid one, and so I let it be…the stones were wakening with the presence and sound of harps in their midst. And when was the last time that happened?
Go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ng97et2PWME for visual and a bit of sound at the Uragh circle near Kenmare, Co. Kerry, shot by a woman on a Celtic mystery tour.
Friday, October 5, 2007
Rifts in Time and Stone
Friday, October 5, 2007
Giant’s Causeway, Northern Ireland
Rifts in Time and Stone: From Table Mountain to Giant’s Causeway, from Washington to Ireland…
There’s no planning these things, they just happen…they arise out of a moment, a space, a glimpse into a pure creation, and sometimes our efforts to capture or instill them into a quasi-permanent state are just that, efforts…but sometimes they become the next painting, the next picture, the next piece of music, and something is birthed and becomes its own piece of the world.
I was challenged earlier this year, by a musician friend at Table Mountain Star Party outside Ellensburg, Washington, to set my double-strung harp’s levers so that one side would sound different from the other. Easy enough to do, but I’d been intimidated by the magnitude of unknown potential in the past, and had never done it. This time I did, and as a result, something very pleasing happened. Now three months later, near the cliff edge of Ireland’s Giant’s Causeway, I noodled around a second time with this new “tuning” on the little harp, and the sound became musical; and then a little more set, or codified, so that it began to make a statement, tell a story. And as this was taking place, I remembered its origin, on the high, flat top of Table Mountain, playing through the day before sunset, dark, and the night’s starry explorations.
The “table” part of Table Mountain arises, literally, out of the Ellensburg valley floor, as the top surface of the 17 – 5 million year old sequence of flood basalts known as the Columbia River Basalts, or CRB’s. The cliff edge I inhabit today however, arises out of the Atlantic Ocean on the far northern coast of Ireland, where massive 60-odd million year old columnar-jointed flood basalts , older cousins to the CRB, erupted and “paved” the geography of Ireland, as well as Scotland (Staffa Island and Fingal’s Cave) 20 miles north, now separated by 20 miles of open sea.
It isn’t the first or only time that I have sensed my harp strings creating a bridge…other times it has seemed to be a bridge out of life, as my hospice patients were dying. Today it was a bridge of time and space, linking two beautiful but vastly different (in appearance and age) landscapes. And it was a link “in” time, as only moments later another guest of the cottages came to listen, and said, as they so often do, how “rare and special” it was to hear a harp played in this land. Is it really so rare? That’s not for me to say because my experience is so limited, yet my experience of this past month has been consistent in this theme. And so once again I feel inspired anew to bring my harps to Ireland for a long and fruitful stay.
Giant’s Causeway, Northern Ireland
Rifts in Time and Stone: From Table Mountain to Giant’s Causeway, from Washington to Ireland…
There’s no planning these things, they just happen…they arise out of a moment, a space, a glimpse into a pure creation, and sometimes our efforts to capture or instill them into a quasi-permanent state are just that, efforts…but sometimes they become the next painting, the next picture, the next piece of music, and something is birthed and becomes its own piece of the world.
I was challenged earlier this year, by a musician friend at Table Mountain Star Party outside Ellensburg, Washington, to set my double-strung harp’s levers so that one side would sound different from the other. Easy enough to do, but I’d been intimidated by the magnitude of unknown potential in the past, and had never done it. This time I did, and as a result, something very pleasing happened. Now three months later, near the cliff edge of Ireland’s Giant’s Causeway, I noodled around a second time with this new “tuning” on the little harp, and the sound became musical; and then a little more set, or codified, so that it began to make a statement, tell a story. And as this was taking place, I remembered its origin, on the high, flat top of Table Mountain, playing through the day before sunset, dark, and the night’s starry explorations.
