The Wood Between the Worlds - Liner Notes
The Wood Between the Worlds/The Thrush in the Willow
I wrote this introduction and reel up at my favorite creative nest: The Ancient Arts Center in the coast range of Oregon, where I go as much as I can in the summer. The reel is in honor of the Swainson's thrushes (we call them whirleybirds) who sing every evening in the long twilight, going from low to high with the most amazing overtones. This album is an homage to that particular wood between the worlds, and folks can certainly visit - there are lots of great classes - Ancient Arts Center.
Shelley Phillips: folk harp
Owen Meehan: flute and whistle
Barry Phillips: cello
The Seventh Estampie Royal is a 13th century French court dance. I first heard it played by an early music group called Sonus from their CD Chanterai. The seventh dance is not often done, and there are many variants, (perhaps because the original is hard to read now!) so I felt free to play with it. I recorded it at 77 BPM, and had the phrases before the refrain line up: 8,7,6,7 to make a nice spiral cycle. Fun with numerolgy! The first time through I play it on a little bamboo flute I made from homegrown bamboo and a used wine cork.
Shelley Phillips: oboe, bamboo pipe
Barry Phillips: cittern, percussion
Deby Benton Grosjean: violin
Neal Hellman: mountain dulcimer
Les Barricades Mystérieuses, by François Couperin, was published in 1717, as the fifth piece in his VIth Ordre de Clavecin. Written in the arpeggiated ringing style of a lute piece, the piece works very well on harp. It is a rondeau, so you will hear the beginning come back around before a new section begins. There is much entertaining speculation on what is meant by the title, from the philosophical to the ribald, and I love this essay on the subject: Les Barricades Mystériuuses It never occurred to me that it might be referring to women's eyelashes: to me it has always evoked a ruined wall out in the European countryside that no one remembers the purpose for which it was built.
Shelley Phillips: folk harp
Fransosen
This was learned by Lars from the playing of Dråm, (draam.com) a duet from Sweden, when they came to Santa Cruz. The tune is a Polonaise from Anders Larsson's notebook from Västergötland. They write "This polonaise doesn't have very Swedish characteristics, instead it feels rather similar to some traditional French music in which bagpipes still pay a prominent role. The tune is paired with a newly written counter-melody written by Anna Rynefors." Bill, Barry and myself have ended up playing this tune faster and faster, so good luck trying to dance to it.
Shelley Phillips: English horn
Barry Phillips: cello
William Coulter: guitar
The Leaves Be Green
This amazing piece by Elizabethan composer William Byrd takes a simple children's song: "The leaves be green, the nuts be brown, they hang so high, they will not come down" and makes variation after variation. I remembered the tune from the 1971 version of Elizabeth I from the BBC, and you can hear the tune jump from voice to voice, until suddenly it just ends, like kids who've been dancing in a circle will just flop down and laugh. I promise you I am playing what's written - all this from the man who was said to be "naturally disposed to gravity and piety."
Shelley Phillips: oboe, English horn, recorders
Froggy Dan and Froggy Doodle/The Ash Plant
I wrote the first slip jig set for two enormous frogs that set up housekeeping on the thyme bed on the bank of the pond at the Ancient Arts Center. That year I'd brought a group of high school and college students up to play at the Oregon Country Fair, and they can attest to the hugeness of this frog couple. The Ash Plant is a traditional Irish tune that we were messing with in the studio years ago - the harp accompaniment is a fun polyrhythm that sounds like lots of frogs - my favorite workshop to teach at harp gatherings. Frogs are really into polyrhythms...
Shelley Phillips: oboe, English horn
Barry Phillips: cello, cittern, percussion
Devin Shepherd: fiddle
Da Day Dawn
I heard this beautiful Shetland tune almost every evening on a long tour of Germany and Switzerland, played by Chris Stout and Catriona McKay as they opened the concert for the rest of us, and I never tired of it. My version owes a lot to them, although Chris Norman (who plays it with me here on a low A Cameron ebony flute) and I have certainly made it our own now. It is to played at dawn after the longest night of the year, just when the light comes back again. We like to play it and then watch documentaries on neolithic Britain.
Shelley Phillips: folk harp
Chris Norman: alto flute
Polska efter Blinde Pelle/Guringius' Polska
The first is another tune learned from Blå Bergens Borduner, the summer of 1994 when Lars Johannesson brought home a bunch of CDs from Sweden, and I listened to a cassette of this band on a loop while canning an entire summer of fruit. I heard the band got back together after a short break from 1995-2009, and I look forward to their new album! I did another of their tunes on my last album back in 2003 - I understand short breaks. The second tune in this set I learned in person and in my kitchen from the great band Väsen, and proceeded to play it on Roger's iPhone ocarina, wrecking the mike since I was blowing into it like an oboist. I think I'm forgiven since he's playing it here with me on this recording. It's real name is Guringius Polska, but we call it Polska efter Väsen, which at Kid's Celtic Camp became The Effervescent Polska.
