What's In A Name?

For those musicians in the Tucson area, mark your calendars for August 26 an 27. That's when you'll have the opportunity to take private lessons and/or workshops with the internationally renowned, award-winning musicians who make up the groups Cara and 2duos.

The bands are performing on Saturday August 29, at the Temple of Music and Art (for ticket information, see www.inconcerttucson.com). The bands are arriving in town early and will be available to teach private lessons and workshops on Wednesday August 26 and Thursday August 27. Private lessons are $40/hr and workshops are $30 each. For more information, or to register, contact me at melissaltatum AT yahoo DOT com. Please note these are not beginner workshops - students are expected to provide their own instruments and know how to play them. Whistles should be in the key of D.

Wednesday Aug 26 (Cara only): Private lessons available from 10am - 12:00noon and from 2:00-4:00pm on bodhran, fiddle, guitar, flute & whistle

Thursday Aug 27 (Cara + 2duos): private lessons and workshops
Private lessons available from 10am - 9pm on bodhran, fiddle, guitar, bouzouki, vocals, flute & whistle

Thursday workshop schedule (note: for fiddle, flute, guitar,and whistle, two teachers are available and the workshops will be divided into two skill levels where necessary)
4:30-5:45pm fiddle
4:30-5:45pm flute
6:00-7:15pm guitar
6:00-7:15pm bodhran
7:30-8:45 pm whistle

All events will be held at Rountree Hall on The University of Arizona campus.


Band biographies:

CARA tour world wide with their unique interpretation of Celtic music. They are rooted in traditional music and song, but their own exciting compositions have received wide critical acclaim. While the two female lead singers are surely a hallmark of the band, the quality standard for instrumentals and arrangements is equally high. Cara combine their mastery of vocals, piano, fiddle, flute, guitar, bodhrán, uilleann pipes, accordion and concertina with a dry-witted and very entertaining stage presence. For more about CARA, check out the band's websites at www.cara-music.com/english/ and www.myspace.com/caralive

2duos consists of four well renowned and successful musicians from Europe - two from Scotland and two from Germany - all with a passion for Irish, Scottish and German folk music. Demonstrating that the musical culture and heritage of their home countries does indeed have lots in common, 2duos have been wowing both audiences and critics alike with their unique blend of German, Irish and Scottish tunes since their formation in December 2006. For more about 2duos, check out their websites at www.2duos.com/ and www.myspace.com/2duos


Instructor biographies:

Patricia Clark is studying for a BA in Irish music and Dance at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance in Limerick. She taught at numerous festivals around Europe like Cambridge Folk Festival and Sidmouth Folk Week in the UK, Le Bono in France and many more. She also is a sought after teacher for masterclasses by musicians visiting Ireland. Toured with several international artists such as Altan, At First Light, Gráda and The Outside Track. Patricia plays fiddle and piano

Aaron Jones was voted ‘Instrumentalist of the Year’ at the Scots Trad Music Awards 2005 and is also a member of award winning Scottish band ‘Old Blind Dogs’ - winners of ‘Folk Band of the Year’ at the Scots Trad Music Awards in 2004 and 2007. He is in great demand as both an accompanist and a singer and continues to work with some of the biggest names in traditional music. He is also a founding partner in traditional music resource www.tradmusic.com, which launched in 2002. As well being a Committee Member for the Musicians Union of Scotland and Northern Ireland he is also an official accompanist at the prestigious BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician Awards. Aaron sings and plays bouzouki and guitar.

Claire Mann has established herself as one of the leading performers and teachers of traditional Irish fiddle and flute. She has toured extensively worldwide with bands Tabache, Croabh Rua, The New Shoes, Tom McConville and Christy O’Leary and is also a tutor of traditional music on the renowned RSAMD and Newcastle University folk degree courses. Claire sings and plays flute, fiddle, and whistle.

Claus Steinort started playing the Irish Flute in 1989. He has been touring and recording with several bands, including Dereelium, Steampacket and Cara. Claus has spent a lot of time in Ireland in the 90s, including a semester in Dublin, where he studied applied languages. Claus has a diploma degree in applied languages (technical translation). He has taught Irish flute playing since 1996 at various occasions, mainly for the Uilleann Pipes Society of Germany, at Wimborne Folk Festival (UK) and various Folk Weeks across Germany. He also started playing the Uilleann Pipes in 2004 and is a master of ornamentation and interpreting a tune. He also plays and teaches tin whistle.