The “table” part of Table Mountain arises, literally, out of the Ellensburg valley floor, as the top surface of the 17 – 5 million year old sequence of flood basalts known as the Columbia River Basalts, or CRB’s. The cliff edge I inhabit today however, arises out of the Atlantic Ocean on the far northern coast of Ireland, where massive 60-odd million year old columnar-jointed flood basalts , older cousins to the CRB, erupted and “paved” the geography of Ireland, as well as Scotland (Staffa Island and Fingal’s Cave) 20 miles north, now separated by 20 miles of open sea.
It isn’t the first or only time that I have sensed my harp strings creating a bridge…other times it has seemed to be a bridge out of life, as my hospice patients were dying. Today it was a bridge of time and space, linking two beautiful but vastly different (in appearance and age) landscapes. And it was a link “in” time, as only moments later another guest of the cottages came to listen, and said, as they so often do, how “rare and special” it was to hear a harp played in this land. Is it really so rare? That’s not for me to say because my experience is so limited, yet my experience of this past month has been consistent in this theme. And so once again I feel inspired anew to bring my harps to Ireland for a long and fruitful stay.
Monday, October 1, 2007
The Familiarity of Bones
Monday, October 1, 2007
Giant’s Causeway, Northern Ireland
The view of the sea again, the entrancement of the wind, and the passage of time over the grassy hills, these things have brought me back to this land that surely I once knew with the familiarity of bones.
Last night’s musical adventure in The House of McConnell in Ballycastle followed on the heels of the previous evening in the Smuggler’s Inn Hotel, near Giant’s Causeway, a few scant hours after our arrival here. It amazes me the way the music surfaces yet again after a full day of driving, but it does! But last night was its own phenomenon and as such, needs more preface:
We had driven from Shannon to Dublin and back on Friday and for all those 12 hours I got my 30 seconds worth of playing a slow air to and for the Trinity (ada Brian Boru) harp in the Long Room of the Library of Trinity College (renamed Dublin University). The slow air, one of my favorites, is Oidche Mbath Leibb or Goodbye to You…recorded on cd#2, Full Hearts, Empty Mind (www.lindakhandro.com). This was the heart of my musical pilgrimage to Ireland…to pay homage to a harp from the 13th or 14th Century, although it was romantically and incorrectly attributed to Ireland’s 11th C first High King, Brian Boru. My overt romanticism didn’t go so far as to imagine that the ancient harp would resonate with mine, but there was something deep and compelling about just being there and letting the modern harp strings sound out toward to the ancient instrument behind glass. The officials in the library were taken aback by my request to play, but enjoyed it anyway, and perhaps it won’t be an isolated event…I know I’ll go back to play there again.
Saturday morning we picked up Ted at Shannon Airport and after another 8-9 hours driving arrived at Giants' Causeway where we went harpubbing (or is it pubarping?) before we even unpacked, and for the first time in 3 weeks there was a harper there! She was playing a 22 string lap harp with great energy and skill! Ted and I went out again last night to meet up with Sabine and Dick (harper and hubby...so does that make him a harphubby?) who is also a fine fiddler and hammered dulcimer player. But the real treat for me last night was to learn of Sabine’s knowledge and passion for geology, paleontology, and archeology, and as a result we talked shop longer than we played harps! So I will be taking her up on her offer to prowl the nearby beaches for fossils, and in return will give her my 2nd copy of the Geology of Ireland map from the Geological Survey of Ireland office in Dublin (thanks to Frank Fagan there).
The morning scoots away from me now on a brisk sea breeze, and the sky is clouding over towards noon…so, more sooner dear friends! We go off now to hop around on the 60 million year old (born yesterday!) basalt columns of Giant’s Causeway…they point toward Scotland, a mere 20 miles across the water.
Giant’s Causeway, Northern Ireland
The view of the sea again, the entrancement of the wind, and the passage of time over the grassy hills, these things have brought me back to this land that surely I once knew with the familiarity of bones.