Shelley Phillips: folk harp, English horn
Roger Tallroth: guitar, cittern
The Lament of Tristan/La Rotta
This is a 14th century Italian dance that I knew from school and the Harvard Historical Anthology of Music (#59a) and the after-dance has entered the folk tradition through Kim Robertson's version, which I play following the prima, secunda and tertia parses. The beginning is so nice that I wouldn't want people to forget about it. The manuscript is in the British Museum, or heaven as I call it. Back in the day it was probably played on a vielle, and just the single line.
My harmony is very modern and tries to express, as the original did, the ancient legend of Tristan, Iseult, and Mark, with it's roots in the 12th century and even earlier.
Shelley Phillips: folk harp
Barry Phillips: percussion
Mr. Beveridge's/Hole in the Wall
Well, you Jane Austen film fans will recognize these Playford tunes from the English Dancing Master - the movies play either one or the other for the smoldering dance scenes between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy. I asked Barry to arrange them together in this medley, and as usual he surpassed himself. So pretty, that it's odd to know that the tune is called a maggot, which is the old days meant a whimsey or fancy, but still is connected with insects, since the use of maggot to mean a fanciful or whimsical thing derives from the folk belief that a whimsical or crotchety person had maggots in his or her brain. OK.
Shelley Phillips: oboe
Barry Phillips: cello
Jesse Autumn: pedal harp
Lars Johannesson: flute
Shira Kammen: violin and viola
My Bonny Boy
This tune was collected by Cecil Sharp in 1916 in his book 100 English Folksongs, and the second and third verses are his arrangement, orchestrated by me. The variant at the beginning and the end is in the dorian mode as opposed to Sharp's Victorian style aeolian mode, and was used by Holst's daughter Imogen, who arranged it for recorder consort, and by Vaughan-Williams, who used it as the middle movement of his Folksong Suite. The last time through it's Barry Phillips's turn to harmonize the tune, and his version is up there with the greats of the English music revival of the 20th century.
Shelley Phillips: oboe, English horn, recorders, whistle
Barry Phillips: cello
Jesse Autumn: double-strung harp
Christa Stiner: bassoon
So Beautie on the Water Stood
Barry and I are playing an instrumental version of a song written by Alfonso Ferrabosco the younger (1575-1628, illegitimate son of the elder Italian composer, born in Greenwich and raised at Elizabeth's court), of Ben Jonson's (1572-1637, actor and writer with Henslowe's theatre company, and contemporary of Shakespeare) beautiful poem:
So beautie on the waters stood,
When Love had ser'd earth from floud,
So when he parted ayre from fire,
Hee did with Concord all inspire,
And then a motion hee them taught,
That elder than himselfe was thought,
Which thought was yet the childe of earth.
For love is elder than his birth.
Shelley Phillips: English horn
Barry Phillips: cello
Kid on the Mountain/Morning Dew
The first tune is a traditional Irish slip jig that we've been performing in concert for years, and I've taught the 3 part version to lots and lots of students. We'd never gotten around to putting it out, but it did exist on ADAT tape since after a visit from Chicago fiddler Devin Shepherd years ago we went up to the studio to just play around, and we laid down these tunes, as well as The Ashplant above.
Barry had to transfer the tape into the computer, but the performance was nice! We added the harmonies to the slip jig, and are delighted to give you Devin's amazing version of the reel for your admiration.
Shelley Phillips: folk harp
Barry Phillips: cello
William Coulter: guitar, bodhran
Lars Johannesson: flute
Devin Shepherd, fiddle
Slán le Maigh
I learned this incredible air from the singing of Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh, who I love dearly, since I used to see her when I went to her home town in West Kerry, and we took her on one of her first tours when she was just 18. She a great flute player too... My favorite version of this song is her singing it at the Scoil Cheoil na Botha 2008 with the gorgeous harp playing of Michael Rooney, whom Chris and I met when he came with his wife, the great flute player June McCormack, to the Boxwood Flute Festival in Nova Scotia (boxwood.org)
We owe a lot to this version, and have taken it into our hearts to express the beauty of the Mendocino coastline where we visit our flute making teacher, Roderick Cameron. It has now evolved over time since Chris and I played it in some of the sweetest places in Nova Scotia and Cape Breton.
Shelley Phillips: folk harp
Chris Norman: alto flute