Juergen Treyz was classically trained on the piano and graduated in Jazz Guitar at the MGI Munich. He also got involved with medieval music as well as folk music from all over Europe. He combines his knowledge of harmonic structure with a sure taste in styles and is one of the most distinctive guitar players and arrangers in Celtic Music today. He also works as a composer for audio books, TV series, theatre plays and movies. He runs his own recording studio named artes Musikproduktion and produced a vast amount of CDs, both with his own music and as a producer for various bands.

Rolf Wagels started playing bodhrán in 1993 and was rated among the best bodhrán players of continental europe. He teaches all over Germany and is a member of the highly praised trad irish bands Cara, DeReelium and Steampacket. In June 2005, he was the first non-irish teacher at the renowned Bodhrán Summerschool "Craiceann" on Inis Oirr (Aran Islands) and was asked to return every year since. His style is a mixture of traditional pulse orientated playing and the more extroverted top end style. Webpage: http://www.bodhran-info.com and http://www.myspace.com/rolfwagels

Gudrun Walther was classically trained on the fiddle, but picked up folk music also from a very young age and combines the two styles in her fiddling. She studied in master classes with many internationally known fiddlers from Ireland, France, Germany and Scandinavia, and makes her living as a touring musician since 14 years. Gudrun is also a popular teacher for fiddle as well as for ensemble playing and arranging.

The Fourth Episode of The Rountree Report podcast is up. It is the second of two podcasts recorded at the North Texas Irish Fest, and in it we journey (at least metaphorically) to Ireland, courtesy of my four musician guests - Daire Bracken, Eamonn de Barra, Mairtin de Cogain, and Eithne Ni Chathain - all of whom also speak Irish. We discussed topics ranging from language to culture to music and the connections between all of them. Many of the issues we discuss, particularly about the preservation of language, are shared by cultures around the globe.

The podcast can be accessed in three ways:

1) on the blog rountreereport.wordpress.com (no opening www)
2) on the website www.law.arizona.edu/depts/iplp
3) via a free download at iTunesU (search "rountree report" or navigate to University of Arizona then Law then rountree report)

Music feeds some important bit of my soul. It's as important as food and water - and being without live music is like being on a diet; recorded music will keep me alive and healthy, but live music is like a gourmet feast. For the last two months, I've stolen time to go to the Sunday afternoon sessions, and that has been a necessary infusion of protein (although maybe the better analogy is an ice cream sundae - a great treat that fades quickly). With no time to practice during the week, however, the session was also a bit frustrating, as I don't have time to learn new tunes.

I knew when lyrics for a new song popped out of my head a couple of weeks ago that work was finally falling back into balance and the creative part of the brain was re-asserting itself. Last night I went to a fabulous concert by what is rapidly becoming one of my favorite groups - Beoga. They are a group out of Ireland who play a unique blend of Irish, jazz, and other musical influences (check them out at www.myspace.com/beoga) Most of the tunes they play (as opposed to the songs) are their own compositions and their arrangements are ... wow.

Next week we're off to the North Texas Irish Festival to enjoy a host of favorite performers.

And part of this week's work task is to continue go through past issues of Xenofilkia for the filk article database. Looking through 20 years worth of issues in a very compressed period of time has been extremely interesting ... and last night I found "Cats with Thumbs" which I'd heard once and was rolling on the floor laughing - and now I have the lyrics!

It promises to be a great week . . .

It's been a week of total immersion in Irish Traditional music and especially flute.  I've had classes with Conal O'Grada (that's me with Conal O'Grada in the userpic) and Majella Bartley, learned some fabulous tunes, and discovered that I stink at learning tunes by ear, but that technology is a wonderful thing.

Tunes learned this week (okay, "learned" is too strong of a word - tunes we covered in class and which I now need to go finish figuring out, practice, memorize, and THEN I can say I learned them).:

From Conal O'Grada, we learned: 

Humors of Drinagh
A polka of unknown name
McKenna's Polka #2 (with instructions to seek out McKenna's Polka #1 to pair it with)
Bucks of Oranmore Reel
a slow air called An Maighdean Mhara
McKenna's Reel #1
McKenna's Reel #2
Caucus Reel
Cuckoo's Nest (hornpipe)

From Majella Bartley we learned:

Darby's Farewell to London
had a fascinating discussion on crans and rolls
Kilcooley Wood (hornpipe)
an O'Carolan harp piece called Brigit Cruse
a slow air called Wounded Hussar
Famous Barrovan (jig)
Flanagan Brothers' Barndance
she played us two jigs she composed
McCahill's Reel

 Whew! 