Last night’s musical adventure in The House of McConnell in Ballycastle followed on the heels of the previous evening in the Smuggler’s Inn Hotel, near Giant’s Causeway, a few scant hours after our arrival here. It amazes me the way the music surfaces yet again after a full day of driving, but it does! But last night was its own phenomenon and as such, needs more preface:
We had driven from Shannon to Dublin and back on Friday and for all those 12 hours I got my 30 seconds worth of playing a slow air to and for the Trinity (ada Brian Boru) harp in the Long Room of the Library of Trinity College (renamed Dublin University). The slow air, one of my favorites, is Oidche Mbath Leibb or Goodbye to You…recorded on cd#2, Full Hearts, Empty Mind (www.lindakhandro.com). This was the heart of my musical pilgrimage to Ireland…to pay homage to a harp from the 13th or 14th Century, although it was romantically and incorrectly attributed to Ireland’s 11th C first High King, Brian Boru. My overt romanticism didn’t go so far as to imagine that the ancient harp would resonate with mine, but there was something deep and compelling about just being there and letting the modern harp strings sound out toward to the ancient instrument behind glass. The officials in the library were taken aback by my request to play, but enjoyed it anyway, and perhaps it won’t be an isolated event…I know I’ll go back to play there again.
Saturday morning we picked up Ted at Shannon Airport and after another 8-9 hours driving arrived at Giants' Causeway where we went harpubbing (or is it pubarping?) before we even unpacked, and for the first time in 3 weeks there was a harper there! She was playing a 22 string lap harp with great energy and skill! Ted and I went out again last night to meet up with Sabine and Dick (harper and hubby...so does that make him a harphubby?) who is also a fine fiddler and hammered dulcimer player. But the real treat for me last night was to learn of Sabine’s knowledge and passion for geology, paleontology, and archeology, and as a result we talked shop longer than we played harps! So I will be taking her up on her offer to prowl the nearby beaches for fossils, and in return will give her my 2nd copy of the Geology of Ireland map from the Geological Survey of Ireland office in Dublin (thanks to Frank Fagan there).
The morning scoots away from me now on a brisk sea breeze, and the sky is clouding over towards noon…so, more sooner dear friends! We go off now to hop around on the 60 million year old (born yesterday!) basalt columns of Giant’s Causeway…they point toward Scotland, a mere 20 miles across the water.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
The Harp Before the Moon
The Harp Before the Moon - traveling Ireland with the harp:
Sunday, September, 23, 2007
Lahinch and Doolin, Co. Clare, Ireland
For the past several days I’ve been wearing 2 pair of earrings in a back to front configuration (2 holes in each ear you see)…one ear would have a silver harp in front of a copper BC native moon, the other ear had the moon in front of the harp. It occurred to me the other day as I was talking a photo of my harp in front of the sea, that the harp is my expression outward toward the elements. And so as the phrase, “the harp before the moon” appeared against the backdrop of strings and surf, it seemed a fitting opening phrase in this halting and barely beginning expression of playing harps with the sessions in pubs in County Clare.
In Lahinch on Thursday night last, Debra and I “opened” the evening’s music with our harps in the front room of The Cornerstone Pub, then joined the fiddle and flute players in the back room when they arrived. They were hot stuff! Young married folks from the US living the tradition-musician dream in Ireland, as she was from an Irish family up the coast, but as we talked between sets, I learned that they had both worked at Dusty Strings in Seattle…so Sarah from the shop and Damien from the store both say hello to Eileen, Molly, and all our harper friends there! We joined in the sets as best we could, and sometimes we actually had the key and basic chords in place just before the tune ended! But we also played some solo tunes each, as well as the duo tunes that we have been working on together. All in all, it was a great time, and people (musicians and pub-goers) were enthusiastically supportive of our contributions.
The next night a different group of players took the back room of The Cornerstone, but we were content to sit and listen, and chat with other visitors. A choir group from Holland sang wonderful songs in English, I think! What I mean is that they were phonetically singing the English lyrics as they read the lead sheet, but didn’t really know the words, and so the sound was an odd mix of unintelligible words with wonderful sound! They were buying traditional Irish cd’s and sheet music every where they travelled.
