This time of year comes with its mix of changing light, changing seasons, celebrations, stories, and holidays. Thanksgiving, St. Andrews Day, the beginning of Advent, looking toward Christmas...here is music to go along with all that.
Thanksgiving often sees families gathering together and has people thinking of heritage and memories. Robin Spielberg was thinking about those things too as she began to work out the ideas for what has become her album Sea to Shining Sea: A Tapestry of American Music. Spielberg is a classically trained pianist who tours the world. has recorded music for documentaries, and among other things has collaborated with Susan McKeown and Cathie Ryan on an album of songs celebrating motherhood. Being a mother played a part in Sea to Shining Sea, as well: as Spielberg was teaching songs to her daughter, she realized that some of them -- Sweet Betsy from Pike, Oh Susannah, Danny Boy, Shenandoah -- were ones her grandparents had passed on her.
“In a way, I’ve been working on this project since I was a toddler,” Spielberg says. ”We had a little organ in our family house in New Jersey that kept me quite entertained.” There was a family songbook of Americana songs, and “I’d learned every one in the book by the time I was five,” she recalls. Visiting her sister’s home in Massachusetts a few years ago, she saw the organ in a storage room. “I had forgotten she had it. It brought back all those memories, and all that music. I started thinking about revisiting my favorite selections and recording them one day.”
So she has. Spielberg’s fluid piano and her distinctive touch anchor a small ensemble including cello, fiddle, percussion and oboe through twenty tracks of instrumental treatment of, as the subtitle of the album says, a tapestry of American music. There are also three Spielberg originals, which fit in well alongside familiar melodies including Home on the Range and the Water Is Wide. Continuing the circle of music, Spielberg’s daughter, Valerie, plays bells and marimba on several tracks.
If the Thanksgiving celebrations have you thinking of Native Americans, Bill Miller’s album Spirit Wind East is a good companion for that, and makes a good companion to Spielberg’s music, as well. It it also an instrumental album, featuring Miller’s work on flutes and keyboards. The music is all original material by Miller, part of a series he’s doing honoring Native tribes of the four directions. In this recording, he focuses on the tribes of the northeast. Miller is of the Stockbridge Munsee Mohican people. “The creation of this projects was like a homecoming for me as I reflected on the history and sprit of the Eastern tribes,” he says. The music holds qualities of both stillness and movement, with pieces including Greyhawk, Prayer Stones, Eastern Woodland, and Evergreen.
November is time for holiday in Scotland, too, with the celebration of Saint Andrew’s Day on November 30th. The people of the record company Greentrax are celebrating. too: they have been recording Scottish musicians for twenty five years now, and they have put together a two disc, twenty five track set to mark that. It’s called, appropriately enough, Music and Song from Scotland. Among the gems included are a song from rising stars Jeana Leslie and Siobhan Miller, a set from innovative pipe band Seudan, contributions from legendary folk musicians Archie Fisher, Jean Redpath, and Dick Gaughan, Gaelic song from Maggie MacInnes and Margaret Stewart, a track from master fiddler Alasdair Fraser, and one from top guitarist Tony McManus. In addition ot the promised twenty five tracks, each disc includes a bonus cut as well. Disc one finds highland fiddler Duncan Chisholm on a boundary crossing journey with musical friends and disc two has accordionist Phil Cunningham and fiddler Aly Bain with a tune written for the founders of Greentrax, a piece which brings this lively collection to a gentle close.
Christmas is coming, too. Among other things, Christmas is a season of fellowship, and the folk at Putumayo seem to have chosen that as a theme for their collection Celtic Christmas. The Albion Christmas Band opens things with a lively version of the jaunty song Here We Come a-Wassailing, Charles Cozens adds a bit of jazz influence to the traditional Advent hymn O Come O Come Emmanuel, and you can almost see the smile on her faced as Irish singer Lasairfhiona Ni Chonaola adds White Christmas sung in Irish. There’s the haunting Jezebel Carol from harpist Aine Minogue, David Arkenstone features flute and strings on God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen, and acclaimed Scottish songwriter Dougie MacLean offers a song from his fellow Scot Robert Burns, bringing things to a close with that song of lasting friendship, Auld Lang Syne.
A winter mix of music to enjoy as you prepare for and celebrate the season -- and stay tuned here at Wandering Educators for more winter and holiday ideas from across traditions and around the world.
Kerry Dexter is the Music Editor at Wandering Educators
She writes about music, creative practice, the arts, and travel at Music Road, Strings, Perceptive Travel, and other places. You may reach Kerry at music at wanderingeducators dot com