 

Traditional Irish music is taught aurally and many musicians cannot read music - at most they read a kind of notation called ABC notation. Learning by ear is a totally different skill set and requires immense amounts of concentration. 

But I have a fabulous digital recorder (Sony IC Recorder) that records lots of stuff at varying speeds (so I can get good quality for music recording) and it plugs into a USB port and dumps the files as mp3s on the computer.  I am then running the raw audio through audacity and whacking out all the irrelevant bits that I don't need to go back and listen to again.  The result is a very useable set of tutoring materials to take me through the next several months.  And all the tunes are on there; and I have some in ABC notation; and I've cheated and found some of the "dots" (the regular music notation) on www.thesession.org and in my Comhaltas music books.

Today has been spent re-listening and editing to the files from the first week (and making notes to accompany them about what is located where).  We really have covered an amazing about of stuff!

And I've played at two sessions, including starting tunes - how cool is that?

Check it out - it's itty bitty, but that's me on stage with The Fuchsia Band at the Kansas City Irish Fest (along with the rest of the Learn an Irish Tune class).  It was a blast!  (just checked this entry and to see the icon with the picture, you have to click on "leave a comment" - I really need to figure out how to post a picture here).

We enjoyed the Festival, but unless major changes are forthcoming on the sound front, our attendance is no longer a given.  We left a couple of concerts early, avoided two altogether, and suffered through the rest.  The sound was nothing short of horrific - unbalanced, overwhelmingly loud, reverb, feedback, squeals, distortions - you name it, it was a problem this weekend.  Rather hard to fully enjoy a music festival when the sound sucks.

I'm not an expert on sound; indeed, I'm not sure at all what goes into making it work, but I know what I hear - and how do you make Solas sound mushy and mediocre?

There were essentially four stages at the festival (I don't count the children's stage).  One was inside at the mall food court - I didn't attend any of the concerts at that venue, so I don't know what the sound was like there.

Then think of a rectangle that runs sideways.  The top right was the Terrace Stage, and the crowd spilled across the entire top of the rectangle.  The right side was the Heritage Stage, site of the workshops.  The bottom left was the Boulevard Stage, with the crowd spilling along half the bottom part of the rectangle.

The sound was so loud at the Terrace Stage that you could hear it over half the festival grounds -  I ventured near once with ear plugs, and it was still uncomfortably loud.  So we avoided concerts at that venue all together.

We attended several workshops at the Heritage Stage, and sometimes it was difficult to hear the presenter/teacher because the music from the Heritage Stage was so loud.  Several teachers also had problems because they would lose their train of thought or their rhythm because of the interference.

Most of what we wanted to hear was at the Boulevard Stage (the one on the bottom left), and that was non-stop sound problems.  I don't think any band soundchecked less than 45 minutes, when 30 minutes were what was scheduled.  Even then, musicians were constantly motioning for adjustments throughout their sets.  I think it was only sheer professionalism that kept some of them on stage. 

As I said earlier, I'm no expert in sound (and I'd love to know more), but the only band on the Boulevard Stage that sounded remotely like what we know they are capable of was Gaelic Storm, and even that deteriorated to the point that we left early.  In fact, as we walked through the enclosed bridge leading back to the hotel, we could hear the feedback and reverb!  Since they did start off better, I wonder if the sound guys were used to doing rock stuff and not traditional stuff - or does that even factor in?

We will certainly be on the alert for indications that KCIF has addressed the sound issues, and will try and see our favorites at other venues before deciding to head back to KCIF.

 

All the ducks are lined up and it's time to start the publicity push for the Fourth Annual Tulsa Gaelic Language and Music Weekend, to be held October 13-14, 2007 on the University of Tulsa campus.  The event is sponsored by the Tulsa Gaelic Studies Group, the University of Tulsa Music Department and the TU Language House.

Saturday, October 13 will consist of workshops in Gaelic singing (taught by international recording artist Christine Primrose), workshops for tin whistle, bodhran, Scottish Fiddle, and Celtic Guitar, and classes in Scottish Gaelic (taught by native speaker Muriel Fisher).

More details, and the registration form are available at http://personal.utulsa.edu/~melissa-tatum/gaelic.html

We've already started receiving registrations, so if you're interested, be sure to get your form in soon.  Spots are limited in all the workshops.