Then last night’s session was in O’Connor’s pub in Doolin. This is a big, rambling place, and the musician’s corner was anything but in a corner…it was front and center! They were raising hell when we got there, but we ate a bit and played a bit in a back room before getting the nod from one of the fiddle players we had met earlier in the hostel. That was the invitation to wriggle our way with harps over our heads, to two stools vacated for us. Oh my, now I felt intimidated! They were blistering hot, and seamlessly tight, but we opened with our new version of Loreena McKennitt’s “Beltane Fire Dance”, I followed with another McKennitt, “Between the Shadows”, and then we were off and away as accompanists with ears tight to the soundboard to find the key, the mode, the chords! The rhythm is never a problem; that fast reel just keeps the left hand ring finger pumping, and a jig is a joy for all 8 fingers to fly. In our next ‘lead’ spots we played a beautiful Breton tune I’ve been learning from Debra, “Tttryyllyygg” (sp???), O’Carolan’s “Clergy’s Lamentation”, a rather fractured version of “Butterfly”, on which they joined at a more stately tempo than they usually play, I’m sure! Our specialty seems to be “Paddy’s Green Shamrock Shore”, though only once, last week in Kilcolgan (Co. Galway) did one of the very elderly gents actually sing with us. I attempted my rendition of “Grenadier and the Lady/The Mowers/Bold Fenian Men” but it’s been a while since I’ve played that set at all, and even longer on the small harp!
Now we’re about to leave again, back on the road, this time to Dingle and environs, so more later! But a quick word about our harps…both made by Stoney End in Red Wing, Minnesota, mine is a Brittany 22 string double-strung harp in cherry; and Debra’s is their new Evensong, a 26 string ‘therapy’ harp with a very nice tone, and a good bass accompaniment to the higher pitch of the Brittany. So thanks, Gary and Eve, we are your appreciative ambassadors in the land of green, music, stone, cows, and the waxing moon.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Dingle and Kenmare, Co. Kerry
Coda (and more coda!) to the above:
Monday morning in Dingle we walked into the music shop next to the B & B (one of the reasons for that choice of B & B by the way!) and who should we see but my friend Gregor Stevens from Seattle. We each knew the other was in Ireland (his homeland) but connecting would be a matter of the fates. Well, weren't the fates just with with us all! That night we attended a concert at the church next door (of course) where some popular and marvelous folks played an utterly beautiful two sets: Pauline Scanlon (vocals), Donagh O’Hennessy (guitar) and Owen (sorry, name escapes me) on uillean pipes. And to beat all, Gregor danced at their invitation, got the whole place energized with him, and received a cd from Owen for his efforts. He was brilliant! Then we played a little in the break of a set of a guitarist and accordion player (who was like the wind), and were received as warmly as ever.
Next day however, we came to Kenmare after the hair-raising drive from Killarney and here we were “discovered” while unpacking the car on the street; my hard-shell harp case is labeled, “harp” with a Seattle address all over it and our discoverers were indeed from Seattle. So once again, the B & B was across from the music shop, and the pub that was recommended to us was next door. I love these towns! After dinner we came into a fully packed room, with 3 players already in swing…fiddle, guitar, bodhran, and were welcomed in. And were we ever welcomed! Once unpacked and introduced to and by the other musicians, we started our contribution with “Paddy…” it’s a great opener for us. And the place went as silent as a tomb. You could hear the Guinness bubble. Now we’ve been invited by the other players to join them tonight at another pub a short drive away, and well, I think we just might! So stay “tuned” so to speak!
Sunday, September, 23, 2007
Lahinch and Doolin, Co. Clare, Ireland
For the past several days I’ve been wearing 2 pair of earrings in a back to front configuration (2 holes in each ear you see)…one ear would have a silver harp in front of a copper BC native moon, the other ear had the moon in front of the harp. It occurred to me the other day as I was talking a photo of my harp in front of the sea, that the harp is my expression outward toward the elements. And so as the phrase, “the harp before the moon” appeared against the backdrop of strings and surf, it seemed a fitting opening phrase in this halting and barely beginning expression of playing harps with the sessions in pubs in County Clare.
