Last year, I released a full-length album “Harp Carols” for the Christmas season. This is an album dedicated to my mother Nancy, who had been asking for something like this from me for over a decade – what a wait!
I’ll be performing the album songs live in December (more on that coming up). CDs will be available at a number of gift shops during the Holiday Season, but if you just can’t wait…
“Harp Carols” is a collection of ancient noels on solo harp and features clarinetist Rosalyn DeRoos on the last song. All songs are traditional Christmas carols except track 7, an improvisation on Gabriel Faure’s “Pavane,” and track 10, “Journey to the Magi,” an original tune a la Alice Coltrane with influence by the T.S. Eliot poem. “Harp Carols” celebrates Europe’s music of 15th Century – 19th Century holiday season and will transport you to a place of Old World calm during this winter’s busiest month.
I’ve also been in the studio recording for my own album of original songs, practicing with a bunch with lovely women with gorgeous harmonies (with my little girl running around between us). Its been a pretty amazing time.
Here’s a photo album.
He's got some 'splainin' to do Sam & MeHarp ChartIn-Studio Selfie at Macklemore & Ryan Lewis'
Julie Baldridge and I recorded a handful of song last spring on my birthday this year. She’s a violinist friend I’ve been playing with for a decade, but she recently moved to San Francisco. We hadn’t played together for quite a while, but all in a short span of time, she was in town, we made plans to play, and on that day I said, “Hey, would you like to record this?”
Most of what we came up with was improvised, like this song – “For Elsie”
We also recorded a song I had previously written, “In the Shadows (of Enchantment)”. I was so pleased. Julie followed the harp so well, but of course she would – just moments before I pressed record she said to me, “half of music is listening.”
Inspired by the recent host of the AWP in Seattle, I’m revisiting some poems. These two poems were published last summer in RASP Anthology
A Blessing (Sunflower)
May you continue to give graces
And bloom again next year.
The bride will want to see you
Growing tall in the golden field
May your head be high
And small creatures
Lift you up with their sweetness
Though they may crawl through life
We are all born with wings
Brown County, 1909
Trouble in the kitchen
With the skillet
Paul dug the outhouse
Too shallow this time
Got a full coop of
Chickens and children
Sure could use a whiskey
But I’m pregnant again
This poem I found while going through some writing circa 2006. It sort of resonates with the narrative brevity of the other two:
(Untitled)
A Hopi woman’s life is now a radio story, her people belong to the air like her loom shaft, that she presses down to even out the wool she hopes the truth will be straight.
Sometimes, I write fan mail. Yes, I do! Who doesn’t like positive vibrations? Last year I wrote to Regina Specktor. No response. Of course, I don’t really expect to hear back from these busy full-time artists that don’t know me. That’s why I was so pleasantly surprised this week when I heard back from someone I reached out to!
I wrote to Claudia Schmidt, seasoned singer/songwriter and prolific folk and jazz recording artist from the Midwest. Here’s my email to her below and her thoughtful response:
January 6, 2014
Dear Claudia,
I came upon your music by pleasant surprise. To me, it was magic really. If you don’t mind indulging me here, I’d like to share the story with you.
It was this last October. I was in the car in the middle of the night. I had just dropped my husband off at Sea-Tac airport so he could fly to New England and move his mother into assisted living. It was an emotionally heavy departure and a surreal feeling to be awake and functioning at 4:30 in the morning. Our 2 ½ year old daughter was in the back seat, barely awake, piecing together the family tree aloud with her little baby voice. It was still pitch black as we drove north to our Seattle home. Then, around the curve of 1-5 the lights of the city appeared. I was listening to KEXP and your song “Persephone’s Song” came on. That song was exactly the journey of that drive for me. Persephone and Demeter, the mother and daughter. The black departure into the unknown underworld.
As a harpist, hearing the harp played always catches my ear. I turned up the music. I wasn’t sure if you were singing and playing? Who is this harpist? What is this song? I was hypnotized. We girls were quiet in the darkness as we listened to you sing “I need my rainy days.” We were on the edge of our own rainy days, the ones that make Seattle iconic, as the onset of another Pacific Northwest winter would soon begin.
Since that wee morning, your album “Bend in the River” gets plenty of play in my house. My daughter fondly, and simply, calls you Claudia, as if she knows you personally. Your voice is a familiar friend, kid friendly, and inspiring to this mama. Thank you. I love how my little child runs around the house singing “there’s a racer inside me, I can’t slow her down!”
If I may ask, I would be very pleased to purchase any arrangement you have of “Persephone’s Song” – it would be a great gift in fact.
Blessings this new year,
Monica Schley
Seattle, Washington
mother & daughter
… and the response…
January 7, 2014
Dear Monica,
Thank you so much for the lovely letter. You really took me into the scenario! My friend Andrea Stern, a Mpls. musician, played on that. I will ask if she has a chart that I could make a copy of and send you. I’m glad you found the song. I still sing it often.
As it happens, I will be in Seattle on Sunday April 6 at the Royal Room. It’s a bit later show than usual, they had an event already. So I won’t start till 8:30pm, a late start for my peeps these days! …. And I hope you can come (I promise I will do Persephone for you). I am also celebrating the release of a new Red House CD on that trip. Lots going on! Be well, and I hope to see you soon.
