Cindy Kallet and Grey Larsen
House Concert
January 17, 2009, 7:30pm in Carrboro, North Carolina
The artists will offer harmony and repertoire workshops in the afternoon.
Join us for an intimate evening of acoustic folk songs and traditional instrumental tunes from these master musicians.
Cindy Kallet and Grey Larsen, each well-known and loved for their decades of music making, have joined musical forces in a new duo. Cindy is a superb singer, guitarist, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. Grey is one of America's finest players of the Irish flute and tin whistle, as well as an accomplished singer and concertina, fiddle, piano and harmonium player. As composers each has contributed to the unique tapestry of contemporary folk and world music as it exists and flourishes in America today. Together, they weave songs and tunes of vibrant color and rich texture.
Scott Alarik of The Boston Globe calls Cindy "...one of folk music's most respected songwriters... provocative, heartwise, and original ...a brilliant guitarist... ". Mike Joyce of the Washington Post calls Grey "... a gifted multi-instrumentalist who consistently demonstrates his melodic finesse," while The New Mexico Daily describes his playing as "positively spellbinding".
The duo's repertoire includes Cindy's sparkling original songs, distinctive settings of traditional Irish music, Scandinavian fiddle duets, old-time fiddle and guitar tunes from southern Indiana, and new music that Cindy and Grey are inventing together. There is plenty of variety and breadth of musical territory here, all deeply rooted in folk traditions, and interwoven with the renaissance and baroque counterpoint in which both Cindy and Grey, coincidentally, were immersed while growing up. Included are vocal duets, guitar, Irish flute, Irish alto flute, tin whistle, concertina, harmonium, and duet fiddling, and plenty of stories that put the music into a personal context. For more on Cindy and Grey, please visit www.kalletlarsen.com. For more on Grey, please go to www.greylarsen.com.
Harmony Workshop with Cindy Kallet
Workshop from 4:30 - 5:30pm
Come join us for some harmony fun! We'll do some musical warm-up "games" and then work on getting comfortable and adventurous with harmonies to easy-to-learn songs. If there's time, we may also learn a couple of songs that already have harmony parts made for them. All voices and levels of experience welcome!
Michael J. Kennedy Repertoire Workshop with Grey Larsen
Workshop from 4:30 - 5:30pm
In this workshop I will share traditional Irish tunes from the repertoire of melodeon player Michael J. Kennedy (1900 - 1978). The tunes go well on all melody instruments, so all melody players are invited. Michael was my first teacher and mentor when I was learning Irish traditional music as a teenager in Cincinnati, Ohio. He was born and raised in north central Co. Galway, on the Co. Roscommon border, and came to Cincinnati in 1923. He spent the rest of his life there, and across the Ohio River in Covington, Kentucky.
I will provide sheet music of Michael's tunes for those who wish to have it, and we will learn some of these tunes by ear during the workshop. CDs of his playing will also be available.
This repertoire is unusual in several respects. The tunes are strictly local to Michael's home area. There was no electricity there in those years and no gramophones or outside musical influences to speak of. While living there he never traveled farther than he could walk from his farm in a day, a radius of about file miles, and he learned all of his tunes from neighbors within that circle. I feel that the tunes are from an older tradition than what most of us are used to today. Some of them are "crooked", meaning that certain phrases contain less or more beats than we expect. Some are in rhythms not heard much today, such as a number of schottisches and a version of the slip jig "Rocky Road to Dublin" that is in 18/8 time. The melodies tend to be angular and stark, and he played them in a largely-unadorned style. I feel very fortunate that I was able to learn this repertoire directly from Michael. He was always happy when young people wanted to learn his tunes, and I know he'd be happy that you will be joining me to learn this music.