In Lahinch on Thursday night last, Debra and I “opened” the evening’s music with our harps in the front room of The Cornerstone Pub, then joined the fiddle and flute players in the back room when they arrived. They were hot stuff! Young married folks from the US living the tradition-musician dream in Ireland, as she was from an Irish family up the coast, but as we talked between sets, I learned that they had both worked at Dusty Strings in Seattle…so Sarah from the shop and Damien from the store both say hello to Eileen, Molly, and all our harper friends there! We joined in the sets as best we could, and sometimes we actually had the key and basic chords in place just before the tune ended! But we also played some solo tunes each, as well as the duo tunes that we have been working on together. All in all, it was a great time, and people (musicians and pub-goers) were enthusiastically supportive of our contributions.
The next night a different group of players took the back room of The Cornerstone, but we were content to sit and listen, and chat with other visitors. A choir group from Holland sang wonderful songs in English, I think! What I mean is that they were phonetically singing the English lyrics as they read the lead sheet, but didn’t really know the words, and so the sound was an odd mix of unintelligible words with wonderful sound! They were buying traditional Irish cd’s and sheet music every where they travelled.
Then last night’s session was in O’Connor’s pub in Doolin. This is a big, rambling place, and the musician’s corner was anything but in a corner…it was front and center! They were raising hell when we got there, but we ate a bit and played a bit in a back room before getting the nod from one of the fiddle players we had met earlier in the hostel. That was the invitation to wriggle our way with harps over our heads, to two stools vacated for us. Oh my, now I felt intimidated! They were blistering hot, and seamlessly tight, but we opened with our new version of Loreena McKennitt’s “Beltane Fire Dance”, I followed with another McKennitt, “Between the Shadows”, and then we were off and away as accompanists with ears tight to the soundboard to find the key, the mode, the chords! The rhythm is never a problem; that fast reel just keeps the left hand ring finger pumping, and a jig is a joy for all 8 fingers to fly. In our next ‘lead’ spots we played a beautiful Breton tune I’ve been learning from Debra, “Tttryyllyygg” (sp???), O’Carolan’s “Clergy’s Lamentation”, a rather fractured version of “Butterfly”, on which they joined at a more stately tempo than they usually play, I’m sure! Our specialty seems to be “Paddy’s Green Shamrock Shore”, though only once, last week in Kilcolgan (Co. Galway) did one of the very elderly gents actually sing with us. I attempted my rendition of “Grenadier and the Lady/The Mowers/Bold Fenian Men” but it’s been a while since I’ve played that set at all, and even longer on the small harp!
Now we’re about to leave again, back on the road, this time to Dingle and environs, so more later! But a quick word about our harps…both made by Stoney End in Red Wing, Minnesota, mine is a Brittany 22 string double-strung harp in cherry; and Debra’s is their new Evensong, a 26 string ‘therapy’ harp with a very nice tone, and a good bass accompaniment to the higher pitch of the Brittany. So thanks, Gary and Eve, we are your appreciative ambassadors in the land of green, music, stone, cows, and the waxing moon.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Dingle and Kenmare, Co. Kerry
Coda (and more coda!) to the above:
Monday morning in Dingle we walked into the music shop next to the B & B (one of the reasons for that choice of B & B by the way!) and who should we see but my friend Gregor Stevens from Seattle. We each knew the other was in Ireland (his homeland) but connecting would be a matter of the fates. Well, weren't the fates just with with us all! That night we attended a concert at the church next door (of course) where some popular and marvelous folks played an utterly beautiful two sets: Pauline Scanlon (vocals), Donagh O’Hennessy (guitar) and Owen (sorry, name escapes me) on uillean pipes. And to beat all, Gregor danced at their invitation, got the whole place energized with him, and received a cd from Owen for his efforts. He was brilliant! Then we played a little in the break of a set of a guitarist and accordion player (who was like the wind), and were received as warmly as ever.
Next day however, we came to Kenmare after the hair-raising drive from Killarney and here we were “discovered” while unpacking the car on the street; my hard-shell harp case is labeled, “harp” with a Seattle address all over it and our discoverers were indeed from Seattle. So once again, the B & B was across from the music shop, and the pub that was recommended to us was next door. I love these towns! After dinner we came into a fully packed room, with 3 players already in swing…fiddle, guitar, bodhran, and were welcomed in. And were we ever welcomed! Once unpacked and introduced to and by the other musicians, we started our contribution with “Paddy…” it’s a great opener for us. And the place went as silent as a tomb. You could hear the Guinness bubble. Now we’ve been invited by the other players to join them tonight at another pub a short drive away, and well, I think we just might! So stay “tuned” so to speak!
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Ireland at last!
September 9, 2007
The first stages are past now and the real journey has begun. This is Kilcolgan, on Galway Bay, not far from Galway city. I arrived here from Shannon at about 6 last night, after a detour through the musical hot spot of Ennis…and a sudden entrapment in a one way (my way!) lane that was probably a fine street 200+ years ago, but was now awash with pedestrians and a cacophony of colour. I believe I stumbled in on a Saturday market day! Goods of all kinds were displayed in booths and on tables, and the surge of crowd ebbed between the shops and in the lanes. After finally finding my cottage at Kilcolgan, an hour further north, I shopped for staples, and headed out the road west from here to Kinvarra, aiming for a sunset and shoreline…100 kmh is the posted speed limit for roads with no shoulder, where hedges or walls race within touching distance of the car ( I still do not “sense” the left side of the car well enough, and hope I’m not accumulating scratches from the foliage!), curves are sharp and blind, and despite my cautious slower speed on the “wrong” side of the road, it was a white knuckle drive, even more so coming back in the dark. But Kinvarra is a place I’ll go back to again soon for the music, perhaps even tonight. Today…I’ll jaunt into Galway city with my one of my new GSI books in hand, “Galway in Stone” which includes a walking tour around Galway of the various stone buildings. In particular, the local stone includes various types of granites, the famous Connemara Marble, and a fossiliferous limestone. A tourist with not only a camera but a hand lens, peering into the stone walls…should amuse someone!
The first stages are past now and the real journey has begun. This is Kilcolgan, on Galway Bay, not far from Galway city. I arrived here from Shannon at about 6 last night, after a detour through the musical hot spot of Ennis…and a sudden entrapment in a one way (my way!) lane that was probably a fine street 200+ years ago, but was now awash with pedestrians and a cacophony of colour. I believe I stumbled in on a Saturday market day! Goods of all kinds were displayed in booths and on tables, and the surge of crowd ebbed between the shops and in the lanes. After finally finding my cottage at Kilcolgan, an hour further north, I shopped for staples, and headed out the road west from here to Kinvarra, aiming for a sunset and shoreline…100 kmh is the posted speed limit for roads with no shoulder, where hedges or walls race within touching distance of the car ( I still do not “sense” the left side of the car well enough, and hope I’m not accumulating scratches from the foliage!), curves are sharp and blind, and despite my cautious slower speed on the “wrong” side of the road, it was a white knuckle drive, even more so coming back in the dark. But Kinvarra is a place I’ll go back to again soon for the music, perhaps even tonight. Today…I’ll jaunt into Galway city with my one of my new GSI books in hand, “Galway in Stone” which includes a walking tour around Galway of the various stone buildings. In particular, the local stone includes various types of granites, the famous Connemara Marble, and a fossiliferous limestone. A tourist with not only a camera but a hand lens, peering into the stone walls…should amuse someone!
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